We were still up at midnight, playing on the computers, when outside our door we heard a BANG! Afraid that someone had hit my car, I ran to the front door, to see that one of our neighbors had come home drunk and managed to ram the telephone pole in front of our house, not thirty feet ahead of my car.
He’d rammed it so hard that his car had turned in the street, now facing 90 degrees the other direction. That is, his hood was facing my neighbor’s yard and his trunk, the driveway across the street.
I could see from where I was that the car was pretty bad, possibly totaled. The entire bumper was laying in the street, along with lots of…bits. As I watched, I heard him open his door and curse. I couldn’t hear the exact words, but I watched him wobble his way to the front and look at the car. It was fairly dark, and our street lights are the soft yellow, so I couldn’t see clearly.
He got back into the car and tried to move it. A horrible scraping sound ensued as his bumper dragged on the ground.
He then got back out of the car…and toodled off. On foot. I presume he went home to sleep it off. I don’t know if he called the cops or what. It honestly didn’t occur to me to call the cops, though now I wish I’d done it. I guess I just assumed he was doing it.
Whether he did or someone else did, about thirty to forty minutes later the cops showed up. Then the tow truck. I was impressed at how thorough the tow guy was. It was damn cold on Friday night, but he not only hitched up the car and took it away, he also swept the road and cleaned up all the bits.
Then the power company’s truck was right behind and they rolled up to look at the pole.
I went out on Saturday morning to look at the pole. It is a thick wooden pole, and cracked about two feet up. The whole pole is tilted at a thirty degree angle. We’re just lucky we didn’t lose power. He must have hit it at least 20-30 mph. (Not to hijack my own thread, but this is why I wonder why people allow their cats to go outdoors in my neighborhood. We live off two 40 mph roads and people don’t always slow down.)
We never saw the driver come back, which really makes me think he just toodled off home and went to sleep. You can bet if I rammed my car into a telephone pole I’d be standing around while they towed it, or at least finding out where they took it.
He probably spent all Saturday dealing with it. That’s what you get for driving drunk. I’m just glad nobody got hurt.