Car Accidents

Eric has a great post up about the first car accident he was in while driving.

Do you remember yours? I do.

I was 16. I had my license about 6 months. Of course, I had been driving for about 3 years being the good farm kid I was.

I was coming home from work at McDonald's. I had worked the closing shift so it was nearly Midnight. I stopped at the local 7-11 for a grape Slurpee and a Butterfinger. I had that Slurpee sitting between my legs.

I was driving my dad's little Isuzu P'up. (I called it the Puppy!) It had an extended long bed on it and was my dad's pride and joy. The Puppy was a manual shift with a touchy clutch.

It was raining that night...huge rainstorm. We tended to get a lot of those in Pendleton. Especially in early October/November.

Just down the road from the 7-11 is a river (the Umatilla) that runs through town. It isn't very deep, but the gully it is in is rather deep...15-20 feet in most places...some places a bit more.

Anyway, the bridge over this river that I went across every night was a steel girder bridge. You know the kind...steel plates on deck so you can look down and see through the bridge to the water itself.

I was only doing about 25 when I got to the bridge. About a quarter of the way across, I felt the tail end of that P'up start to slide. I managed to get her back under control. What I forgot to do was slow down. Next thing I know I am playing pinball on a steel bridge and I am the pinball.

All I really remember is going in circles. I hit 3 out of the 4 corners on the P'up. I set the radiator back 4 inches on one side. I even managed to damage the bridge. There was a spot on the guardrail of the bridge where I had snapped the steel and it was sitting about a foot and a half out over the water.

I must have lost consciousness because I could have sworn I had broken the driver's side window with my head. But when the P'up finally stopped, the window was intact. There was grape Slurpee everywhere. And I was scared shitless.

I got out of the P'up and began screaming like a banshee. "Somebody help me!" alternating with "My daddy's gonna kill me!"

In 1983, we didn't have cell phones, but cordless phones for the house were brand new. And this lady came flying out of her house and brought me her cordless phone to call my parents on.

The cops arrived soon after and that cop was soooo nice to me. He wrapped a blanket around me and set me in the front seat of his cruiser while he checked out the scene.

My parents arrived to make sure I was okay...I was. Other than a few scrapes and bumps, I was fine. Thank goodness for seat belts. That P'up took care of me that night, but I sure didn't take care of it.

I caused $2500 worth of damage to a vehicle that was only worth about $1500. My parents got a new car out of it (an Audi that I hated) and I got a huge lesson about driving and wearing seat belts.