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I Don’t Want To Jinx Myself, But I Have Very Little Experience With Car Crashes. What About You?

September 9, 2021 By Jeff 34 Comments

The only time I’ve ever been involved in a true “crash” was when a dumbass high school friend drove his car — with me in the backseat — straight into a telephone pole on Myers Avenue in Dunbar. I think he was monkeying around with the radio, not paying attention, and just slammed straight into the pole. I remember one of the hubcaps, or wheel covers, came rocketing off and ended up about 20 yards away. And it was red hot for some reason when we picked it up. Nobody was hurt, but the dude’s car was all gnarled and smoking. It kinda pissed me off, as I recall.

Other than that… I’ve been pretty lucky. Or maybe not lucky, just really good at what I do. That’s how I prefer to think about it, but feel like cockiness might jinx me. So, we’ll go with lucky.

There were a couple of small incidents that I wouldn’t categorize as crashes that are also worth mentioning. One time an ex-girlfriend and I were at a stoplight and kissing (this is when I was about 17 or 18) and my car started inching forward and I bumped the guy in front of me. He jumped out and began waving his arms around and shouting about us “horny ass kids” (accurate) and telling us to “get a room” and all that stuff. I guess he’d been monitoring us with alarm in his rear view mirror. Heh. There was a lot of shouting and gesticulating. But there was no damage and he eventually drove away. My girlfriend and I then started laughing hysterically and couldn’t stop for a good long time.

Another time I was with my friend Bill in his dad’s pickup truck. We were smoking cigars (who the hell knows?) and Bill was trying to relight his and drove into a guardrail. It was at a curve in the road and the truck just followed the guard rail around that big curve while making a sickening grinding noise. The thing was all scratched up and dented, and we kept repeating, “Oh shit Oh shit Oh shit.” But I think Bill parked the truck on the street with the crushed-in side on the outside, and it was believed somebody had sideswiped it during the night. I don’t think he got into trouble for it, if I recall correctly.

But that’s about all I have, thankfully. Toney was involved in a bad wreck one day in Atlanta when a tractor trailer slammed into the back of a car she was riding in. The trucking company had someone out there within minutes, she said, trying to get them all to sign papers and accept checks for $1000 or whatever. All three girls were hurt, but none seriously. It happened days before Halloween, and Toney remembers one of her friends being lifted into an ambulance while wearing an elaborate bumblebee costume. Ha! This was before Toney and I started dating, but we worked at the same place and I drove past the aftermath of it. Scary! Thank God they were all OK.

I don’t have much else to report. I’ve witnessed some crashes, and happened upon a few shortly after they occurred. There were also a few close calls — including one with my parents just last week. But none with me directly involved. What about you? Have you been as “lucky” as I’ve been? Please tell us about it in the comments.

Before I call it a day here, I’d like to invite you to stop by the new podcast website. Right here. It features photos and expanded show notes. For instance, I just returned from a trip to West Virginia, where I visited my folks. I summarized the whole thing in Episode 220, and you can check out some pictures (old and new), as well as a few links that further illustrate some of the stuff I referenced in the episode. Check it out if you’re so inclined. If not, that’s cool too.

And I’ll see you guys again soon.

Have a great day!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal (jeff@thewvsr.com). In Canada? Do your shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. chill says

    September 9, 2021 at 5:56 pm

    By the severed arm of Saint Edmund!

    Reply
    • johnthebasket says

      September 10, 2021 at 7:57 am

      Two replies for Saint Edmund and his arm from the 13th century. . .

      1- “For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!” . . . Thomas More

      2- She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
      “I thought you’d never say hello, ” she said
      “You look like the silent type”
      Then she opened up a book of poems
      And handed it to me
      Written by an Italian poet
      From the thirteenth century
      And every one of them words rang true
      And glowed like burning coals
      Pouring off of every page
      Like it was written in my soul from me to you
      Tangled up in blue

      Reply
      • madz62 says

        September 10, 2021 at 9:22 am

        My favorite Dylan song.

        Reply
        • Ryan says

          September 10, 2021 at 9:54 pm

          High praise, indeed. Not sure I could pick a favorite, but that one would absolutely make the top ten.

          Reply
  2. chill says

    September 9, 2021 at 6:04 pm

    Nice to have you back, Jeff!

    I’ve had a couple of incidents with the current ride, both of which involved inattentive young persons pulling out in front of me. Also two or three when I was much younger, involving snow on the ground. I only recall a couple that were due to my own straight-up dumbassery.

    Reply
  3. johnthebasket says

    September 10, 2021 at 8:05 am

    And Jeff, if you’re going to keep writing like a slumming angel, no matter what the interval, people will probably reply. That I can’t write like a slumming angel will not deter me.

    Thanks for the update.

    John

    Reply
  4. Limey says

    September 10, 2021 at 2:01 pm

    Two proper crashes, one entirely my fault when I crested a hill to find a line of stationary traffic on the other side, and the other entirely not my fault when a moron blew through a red light and t-boned me in the middle of a junction. That second one wrote off a 6 month old car, the insurance paid me more than I’d paid for it, and I’d been having buyer’s remorse about getting the sedan rather than the wagon. So I got a few bruises and a new wagon out of it.

    Reply
  5. madz62 says

    September 10, 2021 at 2:37 pm

    Just a few fender benders for me. I have seen my share of terrible accidents and I hope I’m never in anything like that. My husband (before I met him) was in a bad accident and my sister walked away form an accident that almost totaled her car.

    Speaking of cars, I’m taking mine to the car wash when I leave work. The windows are FILTHY and it’s making my skin crawl. It can really use a good going over and I’m kicking myself for getting another black car. When they’re clean they look great but when they get dirty, you can see every speck of grit.

    Reply
    • chill says

      September 10, 2021 at 8:24 pm

      …and when you wash a black car, it will be dirty again in a few hours. I know this the same way you do.

      But – when I’ve had silver or beige or white cars, I found that just washing the windows made the whole car look clean. Conversely, if I washed the car but not the windows, it still looked dirty.

      Reply
      • johnthebasket says

        September 10, 2021 at 10:01 pm

        Does this work for medium-brain hominids? I’ve been wearing specs the last few years so I can see what I’m about to walk into, and keeping the goggles shiny is cheaper than a cleanse, wax and polish of the entire corpus daily, although to be fair, I have no idea why I’m still waxing.

        jtb

        Reply
    • Clueless says

      September 10, 2021 at 11:25 pm

      Reminds me of Shari Lewis singing about black socks. They never get dirty, the longer you wear them the stronger they get.

      And Chill is spot on with washing car windows – my filthy silver car needs a rear window cleaning and it’ll look brand new and squeaky clean.

      Reply
      • madz62 says

        September 14, 2021 at 12:44 pm

        ***UPDATE*** Last night I finally stopped at the car wash. I was desperate and took it to the nearest one which had the worst Yelp reviews. Even with a so-so “works” package, it looks a thousand times better.

        And then it rained last night.

        Reply
  6. johnthebasket says

    September 11, 2021 at 4:10 am

    All you really need is for Lambchop to run around your car a couple of times. Go ahead — give me the name of ONE other blog on the entire interweb that mentions Shari Lewis (or Lambchop) in the comments.

    John

    Reply
    • chill says

      September 12, 2021 at 1:24 am

      Or Kukla, Fran and Ollie, for that matter.

      Reply
      • Clueless says

        September 12, 2021 at 12:29 pm

        That was the show I watched (or was it Garfield Goose?) when we got our first television set. ‘Twas 1952 I think.

        Reply
        • chill says

          September 13, 2021 at 6:50 pm

          Romper Bomper Stomper Boo.

          Reply
  7. Mookie325 says

    September 11, 2021 at 8:44 pm

    Haha, I also had the exact same “incident” while kissing my girlfriend while sitting in line to pay a toll. Same reaction from the guy I bumped – I think the exact exchange went like this: Him: are your brakes OK? Me: yeah. Him: Then why the f**k don’t you use them?!?

    Sadly though, I’ve had several accidents of varying degrees, thankfully none in the last few 20 years or so. Twice got hit on the Garden State Parkway from behind when idiots weren’t alert enough to see everyone jamming on the brakes. Also had two accidents which were totally my fault with the ex-wife in the car – maybe that’s where the “ex” part came from? Both trashed my cars, one totaled. Ahhh, to be young again…

    Reply
  8. johnthebasket says

    September 14, 2021 at 4:45 pm

    I rolled a car in 1967 and Norm Macdonald was the funniest motherfucker to ever approach a microphone. I know I’m over my quota and for some reason that upsets some people with too much time on their hands so I have to double up, but nobody ever came close to the kind of disruptive, spit-out-your-late-night-cereal OJ-did-it humor that Norm dove into with his body and soul. His claim that the worst he could do against cancer was tie it — it could never beat him because when he died it would too — has been vindicated. There will be no nondenominational services for his cancer but I just spent an hour with Norm on YouTube and my belief that he’s well worth remembering was reinforced. Fuck his cancer. Godspeed, Norm.

    John

    Reply
  9. Ed says

    September 15, 2021 at 9:15 am

    A really good and thoughtful interview with Norm: https://youtu.be/olkgPzlh5A8

    Reply
  10. Matt k says

    September 15, 2021 at 10:10 am

    I’ve been tagged a few times. Minor shit, rear ended and the dude fled, no insurance or anything. Cops charged him, took him to court and he still wouldn’t pay damages (like 1500 bucks I think) so me and two buddies went to his place and liberated approximately 1500 dollars worth of “merchendise”.

    Then I rear ended a handicap bus at a railway crossing

    Reply
  11. Limey says

    September 15, 2021 at 5:28 pm

    John – IIRC your grandfather was from Glasgow? Check out the show Still Game – it’s on Netflix – a very funny and sometimes poignant Glaswegian comedy.

    Reply
    • johnthebasket says

      September 15, 2021 at 11:09 pm

      Aye, Limey, just about 20 miles south of the center of the city. Thanks for keeping Grandpa Jack and me in mind; I’ll check it out.

      John (named after Jack Culbert)

      Reply
      • Limey says

        September 16, 2021 at 10:08 am

        I thought I was OK with Scottish dialect… but I leant that I’m not. The slang calms down after the first 2 seasons when the show was broadcast to the whole of the UK, not just Scotland. Good luck!

        Reply
        • johnthebasket says

          September 16, 2021 at 4:43 pm

          Jack had been in Canada and/or the United States for 40 years when I was born, but he never lost the poetry of his original language. We’d sit on the davenport every Saturday and he’d teach me the finer points of baseball with help from Dizzy Dean and Peewee Reese (listening to baseball was one way Jack learned how to speak American English, and he understood the game inside out for a guy who had never played).

          Learning the dynamics of the infield fly rule and batter’s interference in Canadian-tinged Scots Gaelic was one of the more pleasurable experiences of my young life.

          I have some photographs of Jack, and some 8 and Super-8 film, but for some reason, the audio tapes are gone and the playback in my aging brain is fading.

          So even if I don’t understand a word of the show, I’ll enjoy it.

          John

          Reply
          • Limey says

            September 17, 2021 at 1:04 pm

            I wonder what recent immigrants use today to polish their American English? The Kardashians and The Real Housewives of Atlanta? Would could be in trouble!

            Reply
            • chill says

              September 17, 2021 at 7:08 pm

              Cab driver: Where you from?
              Passenger: Wausau.
              Cab driver: No kiddin! I got a cousin from Krakow!

              Actual commercial from a certain midwestern insurance company, imagining what a New York cab driver might look and sound like.

              Reply
              • johnthebasket says

                September 17, 2021 at 7:43 pm

                I have a friend whose family somehow escaped China in the 1970s, speaking only Cantonese, and settled in San Francisco. My friend and his sister who were both under 10 learned American English by watching game shows all day (they couldn’t go to school). They especially valued Jeopardy because they picked up both American English and American history, civics and popular culture. They should have acquired an Art Fleming accent, but because, particularly at the time, San Francisco was pretty Italian, they both sound a little like Joe DiMaggio. Neither looks like him.

                Reply
  12. Jeff says

    September 16, 2021 at 10:58 am

    I removed two comments because they were political. Please refrain. -JK

    Reply
    • chill says

      September 17, 2021 at 8:06 pm

      Excellent. Thank you for keeping an eye on the kids.

      Reply
      • johnthebasket says

        September 21, 2021 at 4:07 am

        The Kids Are Alright. Well, technically Keith Moon is dead, but after seeing and hearing his last studio performance (“Who Are You”) which he performed live on this fine doc, he is also alright.

        John

        Reply
        • chill says

          September 21, 2021 at 9:31 pm

          In a better world, he and they would instead be all right. Just sayin’.

          Reply
          • johnthebasket says

            September 22, 2021 at 4:34 am

            Perhaps. The world of early ’60s London somehow had room for a slightly odd-looking guy from a chaotic household without much in the way of liquid assets to write music and lyrics that changed the world a little. I don’t know why “People try to put us d-d-down” worked better than the “correct” spelling and elocution, but it did.

            Art has its prerogatives, and sometimes we create a different world via circuitous syntactical paths: the road not taken as it were. I can’t prove these worlds are better, but I suspect they are.

            My two conclusions:
            1) I’m glad I didn’t die before I got old, even though my neck, back, hips and knees all hurt like a sumbich and
            2) All right and alright are both preferable to alt-right because I was wrong and Jeff was right: at least in current times, when this joint works it works better without politics.

            John

            Reply
  13. Mary B. says

    September 21, 2021 at 10:32 pm

    I’ve had a few. My best was purposefully slamming into the side of a brand new mid-sized truck because the occupants had jumped out to beat up my boyfriend. They all started screaming like girls, got back inside the seriously bent truck, and fled. They called the cops on me, and when the complete story was related, it was tough tits for them.

    Reply
  14. Burnt Usually says

    September 22, 2021 at 6:21 pm

    Everything is awesome.
    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    Reply

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