How Quick An Accident Happens

I feel real safe driving around. I'm like a bird always looking for predators, always looking for other traffic, the other guy, etc.

(By the way, when I was coming home from the exercise place I saw a couple of people sauntering arm in arm slowly across the road. Traffic had to slow down to let them pass. I was thinking, What? A guy riding with me thought they were drunk. I thought maybe one of them was blind and the other was helping him. But when we passed it just looked like maybe they were in love and oblivious to what was going on.)

Back to the traffic. Anything can happen. But I'm hoping it doesn't.

A guy I know was crashed into this week, the side of his car. And it's a nice, fairly new car. He's just going through an intersection like normal when someone who claimed she looked for traffic just suddenly plowed into his side.

Once you have that enormous crunched in side it just stays that way, making a true mess of an otherwise beautiful car. And it has the potential to shake you up at the minimum and kill you at the max. Fortunately he wasn't injured.

But it makes you question your path. If I had waited 30 seconds longer before leaving, this would've never happened. All that.

Junk Then, Junk Now?

I was just driving somewhere and spotted a '59 Chevy in someone's yard. 50 years!

Ah, that takes me back ... to high school and my family had a '59 Chevrolet that it was my "pleasure" to drive. It actually was a piece of junk and was an embarrassment. But this was a time when being a little freakish was kind of a badge of honor and a distinction. So while I was embarrassed somewhat about the old clunker, I still knew I had the distinction of having something a bit freakish and tried to make the most of it.

I'm also the veteran owner of a few other old cars, including a '56 Ford, a '61 Ford Fairlane, and a '66 Impala. These cars were also junk at the time. The Impala was the biggest gas guzzler I've ever had. It got just slightly better mileage than the space shuttle, which I'm thinking burns off about 5000 gallons of fuel per foot on takeoff. The '61 was losing its wheels (a dealer said) in '71 or '72. The '56 Ford I actually gave away for a couple hamburgers. I could've gotten fries out of the deal too but I had too much pity on the buyer. They should put me on the Supreme Court. I have true empathy.

Seeing the old '59 brought back memories. Memories of cars that were junk then, and something tells me they can't be too much better with another 40 some years on them.