Car Crash

The sound woke up everyone in the house at 4 am but no one knew what it was. I had been dreaming, so in my half-asleep state I was simply confused. My first impression was that some machine broke and violently stopped running. We lost power, so my parents went out to see what had happened. I followed and this is what I saw: A green Mustang (I think) upside-down and backwards next to a tree. It was smashed. The top was either gone or crushed, and there were car parts everywhere. I found (tripped over) the car's battery. What looks like someone's elbow sticks out of the twisted door. About 50 yards back, the telephone pole next to our driveway was shattered. My parents had called 911 on the cell phone, so presently a sherriff's deputy arrives and we go back to the house. Within minutes the road is lit up with emergency vehicles.

Today, after everything was cleared out and towed away, myself and the neighbors went out and looked at the tracks to figure out what happened. This first picture was taken from where the car came to rest. The car went through that pole (which was already replaced and the power restored before I woke up again) before bouncing and sliding to a stop.


Second pic shows the pole from the other side. The mailbox was untouched, which was hard to believe until we saw this. I've marked the tracks and the landing site. The guy must have blown the stop sign and lost control to slide off the left side of the road, because these tracks in the grass lead back quite a ways.


He hit the driveway like a ramp. The car was estimated to have hit the pole about 7 feet up from the ground.

Strange things I think about at a time like this--like the strange disparity of human experience. In such close proximity one life is destroyed, a bunch of people go to work restoring power and hauling away wrecks, and a family lights candles to see and debates whether to go back to bed. 12 hours later everything is back to normal, mostly.

UPDATE:
News post
Some people came today to leave a cross on the spot.