Setting The Record Straight And An Examination Of A Driving Record

We are going to start this week’s column off with a correction, just to make sure to set the record straight. You may remember the front page picture in last week’s Herald of a crash at the Railroad Avenue – Martin Street intersection. I reported that one of the vehicles was loaded with teens, which was a poor choice of words. There were only two teens in the truck, and they certainly were not loaded. Please accept my apology.

If I could have a redo, I would not have mentioned loaded and instead reported that the intersection is dangerous. Many motorists have noted that you need to look twice before crossing Martin Street because oncoming traffic gets on you fast.
While we are on the subject, and since I have published many wreck photos during the last two decades in the Herald, I should share a few of my own driving escapades. I can report that after almost 35 years behind the wheel, I have experienced two-and-a-half collisions.

The first one was back in 1991 around my 16th birthday. I had a little Toyota pickup and my dad and I were headed back to the house after a fishing trip at Enid Lake. I had a 14-foot aluminum boat and, best I can recall, we spent more time trying to crank the motor than actually fishing.

We were headed back up Hwy. 51 in Courtland when I rear-ended another vehicle. The driver was waiting to make a left turn and obviously I didn’t have my eyes on the road. It was a powerful collision, the boat came off the trailer and landed on the cab of my truck. Both vehicles were totaled, but thankfully there were no serious injuries.

With a little help, my Dad and I put the boat back on the trailer. We caught a ride home to Batesville when a fellow with a pickup came along that we knew. He hooked the trailer to his truck and we rode home in the bed of the pickup. My mom was probably looking out the kitchen window and frowning.

Later that night Dad and I were rehashing the crash and both of us recalled looking at an extremely large fellow on a tiny riding lawnmower when it happened. We decided that it must have been a serious distraction as both of our attention was diverted from the road.

I had no excuse a little over a week later when I centered a concrete post in a Walmart parking lot. I am counting this one as half a crash, I drove Dad’s work van home but it definitely needed a new bumper and grill. I had to pay some of the bill on that repair job.

Thankfully that lesson took, and another dozen years passed before my next (and hopefully last) crash. This was in the spring of 2003, and I was courting the lady I would marry. We had only been on a few dates, and this meeting was a quick lunch outing. She worked at the Grenada Lake hospital, where I picked her up, and little did I know we would return in an ambulance an hour later.

We had a major collision at the intersection of Hwy. 8 and 51 in Grenada. I was going straight under a yellow light, and the other driver was making a left turn in front of me, also with a yellow light. There was some serious vehicle carnage, and an older driver in the other vehicle and Charlotte were both transported to the hospital.

I remember her co-workers standing outside when the ambulance pulled up to the emergency room, and I remember thinking they were probably wondering who the idiot was she was with. The diagnosis was a broken nose for Charlotte, and it wasn’t pretty when her mother arrived at the hospital.

“Oh no, my baby’s face,” she said.

Talk about a good first impression – that was the first time I met my future mother-in-law. And I looked, but there wasn’t a hole to crawl in anywhere in that hospital room.

Thankfully our early courtship survived that incident and our marriage has also survived other bumps during the last two decades. But she still watches close when I am behind the wheel!