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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Kind of Amusing

Kind of Amusing

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The old family truckster is still in the middle of a cow pasture, as apparently you are not allowed to tow a car off someone’s property without the owner of the property being present. I spent the better part of the day hunting them down to apologize for parking in their field without permission, and finally met the wife, who told me she doesn’t handle these things and to wait for her husband and call him at nine tonight, because he is out of town buying farm equipment.

The truckster is in sad shape. Both mirrors are gone, the front is all scraped up, the roof is pushed down, the driver’s side door is crushed, and both tires on the driver side are flat and blown out. For good measure, there is a dozen broken eggs in the carton on the top of the hood. It did, however, start right up, so I guess unless the frame is bent, it might still be useful.

Just kind of funny that the last thing I ever thought about in a situation like this is that it would be near impossible to get the damned car towed.

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Totally OT, but hilarious, from our friends at NoiseMax:

    Glenn Beck: Boehner ‘Worthless,’ McConnell’s a ‘Liar’

    Pot, kettle, etc.

  6. 6.

    Rosalita

    Maybe you posted from last night and I missed it but did you guys get a police report? I’m cynical that even then would these fracking people would take any responsibility for wrecking your car and almost seriously hurting a driver.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    How did said truckster get in the middle of that field in the first place, and how long ago?

    Or has this been explained in an earlier post?

    You’re not going to make me scroll back, are you?

  8. 8.

    Violet

    Glad the kid was okay. Sounds kind of bad. It’s always sad to see your beloved car in that kind of shape. :(

    When I was little my mom had an accident and rolled the car. A gallon of milk she had in the car opened and went all over the car. She was fine but the insurance people said the sour milk in the car was as much a part of why they were totaling the car as anything else. Just impossible to get the smell out.

  9. 9.

    LittlePig

    I take it that the truck rolled a time or two? If the roof is bent and it didn’t roll, you ought to own a fracking company here in a year or two.

  10. 10.

    FlipYrWhig

    I guess I don’t know what “ran off the road” means. Was there a collision? Or did the trucks make the kid lose control, so he skidded into something stationary?

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    Maybe those in fracking country should install dash cams, and make sure the fracking companies know they’re being watched.

    http://www.tested.com/tech/456565-best-dash-cam-your-car-costs-60/

    Don’t know how well this would have done at night, with limited light and visibility, but it’s awful to see the frackers ruining the roads, trashing your car, and endangering the frat brother.

    They should not be able to get away with this.

    Plus, couldn’t the local gendarmes track down the convoy by time of accident?

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    @Violet: I believe it. My sister was transporting a stray cat to get spayed once, and he sprayed in her car. This was an old car that had the furry polyester upholstery crap on the floorboards, cloth interior, etc. Anyhoo, that car stunk to high heaven of cat funk until she got rid of it years later. No matter what she did to remove the smell, it could knock you over when you opened the door on a hot day.

  20. 20.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Violet: Yeah, I read it, but I still can’t picture what happened between when the trucks went by too fast and when the car ended up off the road. Contact with truck? Contact with tree? Rolling over?

  21. 21.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @BGinCHI:

    Oh, that’s going to be hold on to the edge of your seat excitement, for sure!

    With running commentary, no doubt!

  23. 23.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    you are not allowed to tow a car off someone’s property without the owner of the property being present.

    That sounds like a line from that old Jeff Foxworthy routine. “If your town has a law like this, you just might be…..”

  24. 24.

    Violet

    @FlipYrWhig: I had the impression the truck convoy was in the middle of the road like they owned it. Fraternity brother at the wheel had to move to the edge of the road to avoid getting crushed. The road edge was steep and he lost control and the car rolled and he ended up in the farmer’s field.

    When I lived in WV some rural roads were paved only 1 1/2 cars wide to save money on paving costs. If I’d met a truck convoy like that, I’d probably have been off the road too. If it was steep on the edge, there you go.

  25. 25.

    Trollhattan

    @Elizabelle:

    I would do that, post haste, if I lived in an area overrun by wildcatters. It only takes once and even if you’re never in a wreck, you’re surely going to have near-misses.

  26. 26.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Violet: Ooooh. Yeah, I can picture that now. Not just off the road like on the shoulder or in a ditch, but down a slope. Yikes!

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    Whether or not the car is totaled has more to do with the value of the car vs. the cost of the repairs than anything else. If you get into a fender-bender, but repairing the fender would cost more than the value of the car, then the insurance company will probably declare it totaled.

    The other day, I saw some poor bastard who had gotten into a head-on collision on a one-way street (still not sure how) in a brand-new Nissan that didn’t even have plates yet. The accident didn’t seem that serious since everyone was out of their cars and exchanging information, but that must have really sucked for the guy with the new car.

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus

    How old is the Subie? How many miles on it? That will come into play when the insurance company is deciding whether or not to total it.

  29. 29.

    Violet

    @FlipYrWhig: Yep. Not a lot of flat space in WV–they don’t call it the Mountain State for nothing. And if it’s a rural road, chances are it’s not very wide and there’s not much of a shoulder, if any. I can easily see getting run off the road at night by a truck convoy.

    This summer I drove through west Texas and southern New Mexico. Tons of oil drilling going on there. Lots of big vehicles on the road. It was daylight when we went through, but it was scary enough when some of those convoys loaded down with drilling equipment went by. And that was on a straight highway, not a curvy, twisty WV rural road. I can’t imagine how menacing they must be there.

  32. 32.

    MikeJ

    and finally met the wife, who told me she doesn’t handle these things and to wait for her husband and call him at nine tonight,

    What the fuck is there for her to handle? Just tell the damned tow truck company that they can tow the car.

    This is the kind of stupid shit you get from women obeying their husbands and deferring to him on everything. Who would want to put up with someone like that?

  34. 34.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MikeJ:

    This is the kind of stupid shit you get from women obeying their husbands and deferring to him on everything. Who would want to put up with someone like that?

    Or she was busy and didn’t want to deal with Cole’s problems right then.

  35. 35.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @BGinCHI: A girlfriend of mine had a boss who was some sort of financial genius, but had to be handed his keys and wallet and a note about where he was going and so on, otherwise he was completely useless. A complete scatterbrain. So one day they got him a digital recorder so he could dictate notes and letters while driving, and when they listened to it they repeatedly heard the sounds of screeching tires and near misses and people yelling “Idiot! Watch where you’re going!” while he droned on, seemingly oblivious. One of the funniest stories I ever heard.

  36. 36.

    Violet

    @MikeJ: Or this happens far more than you can imagine and they’ve been screwed by insurance companies before (maybe there’s fence repair or other damage) and her husband knows the routine better than she does.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @raven:

    Shooting in Littleton school, isn’t Tamara from there?

    I think she’s from Longmont, since she was hit pretty badly by the flooding.

    @Violet:

    When I lived in WV some rural roads were paved only 1 1/2 cars wide to save money on paving costs.

    I believe the technical description is “2 lanes if you swerve”. I’ve driven once or twice on roads like that, and that’s plenty for one lifetime, especially since I’d like to make sure it’s a long one.

  45. 45.

    Violet

    @Roger Moore: It was fine for the rural roads I drove. They weren’t very busy and most of the time you wouldn’t encounter another vehicle. Now if they were taken over by convoys of wide-load trucks, that would be something else entirely.

  46. 46.

    Davis X. Machina

    I had a fracking-equipment-rig near miss damn near every time I traveled US 22 between Altoona and Pittsburgh –maybe 10 of them, during the five years my kid was at CMU. Closest I ever came to being killed on the road was just outside of Nanty Glo.

    And those are modernized roads with climbing lanes and even medians in places.

  47. 47.

    handsmile

    @BGinCHI:

    Spills involve mopping and we know John Cole’s preferred attire for that task.

    Is that something you really want to be live-streamed?

    ETA: Not to discount the profits that can be made from such choice of attire and live-streaming.

  48. 48.

    wasabi gasp

    They cheesed your steamer and they crashed your ride, but they have not lit their doobies with the smoldering remains of your home. Winning.

  49. 49.

    pat

    I think you should have called 911 immediately. The cops are the ones who can give you an accident report. I got rear-ended once and called the insurance guy first, and then wanted to call the cops on a non-emergency line, but I was told I should really have hit 911 first.

    Sounds like the kid was wearing a seat belt, or it could have been a lot worse.

  50. 50.

    Elmo

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Well, if that’s the case, all is surely forgiven, and she should have given him a huge basket of mushrooms to take with him.
    Did the farmer have dogs?

  52. 52.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @BGinCHI: Huh?

    (edit; I misread yours as “Pilgrim’s the guy”, not “Pilgrim’s guy”. Got it now. Not the pregnant part, but the other part).

    True story.

    I’m still trying to figure out what his being criminally absent-minded has to do with getting his wife pregnant, but I’m working on it! Not saying it’s not funny, mind you, I just don’t get it.

  57. 57.

    Seanly

    Your car will be considered a total loss. The roof & supporting legs are a major component of the safety system and are permanently deformed beyond repair. Long gone are the days when the cosmetic shell could just be pounded back into place & you limp back home. It did it’s job & kept the occupant safe in a crash that ruined it.

    The structural system of a modern car is meant to be horribly deformed when in an accident. In the deformations it undergoes, it absorbs much of the energy of the impact. Crumple zone is one of those times when the engineers give something a simple & apt description. Of course, horrible deformations mean big costs to repair, if even able to be repaired.

  58. 58.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @scav: Well I suppose that’s true.

    I’m trying to imagine being distracted by something else while doing, well, that. It’s easier to imagine the other way around, since that’s the one that’s happened far too frequently.

  59. 59.

    scav

    @Bill E Pilgrim: But we’re clearly talking about a very talented talented man for the scatter brain effect. Usain Bolt of the logical leap, not the 5k man from down the street. Sherlock of the selfie shiny object.

  61. 61.

    Jennifer

    I feel your pain. In my wallet. Day before yesterday, the clutch on my 16-year-old Mustang up and burned. I had been hearing some faint noise while shifting for several months and figured the throwout bearing was going out…and boy did it ever. Then it started making a horrible screeching sound, and I could smell the clutch burning. I had just enough clutch to get it to the shop bright and early yesterday a.m., picked it up yesterday p.m. and left the shop $600 lighter…then a couple of hours ago, the check engine light came on. Probably an O2 sensor, but who knows.

    But I’ll just keep on getting it fixed. Hell, when you’ve been driving something that long, you pretty much know what’s wrong whenever something happens, and since I fix everything when it breaks, it’s still not a beater after all these years. I figure within another year or two, it will pretty much be new again what with all the repairs I’ve done on it – which are to be expect on a car that old, but still cost far less than a car payment would. Hopefully you can salvage your Subaru at least enough to keep it for sometime use.

  62. 62.

    khead

    @Violet:

    Yup. This is where I was going with my joke in the earlier thread. I just kinda got used to avoiding the coal trucks while driving on a too small road and encountering them on a blind mountainside curve.

  64. 64.

    aimai

    @FlipYrWhig: Or whether Cole is going to try to charge them in some way. People get freaked out. Couples often don’t like to make decisions if the other person might object.

  65. 65.

    Jennifer

    @aimai: You’d like to think so, but no. About 4 months ago a car came over into my lane on the interstate and forced me into the median, which is only about 30 – 40 ft. wide. I was barely able to get it under control before I went into the oncoming lanes. The car that forced me off the road just kept going.

    Since then, I’ve almost been run off the road 3 other times – one time by a woman in a huge SUV yakking on a cell phone, once by an 18-wheeler, and once by a shithead who decided he needed to be in another lane to get where he was going and cut over after the road split, never caring that someone was already in the spot he was cutting over into. My decision in light of these incidents is that the next time someone tries to force me off the road, unless it’s an 18 wheeler where there’s just no contest, I’m not going. We may both end up dead as a result, but that’s better than just me ending up dead while the asshole that killed me drives on.

  67. 67.

    Gravenstone

    @Violet: Where I grew up, there used to be a house at the apex of a curve, where the house was uphill right where the road went downhill. They averaged a car missing the curve and driving into their house about every two years. Not the sort of thing one would like to become accustomed to.

  68. 68.

    Gravenstone

    @aimai: Stopping implies culpability for the accident. Plus, you can be sure they have bonus money riding on a tight arrival schedule. No stopping, short of the apocalypse.

  69. 69.

    Ruckus

    @aimai:
    If they stop they can be personally identified. They might get their pay docked while not moving. Their company might have to admit fault and they are never going to do that.
    IOW you are thinking like a normal human. At least try to fix things as best as can when shit happens. A fracking co? They obviously don’t give a shit about anything other than making money, otherwise they wouldn’t even be in this dirty crappy business.

  72. 72.

    Ruckus

    @Jennifer:
    Got run off the road by a deputy sheriff once. He was driving right down the middle of two lane road, no emergency lights or siren. Just another little push in the direction of hating cops. They aren’t all assholes but they sure don’t do much about the ones that are. Saw a saying the other day, “If there were good cops there wouldn’t be any bad ones.”

  74. 74.

    RonzoniRigatoni

    @Elizabelle: TIMSEN! Widely used in dairy plants for odor control. I first discovered it to get cat pee smell off rugs (it worx). Found it in a tack shop where they sold it to Hialeah Racetrack (I’m very old) to downplay the stables smell.

  75. 75.

    Evinfuilt

    @raven:
    Those of us in Littleton are tired of being the center of high school gun crime. Okay I am, but our congressman seems like he’d approve of more being a gun nut. Moloch demands another sacrifice.

  77. 77.

    John Cole

    @mclaren: This has nothing to do with a frat boy. I was driven off the road yesterday morning on my way to work. You have no idea what a menace these trucks are on these roads. It’s really terrifying.

  80. 80.

    gbear

    Logging trucks do the same thing in rural Minnesota (and I’m sure in other states too). We were driving on a very narrow gravel road north of Red Lake when a car passing the other way stopped to tell us a logging truck was coming. We kept going until we found a place to pull off the road and sure enough the logging truck came ripping past at about 50 mph. I hate to think of what would have happened had we not been warned. There were very few places to get off the road.

    Glad the kids were OK. Sucks about the car though.

  82. 82.

    JustRuss

    @ranchandsyrup:

    Did you have the arctic blue family truckster with the rally sport pack or did they stick you with the green pea one?

    The actual color of the Griswold’s Truckster was Metallic Pea, which always makes me giggle and wince simultaneously.

  83. 83.

    PhoenixRising

    My sister lived for a time in Clay County, KY, dead center of the pain pill/meth epidemic. The trucks that ran her off the so-called roads included but were not limited to: Coal company, fracking company, logging company.

    She was the community’s sole provider of ob/gyn services at this time, and the mine drivers sometimes yielded to her–because they run so short staffed that they knew whose baby the hippie chick in the Subaru was heading to deliver. (The mine has to stop production if Tom, Dick or Hunter wants to be in the delivery room.)

    The natural resource extraction industries are not known for their interest in human welfare, is all I’m saying.

    My wife & kid got t-boned in March in a 13 month old Honda; if we’d made 3 more payments at the time, USAA would have totalled it. They’ve been great. If you’re not insuring and banking with them…you should be.

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