I’ve had my share of close calls. Most of these were self-inflicted: miscalculations, not paying attention, or overestimating my abilities. One that still gives me the shakes happened at dusk, in the early 1980s in the Idaho Panhandle.
Late for a meeting, I raced my pickup toward town along a highway that paralleled the north side of the busy Burlington Northern railroad tracks. My destination, several miles south, sat on another main route. I overtook the back end of a long freight train.
If I don’t pass it before I get to the highway crossing, I thought, I’ll be sitting there for half an hour. I floored the gas pedal. I knew that once the train triggered the crossing sensor, bells would sound and the arm would descend, blocking the road. I pushed hard, exceeding the speed limit until I turned south. Whew! I’m far enough ahead to squeak through.
Bells clanged and the arm had already dropped when I reached the crossing. I swung around the crossbar and goosed the gas. The engineer pulled hard on the whistle. Crap, he’s close!
I didn’t slow down when I hit the tracks and nearly became airborne. My back bumper cleared the rails by just a couple of feet before the train entered the crossing.
No cars waited on the far side of the tracks, so nobody saw me pull over and pause until I stopped shaking. Never again, I vowed.
And I didn’t, for forty-three years.
***
The highway that passes my favorite supermarket has been under construction for what seems like forever. I’m aware that the stretch in front of its driveway has seen several wrecks since the road has been torn up.
One day, not in any particular hurry, I sat at the stop sign in the parking lot, waiting for a break in the traffic that wended its way among construction cones. People were driving way too fast for me to turn left and squeeze in. I grew impatient.
Finally, I figured I could make a break for the middle turn lane and move from there into the far lane. Just as I did so, a car whizzed up the center lane and nearly broadsided me. I hit the gas and entered the far lane, cutting off another car, whose driver had to brake. Sheepishly, I went home, thankful nobody got hurt.
I could easily have prevented both of those close calls, and many others, had I only been more careful. (Remind me to tell you about the cement truck.)
What made me think about this now is that some near misses are beyond our influence. Hurricane Helene crashed into Florida last week and busted its way across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and beyond, doing great damage even after it was downgraded to a tropical depression.
Forecasters initially projected it to pass right over my house, or slightly to the west. I expected to be on the northeast side of it; always the most dangerous area. As the storm approached, its track shifted, eventually passing to the east of my county and leaving us relatively unscathed.
Helene wreaked horrific havoc on communities to our north and east, costing lives and destroying homes and infrastructure. I feel for those people as we in the relatively untouched areas count our blessings and look for ways to help and support them.
As the Englishman John Bradford uttered in 1553, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
#closecall #nearmiss #helene
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Add comment
Comments