Huh - a “whacky” day here, to close out April!
I was walking out toward the garden veggie area this morning - bright sunlight, completely calm wind, no clouds, and... crack! I heard a branch break off and then start crashing down through the tree I was approaching. Just a few steps more and I’d have been right under the branch hitting the ground. ~3” dia. where it had broken off is not big, but definitely enough to put a notch in my noggin.
As it was, I shook my head, dragged the branch off the path, and no sooner completed that when “BAM!” — then the sound of a mid size vehicle (A big pickup truck?) revving and roaring off — but that was out front of our house and not visible from where I was. So I trotted around front and discovered the presumed pickup truck had left tracks and various items and “pieces” behind, not in our front yard / ditch, but the neighbor’s place across from us: At least it had not hit another vehicle.
From the tracks, the truck(?) veered off the road to the truck’s right before it got to our neighbor’s driveway, leaving nice tracks in the ditch. It then hit the driveway where it crosses the ditch, went airborne, came back down and ploughed (initially deeper) ruts in the ditch past the driveway, continuing on for about 120 ft. (I walked it off) before the passenger side mirror clipped a road sign. That broke off the mirror assembly and almost Wile E. Coyote like flipped the assembly sort of back in the direction from whence it came, but with enough sideways energy that the assembly was a few yards into the neighbor’s yard. The mirror itself is not cracked or broken.
The tracks then went back up onto the road.
Also strewn along the path were:
A new looking pair of cheap sunglasses,
A new looking baseball cap,
A new looking “milk crate” (but slightly smaller),
A new looking step stool,
A new looking 5 qt. bottle of synthetic motor oil (but the cap had blown off and most of the oil drained into the ditch.)
2 fairly new looking blocks of wood, approx. 6” x 8” x 12”.
A well used looking heavy duty gas powered weed whacker with line in it. It appears undamaged. Heavy SOB.
The grass in the ditch is a good 12” tall, so, there could be some stuff I didn’t see, too. I did not do a hands and knees search!
All sorts of clumps and globs of mud were thrown up on the road — I kicked the bigger ones into the ditch.
Best guess is that even though this was about 10:30 a.m., the driver was “impaired” and doesn’t want that known, so that’s why he / she “took off”.
The neighbor seems to be gone - does “out of town” apply when someone doesn’t live in a town? They are new and I don’t know them at all...
This is doubly bizzarro, as the previous afternoon, the State of KY’s Prosecuting Attorney (Commonwealth Attorney in KY, “States Attorney” in IL), for FOUR Western KY counties, died in a single car “veer off the road and into a tree” accident. :-(
The truck in THIS incident across the road from me was damn lucky he didn’t flip his truck when he hit that driveway crossing the ditch. But, he did hit it “square”, as at that point he was going right down the middle of the ditch. I wonder if he needs a wheel alignment job now? That “BAM” was darn loud.
Wow! So looks like you ‘found’ a bunch of usable stuff, LOL!
I had two accidents on my main road at my other farm. One was a SEMI trying to avoid hitting someone (probably a loose cow - not mine!) and he smashed into my Farm Stand at the end of my LONG driveway. That was quite the mess to clean up - but he helped!
One morning, I was leaving about 7am for work and heard a horrific ‘BAM!’ from the road. A car was trying to pass a tractor that was turning, misjudged and hit the tractor! The farmer ended up with a broken arm, the tractor was OK, but the sedan was smashed to pieces with one of the wheel axles landing on my front lawn! Those two were taken away in an ambulance with pretty severe injuries, but they survived.
And then, at least once a MONTH the cows and/or hogs across the road from me would escape. After 25 years of this kind of stuff, I was almost tempted to move to the city just for some peace and quiet, LOL! (Never!)
Wow, the branch story was great, and I’m glad it didn’t actually hit you in the head. Otherwise, no Paul, at least not for a while.
The truck running off the road story is a real doozy! I’m guessing you’re right, that the driver was impaired. Probably was on his phone and going too fast.