WHOA

One night South of San Antonio, Jimmy T and I were patrolling the stretches of US 281 to make the world a safer place for Mom, the flag, apple pie, and the American way.

The dispatcher called to say there was report of a one car roll-over accident with the vehicle burning and the occupants trapped inside.

I was driving so J.T. whipped out our trusty county map to find the backwoods lane where the wreck was reported. The county road turned out to be an unfamiliar narrow cow path. It was "paved" with fine sand at least six inches deep. I drove at maximum possible speed with a billowing cloud of silica behind us and asked my partner to look at the map for sharp curves ahead.

Jimmy rather nonchalantly said that we were approaching a "T" intersection where we would have to turn either left or right..........AND WE WERE INSTANTLY IN THE INTERSECTION!

I was looking eyeball to barbwire with a row of cedar posts that separated the cows from the road. Didn't have much more than a blink to react so I turned the steering wheel all the way to the right and pushed the accelerator to the floor to try to make the turn.

My forward progress didn't slow, but the black/white smokey car did obligingly turn sidewise in order to put the wire/posts on my side of the ride.

We slid thru the posts shearing them off at the ground (putting real efficient dents evenly spaced on the sheet metal side panels). The wire mostly broke, but the top strand went over the roof (tight enough to play like a fiddle string) while the points of the barbs dug past the paint into the metal. These mortal scars were also evenly spaced across the roof in a cruel pattern.

We kept slidin' like a greased banana peel til enough cow pasture sand bent the rims on the left side and piled a sand dune half way up my driver door.

As we sat there wondering if it was the radiator (or our bladders) that had sprung a leak, Jimmy looked at me and very calmly said, "Whoa".