1998 was quite an eventful year for us; March through July of that year will be remembered by the sound of shattering glass, sheering metal, squealing tires and the smell of detonated air bags!
That year, of course, will also be remembered as the year that Pigeons entered my life!
Joan was broad sided by an uninsured motorist at the intersection of Hwy 9 and Hwy 56 in early March. The driver of the other vehicle was from out of state, and failed to stop at the intersection
I was forced to take the kids to school, Joan to work, and finally drive myself to work: Tedious, frustrating, time consuming, and about 150 miles each day! About a week later, I backed into an old station wagon. The impact did nothing to my truck, but it caused $900.00 in damage to the old vehicle, and, of course, it was my fault!
About two weeks later, Joan was riding with me to Melbourne to pick up her partially repaired car. We did not get ¼ mile down the highway, when I happened to glance to my right (upon entering into a sharp curve), and I saw three Wood Ducks taking off from a farm pond! The sight of the ducks was breath taking, and my eyes were riveted on them as they lifted off of the pond. When I looked back at the highway, I was in the wrong lane and headed into the path of an oncoming truck. I tried my best to miss the vehicle, but the man had frozen at the steering wheel, and he did nothing but grasp his wheel and absorbed the impact. My truck wound up in the ditch on the right side of the highway, and his just stayed put! Joan immediately exited the truck on the passenger side to help the other party involved. I just sat behind the wheel for a few moments confused from the contents of the air bag. I first looked down at the steering wheel, with the deployed air bag, and wondered what in the hell had happened to the wheel! Finally, I tried to open the driver's side door, but it would not budge, so I was forced to slide over to the opposite side and step out into the ditch just as Joan had done earlier. I walked around to the rear of the truck, and I noticed that I had dual wheels on one side. I remember thinking, "I don't have dual wheels, I don't think!" His front left wheel had been knocked completely off of his truck and came to rest in perfect alignment with my left rear wheel.
Joan had pulled this 200-pound man out of his truck by herself when I finally got over to the opposite side of the highway! He acted as though he was hurt very badly, and an ambulance arrived very shortly. The man's 14-year-old stepdaughter was in the passenger seat, but she said that she was fine and declined a ride to the hospital. The man sued me, but I have not lost any sleep over the matter yet.
Joan got her car back that day, with the help of some friends. Two weeks later, she was driving to the Violet Hill Elementary School on a gravel road just to the north and east of our home. A fifteen-year-old boy smashed into her, knocked her car off of the road, and she hit her head on the ceiling. She still has problems with headaches today. The car was totaled this time, and the youth did not even receive a ticket! This happened just as she was completing another semester's work toward her masters degree in chemistry. The most unfortunate thing here is that her injuries were significant enough to keep her from obtaining that degree. She only lacked one or two semesters to finish when the accident happened.
The next couple of years involved going to a Chiropractor, an Orthopedist, and three Neurologists! She was finally diagnosed as having "Thoracic Outlet Syndrome", and this has caused her pain, discomfort, and some loss of gross and fine motor skills. She no longer drops glassware, etc., because she was assigned exercises to perform by a Physical Therapist. So, even though she has improved, she did not ever go back to ASU to finish getting her second masters degree. She did, however, get close enough to the degree to be qualified to teach all of the Physical Sciences. A masters degree would, however, increased her earning potential! A 15-year-old kid driving with a 16-year-old passenger has denied this. Even though the boy was an illegal driver in this situation, it has never been fully resolved!
Farmer's Insurance represents the youth, and I was at first furious with the adjuster for the way he handled the accident, and then I began having some fun demeaning this Idiot! I even sent him a "Bill Clinton" Pinocchio wristwatch for Christmas that year, but it was returned. I will not mention the adjuster's name here, because the matter has still not been resolved, but months before I had told him that he was too much of a "Crook" to deal with Joan, and he would need to address any correspondence to my attention. Finally, I told him that he was too much of a "Crook" to deal with me and that his supervisor would need to do so. Frankly, I think that both men should have been fired, but they still have the money, and they work for an insurance company, so that tells the whole story! By the way, the watch was returned to me with a note saying that it was against company policy for their agents to accept gifts or gratuities! I then asked if that was the policy, why then had it been very carefully opened before returning it to me? I got no answer to the question; they simply turned the case over to a female attorney in Little Rock. This woman apparently has a very severe case of "Lockjaw!" I have since learned through experience that when you are wrong in Arkansas the policy is, "Just Keep Your Mouth Shut!" I have said more than once that the day will come when I have forgotten the adjuster's name, but I doubt very seriously if he will every forget mine!
We had four wrecks between March and May of that year, and Farm Bureau decided to cancel our insurance policy. I can't say that I blame them, who in their right mind would want to continue this costly business practice? I
We spent the next three years with Progressive Insurance, and paid nearly $4,000 per year in premiums! Progressive got off lucky; they only had to foot the bill for one more accident. I had just purchased a new truck late in 1999, and when one morning on my way to work, I got my mind hung up on adjusting the thermostat, for whatever reason, turning the heat down was the only thing in the world that mattered to me! It had been very cool when I started the trip, but by the time I got into the downhill curve near the Violet Hill Store, I was intent on turning the damned thing down to a cooler position. This is a place where I always slow down, but that morning I was just too intent on adjusting the temperature. The road curves quite sharply and there are no shoulders to speak of. Soon I found myself on the wrong side of the road! I quickly forgot about the thermostat and tried desperately to pull out of the curve. The truck began sliding sideways across the highway and toward the store, and I had done everything possible to recover, but to no avail! As I was skidding, I decided to see just what I was going to hit this time. There were two trucks parked on the side of the store, one completely vacated and one with a dog in the bed. As my left front skidded into the right rear of one of the trucks (the one with the dog in it) the now familiar sound of sheering metal and shattering glass again reared its ugly head! The crash immediately brought everyone inside of the store outside to see what on earth had happened! It was just me, I was so "pissed", the only thing I could think of was, and "I wonder how much this is going to cost me!" The man who owned the truck with the dog in it later asked me if I had seen his dog who had disappeared; he also wanted to know if I had seen which direction he animal had taken! The question sounded fairly ludicrous to me, but I simply told him that I had seen the dog out of the corner of my eye, and he was headed "That Way!" Indicating, of course, in the direction away from the impact. The dog apparently was so shaken that he did not return home until a week later.
I did not know it until 15 or 20 minutes later, but the first truck had lunged forward into the second truck and caused even more damage! The whole thing was close to $40,000 in property damage, however, if the trucks had not been parked there, I could well have taken out half of the store and the people inside. So for the next six weeks, I was back to a rental car!
Upon getting my truck back from the body shop, I met a "State Trooper" on my way to work one morning. We simultaneously topped a hill going in opposite directions. I was only going 80mph in a 55mph zone, but he immediately whipped around, and the blue lights flashed brilliantly in my rear view mirror. I have no idea why I was going 80mph; I was only an hour early for work! Incredibly, he only gave me a warning and not a ticket. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He advised me to use my cruise control, and I candidly told him that I found it to be useless in these hills. However, I slept on that advice and began setting my cruise on 50mph. It worked great, and I have not even had a close call ever since! I only wish we had met sooner, he really did teach me how to drive in the hills!
Joan had one more incident that cost us a pretty penny! She tried to drive too close to the side of the road upon which we live, and she tore the radiator up in her car. Her blood sugar was low, and she just misjudged her boundaries. The next morning she burned the engine up; there was no water left in the radiator. We could not afford to file another insurance claim, and after several futile attempts to fix the damned thing, we sold it for just about what we had spent on it trying to fix it! That car was the first Ford that we had owned in many years, and after that experience, it will be our last! For the first time in my life, I bought a Japanese car! I felt like a traitor at first, but the Nissan Altima has proven to be a very nice vehicle!
We have even gotten back to paying a reasonable premium with Allstate. However, if our credit had been less than perfect, we would still be paying the $4,000.
1998, you might remember, was the year that I was introduced to the world of Pigeons! As I was checking on the birds one morning, I discovered that I needed to change a light bulb in the barn. The bulb is mounted on the wall just over the feed barrels. There are four wire doors on the front of this enclosure that houses the barrels. This keeps varmints out of the feed, and it is raised up on the plywood platform, which keeps the feed dry. I looked the situation over, and quickly decided that I could not reach the bulb by opening one of the doors and simply stretching from the plywood floor. I found a couple of scraps of wood that I could use like stilts. This was a good way for me to leverage my position. As I reached for the bulb, the whole damned thing came crashing down! What an idiotic idea to begin with; I severely sprained an ankle in the process, and hobbled off to work without changing the bulb. That afternoon I told Joan about the incident and showed her my extremely swollen ankle. She and I went back out to the barn, and she just opened one of the doors and simply changed the bulb! I was not only incorrect in assuming that I could not reach it from that point, but extremely disgusted as I saw how easy it was for her to do just that! So, how many Pharmacists does it take to change a light bulb? I have no earthly idea, and I really don't care! I do know, however, that it only takes one Microbiologist!
| Reflections, page 1 |
Reflections, page 2 |
Reflections, page 3 |
Reflections, page 4 |
| Reflections, page 5 |
Reflections, page 6 |
Reflections, page 7 |
Reflections, page 8 |
| Reflections, page 9 |
Reflections, page 10 |
Reflections, page 11 |
Reflections, page 12 |
| Reflections, page 13 |
Reflections, page 14 |
Reflections, page 15 |
|
