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Sideswiped!
Written
November 26, 1957
About
a year ago we had an automobile accident.
It
happened on a Saturday, because I remember I woke up earlier than
usual. Mother would have gone to Marysville for parts without
me, but I woke up in time to go with her.
On
the way back, there is a 90° turn just out of Richwood.
This year, there was a cornfield on the inner side of the curve.
This cornfield blocked vision around the curve.
Then
just as we got to the curve a stake truck appeared, coming the other
direction. It seems whenever a car or truck comes around a
curve, they always move to the center. Therefore, we collided
almost head-on. |

A
STAKE TRUCK |
The
truck glanced off, turned around, and went on its side. The
door on my side flew open, but I didn't fall out.
If
we had hit just slightly different, the wreck could have been much
worse. But we were only slightly injured, the truck driver not
at all.
Background:
I wrote this essay for my fifth-grade English class. It's the
earliest non-childish composition of mine that I've discovered in the archives.
Several months
before the accident, in April 1956, I snapped this picture of the car
that would later be involved. That's my Kentucky cousin Freddy
Thomas standing beside the 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air sport sedan.
I colorized the picture in October 2006. |
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I made the drawing
below in 2003.
The collision, in which the left front wheel of the truck smashed
into our car's left front fender, took place a couple of miles south
of Richwood on Ohio Route 37, probably in October 1956.
The tall corn,
awaiting the harvest, had hidden our car and the truck from each
other as we approached the banked curve at 50 miles per hour.
If the two drivers had been aware of the oncoming traffic, both would
have been more careful to stay on their respective sides of the centerline.
And
if cars had been equipped with seatbelts back then, we wouldn't have
sustained a scratch. As it was, my only injury was a knee
laceration. We were lucky.
For
several summers afterward, we noticed that the field on the inside
of the corner was no longer a cornfield. Instead, the farmer
planted lower-lying crops like alfalfa or soybeans. |
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