When Sarah and I were in high-school, we drove a 1990 Cadillac Brougham. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a very, very large car, one that would be branded as a "boat." Here is a picture of me with the car.
As you can see, it's not in very good shape, which will be explained shortly.One day, when I was about fifteen, Sarah and I went to Lewistown (without permission) to get fireworks. We were going to take the pickup, which you can see in the background of this picture, but we decided to take the car instead and I can't remember why. It's a damn good thing we did.
On the way back from Lewistown, I unwittingly let Sarah drive. She was fourteen at the time, with no driver's license,and I was apparently unintelligent. I was telling Sarah a story about something that had happened to Dad several years ago. The story is actually worth re-telling, because it was probably a sublime experience for Dad.
One day, Dad was refilling a set of drills from the back of a straight truck. I am sure many people have no idea what I am talking about so here is a picture of a set of drills:
I know it's a picture of a toy, but it is actually pretty accurate and you can see the platform on which Dad would have been standing in order to refill it. Here is a picture of a straight truck with the box lifted:
Now imagine the drills directly behind the lifted box of the truck. The truck was full of seed and Dad was using a bucket to take seed out of the box of the truck and putting the seed into the drills. Dad jumped off of the platform of the drills to "take a leak" and the box of the truck broke loose, demolishing the drills. If Dad would have been on the drill platform, he would have most likely been killed. This event was undoubtedly terrifying for Dad because he almost died and beautiful because he did not die.However, this story about Dad is not what this blog post is centered around. So back to my original story.
I was telling Sarah the story about Dad while she was driving 80 miles per hour down the highway toward Winifred. I tend to speak with my hands, and as I told the story this tendency was illustrated. Sarah couldn't help but look at me, and in doing so drifted slightly off of the highway. Being an inexperienced driver, Sarah panicked and over-corrected, sending us flying into the ditch at an angle nearly parallel to the highway. We skidded sideways so hard it popped the beads off the tires. We busted through one fence before skidding to a stop, fully upright and totally uninjured. Had we taken the pickup, the consequences of Sarah's mistakes would have proven much more dire, possibly fatal.
I barely remember the wreck. Time slowed way down and I remember thinking the whole time "we are going to be fine." In fact, I believe I was saying it out loud, but I cannot remember for sure. I was never even frightened until afterward, when I realized that we could have been killed had it not been for our enormous, wide-based car. Perhaps no one is terrified in a situation like that until it is over. It happens so fast, but time seems to slow to a near halt and you think about thousands of things in those few seconds while you are actually unsure of whether or not you will be "okay." The next day, Dad and I went to fix the fence, the tire guy put tires on the car, and I drove it home. Everything was okay.
I am not sure if this car accident qualifies as a sublime experience because, as I mentioned before, I never felt that terrified. I knew that old car would get us through unharmed. Perhaps the sublimity in it comes from the beauty of time slowing down and the thousands of thoughts rushing through my mind in just a few seconds. If anything, the experience made me look at that gigantic, beaten-up old car as beautiful.
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