Rollin' and Tumblin'

Or The Real Collision Blues

My former steed in its final home.

Happened like this: It was a little after 7pm and I was on the pike, heading east in my totally hot, assistant-editor, bitch-magnet Chevy Venture minivan. The sky was as clear as a bell, no precipitation or I damn sure wouldn’t have been making the trek. Sure, it was windy and damn cold and the sides of the road were covered with snow, but the highway itself was totally dry and clean. I went through the toll at Canaan. No problem, zipping along with the rest of the traffic, doing the limit and listening to the great new Julia Lee anthology I’d just picked up (That’s What I Like, Proper Records, 2004).

Then, with no warning whatsoever, there was this swath of packed, tire-grooved snow across the road. I slowed down, didn’t slam on the brakes. But I started to fishtail. Black ice. The wheel was jerked right of my hands, and I started to tumble. Oh shit.

And yet for some reason I knew I wasn’t going to die. No life-flashing-before-my-eyes moments. Can’t say why. That’s just how it went. My mind was much more in the realm of Oh fuck now I’m gonna be out of a car and have to deal with all of the insurance bullshit, etc. Weird. Guess it just wasn’t my time.

The van finally found a suitable resting spot atop the raised-rock median (!) between the east- and west-bound lanes. It ended up at about a 45-degree angle—driver side down—against pretty much the only tree in the immediate area. I unbuckled my seatbelt (please use it, always), and crawled out through the now glassless driver-side window frame, onto the windswept Massachusetts-New York tundra. Quick check: Fingers warm with blood but, looking by the light of my still-radiating headlights, I see no nasty-looking gashes. Head wounds? Doesn’t hurt, no blood up there. Cell phone? Glasses? Gone to the wind. Shit, now I’m gonna have to replace those, too. Fuck.

Ms. Lee is still singing to me, so I reach in and turn her off. I’m shaking like Old Glory in a hurricane. I grab my coat off the back of the seat, dust off the broken glass, and put it on. After what seems like a million years, a flatbed wrecker pulls up. The driver yells up and asks if I’m okay. I yell back that I’ve been better but, yes, I’m all right. He makes a U-turn and helps me into his nice, warm cab, where I wait for the cops and the ambulance as my hands bleed, my body trembles, and my teeth chatter like an electric staple gun.

After the EMTs check me out and stick Band-Aids on my digits, the wrecker-truck guy comes and tells me that the tree my van is now leaning against was the only thing that prevented me from making the15-foot drop over the elevated median cliff and into the west-bound lanes. Sure glad that seed fell there and grew, however long ago. The trooper gives me a ticket for “driving at imprudent speed”—which I intend to contest.

Back at the wrecker’s garage, I go through my obviously totaled vehicle and grab my overnight bags and whatever CDs didn’t fly through the window when I rolled. Damn, that Julia Lee CD is stuck in the player and I can’t get it out. Shit, just fuckin’ bought the thing, too. Goddamn it! (No fear: I reorder it the instant I’m back home.) I call my sister in North Adams for a ride. After I’ve spent a few hours getting to know the “Blue Collar Comedy” devotee who oversees second-shift production of the foul liquid they call coffee at the nearby Cumberland Farms, my wonderful sis finally arrives.

Since my finger wanted to get in the last shot so badly, I gave it a starring role in this one. Bye-bye, my little Chevy.

I wish there was some glaring, deep life lesson to pass on about all of this, some neat little poetic bow to stick on top of it and say, “Be thankful for the little things in life” or “Slow down,” but there isn’t. I mean, I am thankful, of course. And I wasn’t speeding. I know there’s something big there, but I haven’t honestly figured it out yet, though I’m sure I will. I guess if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last year or so, it’s that even though life doesn’t always go the way you expect it to as long as you don’t try to fight it and force it to fit some planned pattern—just roll with it, if you will—you’ll come out of it okay. Maybe that’s it, then. Corny? Yeah, I guess. But it sure seems to be a metaphor that fits.