Important

And How I Learned About It

Posted July 1, 2003

Important safety tip: A turn is not a curve.

I never thought about it before, the age of 36, I finally broke down and learned to drive.

It took me so long because of environmental concerns, and because of the sheer stubborn pleasure that I took in spurning something that was so important to everyone else. But it was also because I had the gut feeling that if I ever did try to learn to drive, I'd wind up driving right off the road.

However, as I got older, my allergies kicked in to the point that I was no longer had the wind to ride my bike. I was walking to work at the time, but relying on Jim to pick me up with the groceries or for the occasional trip to Wal-Mart was creating more stress than I wanted in my life, and reluctantly I decided that the time had come to make my peace with the automobile.

Jim and I don't work well together. Besides, our Pinto station wagon was stick. Not only was I reluctant to deal with a clutch before I'd mastered the steering wheel and the accelerator, but the stick shift of that particular car was on its last legs. If you didn't apply just the right touch, it would dislocate from the rest of the works and roll limply and uselessly in the box that held it in place.

So I took an adult driver's ed course at SIU, which only confirmed my fear of cars. Being in control of a few lethal tons of metal and glass that I didn't understand and didn't want to, was not my idea of a good time.

My friend Pat (short for Patricia) stepped in at that point. She borrowed her aunt's car and patiently took me driving around Crab Orchard Lake, over and over. I don't know my right from my left, a deficiency that gets Jim's dander up. Pat learned to say "my side" and "your side".

She got me over the first hump. The day came when we went out into the country to look at some land Jim's boss was selling off, and I let him talk me into showing off my developing skills.

I worked the clutch and he helmed the touchy gear stick. We took off down Old 51, a curvy road. Jim didn't have Pat's patience with my snail's pace around curves and he gradually taught me that I could take a curve three or four times faster than I'd initially felt safe. I didn't like it, but I was getting used to it.

Then, just above the migrant worker's camp, it was time to leave the paved highway. "Slow down and turn," Jim told me.

I hit the clutch instead of the break. The car actually speeded up a little as we were going downhill out of gear.

Jim noticed the problem but didn't say anything. He assumed any idiot would realize they'd missed the turn, go down the road a ways, turn around and try again.

As the adage goes, never assume anything. It makes an ass out of you and me.

Having taken all those curves at what seemed like breakneck speed, I thought nothing of the speed of the car. Going downhill at 45 miles an hour, I made a 90° turn onto a gravel road that sloped downhill instead of lying flat. The few feet of asphalt where the roads diverged were dusted with gravel, which didn't help any.

Faced with the novel sensation of trying to control an airborne automobile, I was still trying to figure out why the car wasn't responding to the steering wheel when gravity pulled us to the hillside and we started to roll down it.

We brought up against a sturdy young tree that absorbed our energy like a spring. Jim says we owe our lives to the fact that the slope had been clear cut a few years before. With nothing to break our fall, we would have rolled over and over. If we'd brought up against a sturdy oak, we'd've been squashed.

As it was, I struggled to get my bearings, suspended above my steering wheel, (thankfully I was wearing my seatbelt!) and peering through the mosaic of safety glass that hung before me.

Jim gingerly disengaged himself. The Pinto didn't have a passenger-side seat belt, and he wouldn't have been wearing one if it had, but he'd had time to brace against the frame of the car. He reached over and snapped off the engine, then gingerly crawled through the empty space in the door that had been a raised window moments earlier. I think he muttered, "You're on your own, doll," as he made his exit.

The first thing he encountered on the "other side" was an excited babble of Spanish from the workers and their families who had been drawn to the accident. Then a hearty hand fell upon his shoulder.

"Are you all right, my son?" a warm voice inquired. He turned to face its source and found himself confronted with a Catholic Priest (it was Sunday and he'd come to the camp to say mass.)

Having been raised a Lutheran, Jim's first, involuntary thought was, "I've died and gone to Hell!"

But he quickly got over that. Friendly strangers helped me out of the car and I burst into tears. The year before we'd been gathering yarrow. I'd popped out of the car, leaving the door open behind me for some reason, and wandered pretty far afield as clump after clump of medicinal blossoms beckoned me. Jim had backed up to meet me, and wrenched the door almost off its hinges when it brought up against an obstacle. He'd been mad at me for a week over a damaged door. How would he feel now?

He put his arm around me and brushed some chunks of safety glass off the top of my head. The last time he'd been annoyed because he faced the hassle of getting the door fixed. This accident closed the book on this car. No fixing it. No hassle.

Besides, this time he was glad to still be alive.

We'd told the priest not to bother calling an ambulance, but some passing motorist had seen the debacle and called for one. Jim led me up the hill to meet it when it arrived. I dropped down cross-egged with my head in my hands and started to cry again. I felt like it was the end of the world.

The paramedics had been to more accidents than I had, and had a completely different perspective on arriving at one where they weren't needed. The talkative one broke into a pleased grin when Jim waved him away.

"How's it goin'?" he asked.

"It's gone better," Jim told him.

"That your car?" he asked, gesturing to the Pinto leaning against the tree with its belly in the air.

"Used to be."

"How'd you get it down there?"

"I didn't. My wife did. I'm teaching her to drive."

"Oh," he said, completely satisfied.

The paramedic started talking up x-rays as Jim tried to shoo him and his partner away. About the time they left with a friendly wave, the sheriff showed up.

"How's it goin'?"

"It's gone better."

"That your car?"

"It used to be."

"How'd you get it down there?"

"I didn't. I'm teaching my wife to drive."

"Ah," said the sheriff with an understanding nod. "Can I see her license?"

I bestirred myself and produced my learner's permit. I expected him to tear it into shreds and stomp on it, but he noted it down and gave it back to me. I asked about fines. He looked at me like I was crazy. I asked who I had to contact to pay for the sign I'd taken out. He shrugged. "It needed replacing anyway," he told me.

A tow truck arrived. Jim walked up to meet the puzzled driver who was looking for a wreck.

"How's it goin?" the driver asked him.

"It's gone better."

The driver's eye fell on the Pinto on the slope below him. "Shoot!" he exclaimed (or something like it). "That your car?"

"It used to be."

"How'd you get it down there?"

"I didn't. My wife did. I'm teaching her to drive."

The driver nodded with a sage expression, and he and Jim walked down to the car to figure out how to get it back on the road, pointing and gesturing broadly. The sheriff had finished his report, and he and I trailed along behind them. Several of the workers waved to me, and I waved back with a game smile.

We all watched as the tow truck worried the wreck of our Pinto. The workers cheered heartily as the car came clear of the trees, its windshield now more of a curtain undulating sickeningly as the car lurched forward.

The driver looked quizzically at the car behind him. Then he shrugged, left his truck and ducked inside the Pinto. The gear shift dislocated in his hand. He looked dissapointed, but Jim said casually, "It does that all the time." The driver made a face, and got out to let Jim try. The workers cheered again as the motor started right up.

Pleased, Jim got out of the car and the driver disengaged it from his tow truck. Jim sidled up to the sheriff. "Are you going to file that report?" he asked.

"You'll need it for your insurance."

"We only have liability on the car."

"I mean, if either of you turn out to be hurt. Sometimes you don't know for a day or two. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I understand that if an accident does less than 250 dollars worth of damage, you don't have to file a report. This car isn't worth $250."

The sheriff thought about it a moment.

"Heck!" said the tow-truck driver with cheerful enthusiasm. "This car ain't worth 25!"

The sheriff said he'd keep the report for a week. If we discovered we'd been injured, he'd file it. Otherwise he'd let it go.

So I totaled my first car without my insurance company hearing about it.

Jim knocked out enough of the wind curtain that he could see to drive us home. As we got in the car to leave, I heard a high-pitched happy shout. We waited for the proud child who was running up, waving a hubcap like an ensign.

Hubcap in hand, we drove home. I kept my face covered to shield it from the bits of glass that broke clear of the billowing windshield.

Jim took a photo of me with my foot on the fender as if I were an elephant hunter with a trophy, and we took baths and searched each other for the last flakes of glass like chimps grooming each other.

That evening, my friend Steve, who lived down the road from us, knocked excitedly on the door. He'd seen the parked car and panicked. Relieved we were both OK, he insisted that I get into his car and drive him around the block. "Do it now!" he told me earnestly. "Or you may never do it again!"

I thought it was silly at the time, but I humored him. The next morning I was grateful to him. I woke up with the bewildering feeling of hanging suspended above that steering wheel; but also with the memory of the successful drive around the block.

I was less frightened of driving after that. I'd always been sure I'd drive right off the road if I ever tried to drive. I'd always assumed that it would kill me.

Never assume...

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you care for the background, you're welcome to use it.