A while back I wrote about a remarkable old car. Here is what happened to it.

The End of the Old Man

It had been a good day. I had gone to the Little Rock area on library business, taken care of the business, done just a bit of shopping, and eaten at a Chinese restaurant. Now I was heading home, going down a highway beneath a clear evening sky. Dad’s ancient hatchback, “The Old Man,” had carried me up there and most of the way back, and looked like it would take me all the way home. The old car would not get the chance to finish the journey.

I was some miles from the nearest town, passing through a little community that even many people in our area have never heard of. There’s virtually nothing to see from the highway, just a scattering of houses, a small church, and a volunteer fire department. A road crosses the highway beside the fire department building. As I rounded a curve, I saw a Ford pickup pull up to the stop sign on the left side of the highway and pause. I naturally assumed that the driver intended to stop there until I had passed. Instead he pulled right out in my path.

There was no way to dodge. I was already turning to the right in the curve, effectively steering into the point where the pickup was headed. I hit the brakes, hard. Though I was not speeding, there was nothing like enough room to stop. The car struck the right rear wheel of the pickup more or less head on. I felt a great jolt as the force of the impact slewed the back end of the pickup around. It was over in a split second.

The car’s engine was still running. I shifted into first and drove onto the parking lot of the fire station. I killed the engine and got out of the car. I had spots of orange soda splashed on me. My hands were shaking, the left one violently.

The driver had gotten out of the truck. He was an elderly man dressed in overalls. He was all right. I was too. It occurred to me that I could be very angry with him for pulling out in front of me like that. I knew that getting mad would not do any good. All and all, I felt surprisingly calm. I was very thankful to God that nobody had been hurt.
I asked the driver if he had a cell phone. He did not. A house, a double-wide trailer, sat some yards away. I walked over and knocked on the door. Nobody answered.

As I started back toward the accident scene, I saw two neighbors rolling up on four-wheelers to see what had happened. When I got back to the spot I asked whether they had a cell phone. One of them did. I asked him to call the police. My hands were still trembling, and I didn’t feel like trying to handle an unfamiliar phone.

It took three calls to get ahold of the police. We eventually learned that an officer would arrive in about an hour. I would have to wait until then. It would give me time to try to arrange for transportation back home. I was still some thirty miles or so away. At some point it occurred to me to note and write down the pickup’s license plate, in case the driver tried to leave the scene. He showed no signs of doing so.

One of the neighbors soon left, but was replaced by a man from the house I had first tried. He said that he had been in the shower and had not heard either the accident or my attempt to knock on the door. I borrowed his cell phone (my hands had stopped trembling by now) and called our church’s pastor. He was not home. I left a message and then tried my Sunday school teacher, Sandy, and her husband Gale. They were home. Sandy said that Gale had been under the weather and had stayed home that day. She was not sure he would feel like coming to get me. They had a quick conference on their end. Sandy soon told me that Gale would be on his way.

I settled down to wait. The neighbors who had come out to visit were loggers who began talking shop with each other. The elderly driver who had caused the accident was a retired logger. He began reminiscing about the days when logging had still been done with a crosscut saw. His memory went back a long way indeed. They talked together about when this patch of timber beside the fire station had last been logged, about what a nice stand of timber it was and what would be the right way to go about logging it again. They complained about having their batteries stolen by thieves when they left their logging vehicles on the site overnight. Since I had grown up in timber country myself I could follow the gist of the conversation, but I had little to contribute.

Early in the wait a woman pulled up. She rolled down her window and said “Do I know you?” She did indeed. Who should pull up to the scene of my accident but my insurance representative! She had been driving back from a day in a company office in another town. Actually this wreck did not affect her, since I was now driving a borrowed car and only had renter’s insurance from her office. She made sure I was all right and gave me a couple of pointers on settling the claim and drove off.

The conversation around the wrecked vehicles continued. The old gentleman was friendly and talkative and seemed a nice enough sort. He had been retired for some years and had lost his wife a few years earlier. I did get the impression that he had perhaps been driving for a bit too long. He had honestly not seen me coming.

There was more logging talk, and opinions ventured about the likely fate of the lumber mill in the nearest town—and the likely fate of the town itself. We also talked some about church. It turned out that a former pastor of the old driver had moved to my home town some years earlier. I had once been acquainted with him; he had taken over as pastor of a church my Dad has once pastored.

Almost exactly an hour after we had spoken with the police the officer pulled up, right on schedule. At the very same moment, from the opposite direction, Gale arrived with my ride home. The officer, a youngish state trooper, went about asking the necessary questions, taking names and insurance cards, and filling out paperwork. He observed the vehicles and measured out the length of my skid marks. While this happened Gale, yet another timber industry veteran, visited with the neighbors.

By now it was getting dark. I had to fill out my accident paperwork by flashlight. A neighbor had to help the other driver fill out his forms. Since I had a small sore spot beneath my left shoulder from the seatbelt the officer had to designate it as an “accident with injury.” The matter of blame was quite open-and-shut. He informed the other driver that he would have to appear in traffic court to answer for a ticket for failure to yield the right of way. Through it all the trooper was unfailingly polite. He even observed that the accident could have happened to anyone. I suppose he was trying to spare the old man’s feelings.

When all was said and done I loaded my belongings and the books that I had gone to Little Rock to buy into Gale’s truck and we drove off. Gale was feeling quite well now. He said that this little drive after a day at home feeling under the weather was just what he needed to get himself going again. I could not thank him enough for helping me out. This was the second time in only a couple of months that I had had to ask him to pick me up. The other time the Old Man had broken down and left me on the side of the road. Now it looked like the old car would not take anyone anywhere again.

When I got home I called Mom and Dad to let them know what had happened. The next day Dad borrowed a trailer from his boss and took off work and drove the couple of hours to my town. I took most of my afternoon off work to go out to the scene of the accident and help recover the Old Man. By now I had a noticeable bruise beneath my shoulder.

The Old Man’s front end had been knocked in pretty badly. The bumper had a clear imprint of the center of the pickup truck’s wheel. The hood had been forced up into a u-shaped bend that exposed the engine. But the windshield had not been damaged, and the engine was still sound. Dad was able to start the engine and drive the Old Man onto the trailer under its own power. We secured it and drove back. Dad left me at my place and began the drive home.

He did not make it. His pickup’s transmission gave out on him. He had to call Mom to come and get him. It took her hours. Dad had to borrow another vehicle and another trailer to retrieve the Old Man and the pickup. I felt rather bad about causing so much trouble, even if it was not really my fault.

The Old Man now sits among other wrecked vehicles outside the auto collision shop where Dad works. Dad thought at first about possibly reviving the old car. It had nearly 350,000 miles on it; he had driven the car for many years and rather liked it. But it was clear that the car would be more trouble to fix than it was worth. The Old Man has made his last journey. We’re sorry to see him go—or rather stop going. He was a good car.