The advantage of being a grandparent instead of the parent: the phone call you get is "your grandchild has been in a car accident, but she's o.k.", instead of "your child has been in a car accident and is in the emergency room." You don't have to experience the absolute terror the whole time it takes you to get to the hospital and learn she is o.k.
Kathryn is so lucky her tangle with a semi on the interstate wasn't any worse. Here Preston looks as though he is looking at the front-end damage to her car - actually this photo was taken a couple weeks ago when she got her car.
Kathryn's accident so soon after she started driving her car reminded me of my older brother's first accident. Six days after Ron turned 16 and got his license, my diary read: "Ron ditched the car over east of Brooks." It was the first time he had been allowed to take the car alone. He was on the old Blue Grass Road between Brooks and Corning when he took the corner east of Daleton Boswell's too fast and slid into the ditch. He wasn't hurt and the car only had a little dent that he and Dad hammered back out. It was a good lesson for him. "Experience is the best teacher."
Ron's daughter, Lorrie, had a similar experience when she began driving - although her accident was more serious. If I remember correctly, she was driving and Andrew and a friend were riding in the back of their 70's (?) Chevy Nova when she lost control on the gravel and totaled the car. They were all wearing their seat belts and weren't seriously hurt. Again, lesson learned.
Kari's first car was damaged in a fender bender, but she wasn't driving it. Her closest call might have been when a tire on the old Mustang blew out when she and Anne were on the interstate coming home from college. They were able to maintain control and weren't hurt.
Preston and I had a scary slide on our way to see Kari when she lived in St. Paul. We took his little blue pickup so we could help her move. It started snowing on us on the way. By the time we got to the twin cities, there was a lot of slush on the roads. We were coming down the I-35E hill toward the Mississippi River when the truck started sliding toward the guardrail. I remember thinking, "I hope the seat belt holds". Preston was saying something like, "Oh, s__t!" Luckily we slid along the guard rail and came to a stop. The worst of the damage was a ruined tire - but even it didn't go down until after we had gotten safely to Kari's.
I don't remember Doug having any accidents other than striking a parked car when he was in high school. (There were probably some I never knew about.) The accidents of his I remember most were the ones he had when he was a child riding with me in our '57 Plymouth 2-door hardtop.
I put the car into the ditch on the same corner east of Brooks as my brother only I went off on the other side headed the opposite direction. I was able to drive a few feet in the ditch until I got to a farm driveway and drove back onto the road. No one would even have known about that if Daleton Boswell hadn't seen me.
A few weeks later we were headed home toward Brooks from Corning on the gravel road past the hospital. The road was being drug and the road grader had left the gravel piled in the middle of the road on the first pass through which made me drive closer to the edge of the road than I normally would have been. The road side was soft from recent rains. As I came around the corner east of Paul Flowers, it was as though the ditch sucked the car right in. It was a deep ditch. The car ended up tipped on the driver's side. Doug was thrown to the front floor boards. In order to get out, I had to crawl across the seat and open the passenger side door, then reach back in to get him out. That wasn't easy - the door was large and heavy; Doug was crying. I didn't know how badly he was hurt.
I made it back up to the road and carrying him, walked the 3/4's of a mile to Flowers'. They called a wrecker which Ron Wetzel was driving. He pulled the car out - amazingly it wasn't damaged - and we were on our way. Ironically, Ron wrecked the wrecker on the way back to town and he ended up in the hospital. He went off the road for the same reason I did - because of the way the gravel was piled in the middle of the roadway - but went off in a much deeper ditch.
What I remember most about this incident was when I went in to the Hy-Vee to tell Kenny about it. He didn't even ask if his little boy was hurt or if I was alright - all he wanted to know was, "What did you do to my car?" - meaning how badly was it damaged. That hurt me much more than my bumps and bruises.
Two morals from this blog: "Learn from your experience" and always first ask about the welfare of the people before worrying about a car which can be replaced.
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