Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I can't make this stuff up

We lost the car in Knoxville Tennessee. I am not kidding. It was the second day of our trip to Garden City, SC (Myrtle Beach). We were at a gas station just off Interstate 40 in Knoxville, Tennessee. I parked the car at a gas pump and put the nozzle in and all that. Then I told John and Harry I was going in to buy some water. I am in the habit of leaving the pump while I’m fueling the car, doesn't everybody? Well, then Harry said he was going in to use the rest rooms. John didn’t need to go. I actually used the rest room too (I think) and at any rate I met Harry at the counter buying an ice cream bar. We walked out together.

“Harry where is the car?”

We looked. It was gone. We went to all the pumps, nothing in back.
We were freaking, and then Harry pointed. The car was about 500 feet or more away, across the street. It was sitting between an electrical utility pole and the wires that they use to support it. It had rolled across a street, through a grassy ditch full of who knows what, through utility wires, just missing a utility pole, and into an old arborvitae that was cracked and falling over from the impact. There were two guys who looked a bit shell shocked standing near the car. They must have seen what happened. John was in the passenger seat. He was white. I asked the one guy how fast the car was going… he thought maybe 10 mph maybe faster. It took Harry a couple of tries to get it out of the tangle of shrub and grass. Amazingly, while the bumper smelled strongly of spruce, there were no dents. Everything seemed to work. No scratches on the underbody. We still had to go through the mountains and I was hoping we didn’t have alignment problems. John’s only comment when we asked him if he was alright was “I DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT IN THE CAR BY MYSELF AGAIN!” I was too stressed to do any more driving so Harry drove the rest of the way to Garden City. We found out later
when John was describing the incident to my sister, that John was trying to turn on the air conditioning. He put the car in neutral and turned on the car. The parking brake was up but didn’t work. The car was on an incline so it rolled forward. Harry confessed that in the excitement he had dropped his ice cream bar. We should have bought a lottery ticket.

No comments: