Richmond mentions nearly being creamed by a truck here, and it reminds me of one of my own brushes with the reaper.

I had just gotten home from my very first day at Purdue. I needed a drafting set to do the homework I had that weekend. The only place I was likely to find a set was in Crown Point, five miles away.

So I’m driving the twisting backroads between cedar lake and crown point, and I get behind Woody, a local barber. He’s doing 15 in a 45, so I wait till I get to the top of a hill, I have a clear mile and a half to pass him. I get out, and as soon as I get alongside he speeds up to around 60. So I can’t get back in ahead of him in time. At the tip of the next hill, I meet a car headed the other direction.

Combined speed probably around 95-105.

Knocked the wind right out of me. Cut my legs up, broke the steering wheel with my stomach, put my head through the windshield and made a dent in the hood. The transmission ended up more or less in my lap.

Woody came along side demanding my driver’s license. Prick. I could barely breathe. Thank god I was a rugged bastard, the crash would probably have killed me outright. THe oncoming car was totalled, and the driver was a nearly 400 lb woman- she was her own airbag, basically.

Woody, the prick, gave testimony that I was driving recklessly etc. and I ended up in traffic school (for the first of many times)

I would have complained more, but I was just tickled to be alive.

Every year afterwards, though, on the anniversary of that day, Woody had to buy new tires for his car. Odd how that happened every year for more than twenty years and nobody ever figured out how it was happening.