One summer when we lived in Louisville, we had a road trip planned to visit Utah for summer vacation. Our friends, Mike and Roxanne Jarvis, had recently moved to Utah and had left their little Datsun pickup truck behind, and asked us if we could drive it out with us. We had four drivers in the family, Kathy and I, and Ben and Joe. We decided to rotate drivers through our van and the pickup and make the trip straight through without stopping at a motel.
Things got started as planned. We strapped our car-top carrier into the bed of the pickup truck and had two riding in the cab and the rest in the family van. It was a hot summer day and the windows of the truck needed to be rolled down because there was no air conditioning. Things went as planned until we were almost to Kansas City. Joe was driving the truck and Betsy was in the passenger seat. I was driving the van and was in front of the group. I remember periodically looking in my rearview mirror to make sure all was right with Joe and the truck. One time as I glanced back I saw the truck move off the road onto the right shoulder. I remember saying something like, "Joe is going off the road." As I watched I saw the truck come back onto the road and thought all would be ok, but then the truck continued across both westbound lanes and pitched into the median on the left. Apparently a bee had flown into the cab and Joe was trying to brush it away from Betsy when he went off the road to the right. When he came back onto the road and moved to the left side, we think a tire blew and caused them to pitch into the median. I will never forget the scene as I viewed it in the mirror. The car began to roll head over tail down the median, over and over. It finally came to a rest in the median, on its left side, pointing back toward the east.
It took me a few seconds to get the van safely stopped and then we all piled out and started to sprint back down the median toward the truck. Poor Kathy was about 8 months pregnant with Caleb. I remember wondering what we would find when we finally got to the truck. It seemed like it took forever to run that few hundred yards. I remember that other people were already there to offer aid. I remember that the engine was on fire and the the first person on the scene had a fire extinguisher with them and put out the fire. I remember seeing Betsy's head pop up out of the right side of the car, through the window that had been broken out. I remember seeing Joe roll out of the driver's seat through the back window of the cab that was also broken out. His window was down against the ground so he couldn't go that way. Both had their seat belts on and were not ejected from the truck. The roof of the cab was smashed in in the middle, but both sides where their heads were were not smashed. There was a troop of boy scouts who stopped and several with emergency response training who stopped. They helped us get Betsy and Joe away from the truck and called 911 for help.
As far as we could tell, they both seemed ok. They had some cuts and scrapes and Betsy appeared to have a bloody mouth. On closer inspection, we found that she had red cardboard from the cover of a hardback book stuck in her braces. Apparently she was reading the book when this happened and it flew up against her face and her braces took a piece of the cover. The ambulance arrived and Joe and Betsy were both strapped to boards so they could be safely transported to a nearby regional hospital. We strapped the car-top carrier onto the roof of the van (it had been thrown out of the truck bed, but was pretty much still intact), piled into the van and followed the ambulance to the hospital. The doctor there examined Joe and Betsy, took a few X-rays, and concluded that there were no broken bones or significant injuries. About three hours after the accident we were on the road again. Now all crunched in the van, but all alive.
When I think about that accident, I marvel that neither Joe nor Betsy was hurt (beyond scrapes and bruises). They had to have been going at least 65 mph as they pitched into the median. I hear all the time about fatal accidents when the cars were going much slower than that. Sometimes I look at Joe, now 35 and the father of 5, or Betsy, now 31 and the mother of 4, and thank Heavenly Father for preserving their lives. I think about that person who had the fire extinguisher and want to thank him, but I don't even remember him being around during the aftermath. The only thing that died that day, was the Jarvis's yellow Datsun pickup truck. It was totaled and we left it in the median of Highway 70 waiting for a tow truck to come and haul it away. It was a hard phone call to make when we had to let Mike Jarvis know that we had totaled his truck.
It's good to have this experience written down. I can remember it pretty vividly as well. I was sitting shotgun in the van. When you said, "Joe's going off the road!" I looked out my window and, for a second, thought that meant he had taken the off ramp right next to us. But then you yelled, "No, Joe, no!" and then Mom and Sarah started screaming in the back seat and we were pulling off the road. I didn't ever see the truck until I got out of the van and saw it still in the median. There were cow bones in the median on the way over to the truck. I remember seeing it, but now I think "Why was there a cow on the freeway?" Maybe it was a deer or something? Anyway, I remember Betsy was in shock a bit and wandering until someone made her lay down. I can picture them strapped on the boards. I remember the hospital seemed pretty little. I recall that after this incident we started being stalwart about using seat belts. Previous road trips I remember lying down in the back of the silver van, sitting on the floors, etc....never seat belts. I also remember that it was supposed to be Abby's turn to ride in the truck. I was annoyed at our last gas station that she didn't have to take her turn because she didn't want to.
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