I remember the time in the '70s I saw a guy driving down the freeway, happily strumming on a guitar.
A few years ago I was looking out ay my back yard on a fateful day in August. It had raining heavily for weeks, and the ground got extremely saturated. I watched as a massive oak tree on the left side of the back lot fell over, parallel to my house. It hit the ground so hard, I felt a shock wave.
I was so lucky it didn’t hit my house, my shed, or my well. I was also lucky that I knew a contractor who referred me to a family tree removal business, and they weren’t that expensive.
Things seen from car…
Three weeks ago I sat for a couple of hours and watched an African rock python swallow a monkey, from about 15 feet away.
When I was a kid, my mom, aunt and I were sitting in the kitchen, when a red ball of lightning came from one wall, shot across the kitchen and vanished behind the refrigerator. Freaked us all out.
Many years ago, when I was living in NYC, I was walking in front of the oh-so-formal-and-proper Plaza Hotel. All of a sudden, a string of about 20 elephants of all sizes emerged from a side door of the hotel, holding each other’s tails. They crossed the street and vanished somewhere in the next block.
The weirdest thing I ever personally witnessed was many years ago when I was in college. I was out with a friend and we stopped at a drive through ATM, and it started raining in the parking lot next to us. And only in that parking lot. Not on the road, not on the bank parking lot where we were, not anywhere else, just on that one parking lot next to us. We watched it rain only in that one parking lot for about a minute or so, then the rain spread quickly and soon it was raining everywhere.
Driving on a tiny road in Malta, the wife slammed on the brakes and shouted Good God, it’s a chameleon!
And indeed it was, standing there in the middle of the road. We sat in the car and gawped as it duly changed color, and then strolled off into the undergrowth.
j
Oh, this brings up a memory or two. Or three.
-
We flew to Chicago, where my brother had a fancy house in the northern part of town, to house-sit for a couple of days then proceed north to visit relatives in WI. About the year 2000; and it was icy cold outside, this being close to Christmas. Well, we got into the house, and there was some sort of furnace malfunction. Not sure how, but we got it working again. They were grateful to us for fixing the issue before they had damage (burst pipes etc.).
Anyway, thanks to the ice and snow, I had, just this once, opted to take the optional “no questions asked” type insurance for the rental car. I am glad I did, because backing out of his small parking spot, which was bounded by a low, wrought-iron fence, I touched it with the car’s plastic front bumper, that had sat in the extremely cold night air all evening. The front bumper shattered like glass. A big chunk fell off, which I put into the trunk, then carried on. The damage wasn’t enough to make the car undrive-able, but it would need explaining when I returned it. I told the rental guys what happened but didn’t have to pay for any damages. -
Driving north into WI, probably on I-94, I passed a wide field between the northbound and southbound lanes of the interstate. For some reason, this field was filled with vehicles, mostly 4x4’s–pickups and SUV’s. You could see the tracks through the icy snow from where they departed the freeway and skidded to a rest in this field, hundreds of yards in. There was a whole fleet of them. I’m guessing these people hit an especially icy patch and just slid off, toward a low spot in the median. What was funny, was that it was practically all 4-wheel drive type vehicles. I guess they thought they were protected from slipping, and drove with higher than advisable levels of haste and aggression, and…slid off the road. Into their own special hell.
-
Not related to the above trip, it’s something funny I witnessed when I was a kid. Here’s some guy rolling a car’s wheel + tire down the sidewalk ahead of him. Not too fast; he’s keeping it under control by awkwardly giving it a little push every now and then while quickly following the wheel, bent over. Kind of looked silly. He saw me watching him and our eyes met. I think you can guess where this is going. Yep: the wheel flopped to an immediate stop, and he somersaulted over it, very goofy.
Some time in the 80s I was driving home and noticed a guy in the next lane just rocking out singing a duet with a puppet on his right hand. He was steering with his left hand. Sometimes he’d sing, sometimes the puppet would sing, sometimes they’d harmonize. Followed him for about a mile before he turned off.
You might well have seen my old roommate; that totally sounds like something he would have done.
Here’s one on behalf of mrs. dirtball. She told me about this freak accident that happened to her when she was a teenager driving down a winding road in an area where steep front yards sloped down to the street. Out of nowhere, a bowling pin came tumbling down from one of the yards, went into the street in front of her car, and bounced around under the car for a few awful seconds making an ungodly racket. She continued on for a short distance until she could safely get off the road (into the parking lot of a convenience store or something of the sort) to check on damage–at which point the car was done. There was enough damage underneath that she ended up selling the car for whatever parts were worth salvaging.
Never did find out why or how a bowling pin came tumbling down.
For those of you old enough to remember, I saw a real life pair of an Ed Norton and Ralph Kramden (from the Honeymooners) leaving a pizza place closing up late one night in Manhattan The Ralph was overweight and in a uniform. The Norton was skinny and wearing a vest over a t-shirt. The Ralph was yelling at the Ed Norton to keep moving, wildly gesturing with his armsThe Norton was yelling back “alright alright alright”. For a second I thought they must be filming a TV show but there was no one else around. In a way it was creepy.
Cars in medians…on I-10 20+ years ago, saw a car parked out in the middle of one. The grass hadn’t been mown in months, was easily shoulder height, and you could easily see the path the car blazed through the vegetation. A very confused black guy was standing next to said car, as if trying to figure out how he got into this mess.
Mid 80’s driving back from Tally to Gainesville, saw 3 puppies cavorting on the side of the interstate. I would have stopped to get them except I was following my sister and wasn’t sure where she lived in G. [Long before cell phones of course]
When I was in grade school, the older kids (grades 6-8) would wait in the front of the school to go back in after lunch. The road in front of the school still had trolley tracks. I was in 7th or 8th grade when a car drove by and, just as it got in front of the school, the front wheel on the passenger side (closest to the sidewalk) suddenly fell off, the hub(?) went down into the trolley track and sparks flew like crazy before the driver could stop – to the great delight of approximately 50 cheering kids.
I had it happen to me when I was looking at a used car. The salesman opened the bonnet (British car) and the wind snapped it right off. It sailed across the lot.
While a bowling pin making a break for freedom is certainly odd, it is also odd to me that a bowling pin was able to do so much damage to the vehicle. A bowling pin is basically just a hunk of wood that has been shaped on a lathe and painted. Granted they use a hardwood (maple, I think), so it’s not soft pine, but still I wouldn’t expect it to be capable of totaling a vehicle.
Well, she wasn’t clear on the nature of the damage when she told me about it, but the car would have been an old beater held together with duct tape and wire coat hangers and chewing gum. It probably wasn’t much longer for this world anyway.
I’ve shared this story here before, but it sprang to mind with the current thread:
In high school, I cleaned offices to make extra money. I usually went in the evening, which left me driving home around 10 or 11 at night. One such night, on the way home, I pulled up behind a car stopped at a red light. Something didn’t seem right about the way the driver was sitting in the car, but I really didn’t think anything of it until the light turned green. The car in front sat motionless. After waiting a few moments, I lightly beeped my horn. Nothing. Another few moments, another beep , slightly more assertive. Nothing. I flashed my headlights a couple of times. No movement, car or driver. By this time the light has not only turned red again, but has turned green again and red again.
I back up a car length and swing over beside the car in front of me. The driver is sitting behind the wheel, his head tilted all the way forward so that his chin is resting on his breastbone. He was wearing a campaign hat (the kind drill instructors and, I think more to the point, South Carolina state troopers, wear), which I think accounts for the strange look of his head when viewed from the rear. I bee-beeped my horn a couple of times. He never stirred. I sat and watched for what felt like five minutes but was in fact probably only a couple of cycles of the light.
Then I drove off, not knowing what else to do. Dead? Asleep? Passed out? I don’t know. I never found out.
So I was walking down the 42nd Street sidewalk next to Bryant Park in NYC, on a sunny day with a blue sky. All of a sudden it started raining, just on the sidewalk. Confusion among all the pedestrians. I swung around and entered the park, which had been separated from the sidewalk by a tall hedge. There, on a park bench, was a sleeping homeless guy, flat on his back with his pants down, the final spurt of pee emerging from his dick.
That reminds me of a good one. We were driving down Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, Mass. when we saw a woman make a U-turn. The problem was, she tried to cross over a raised concrete (about a foot off the ground) median. So, she was stuck, with her wheels spinning in the air.
I phoned the police. They asked me, what’s the address where this car is stuck up on a concrete median, spinning its wheels? I told them, just come on down, you can’t miss it.
A couple come to mind: rafting Cataract Canyon on the Colorado a few years ago in high water–lots of stuff floating down the river. Dead cows, lots of plastic bottles, lots of driftwood, aaannddd… a bowling ball? How the hell does a bowling ball end up in the Colorado river?
We used to clear trails around Telluride on motorcycles in partnership with the USFS. One spring there had been a big snowpack and we went to clear Horse Creek, where the upper part of the trail is on a very steep sideslope, like 35-40 degrees. Avalanches were common, and we would often have to cut toppled trees. This was different–a spring wet avalanche had come through and ripped 90’ firs out by the roots, so the tops lay uphill and the intact root balls were downhill. Some of them were 3’ in diameter, and we decided maybe the Forest Service should address that trail.