The Flat Mailbox Morning

Sun 8/26/07

I got up only slightly later than my normal time and came downstrairs to take a shower, let the cat out, and start breakfast. It was just after eight and I was sitting down to check my e-mail when I heard a sound which can only be made in one way, a crunching bang, from the direction of our driveway. I've never heard an accident before, but I knew immediately what it was, and jumped from my chair to look out the window. A cloud of dust was beginning to settle, and I could see the front of a green Ford Explorer where formerly the corner of our driveway, a chainlink fence, and a wall of twenty-foot tall arborvitae had stood.

I leapt up the stairs two at a time and jumped from my bathrobe into clothing, telling Sarah to dial the police and call our landlord as well. By the time I had run out to the wreck another car had stopped. The cabin of the vehicle was only slightly damaged, although the driver's window was completely gone. The driver, a middle aged man, was conscious, and appeared unhurt but for a few scratches from glass. He was shaking, though, and gripping the steering wheel and shifter spasmodically while repeating that he was, "just going to work." I asked him if he was hurt, or had hit his head, and finally discovered that he had diabetes. In shocking circumstances it can take several minutes to sort things out, but he got out a candy bar to eat, raising his blood sugar level, just about when the police arrived, and was feeling back to normal soon. In the meantime a tow-truck company pickup had stopped, and soon a firetruck and ambulance arrived.

His name was Owen, and he'd been westbound on his way to work when he must have temporarily blacked out, waking up to see an oncoming car. He swerved and somehow overcorrected into the opposite ditch, where he sideswiped a power pole, which totalled the front left end of his truck, and started it spinning counterclockwise until it completed a quarter turn and came to rest, nose in, about where our mailbox used to be. The Sunday newspaper was spread for twenty feet in either direction. Fortunately, nothing was damaged which money can not fix. Only a few scratches on Owen, and our power was out for half and hour until the power company sent a truck to reset the cutout and repair the minor damage to the pole. I am thankful that he woke up in time to avoid a head-on collision, that he slid passenger-side first, and that I hadn't decided to go out and pick up the paper just then. I'm also just a little thankful he wasn't fifty feet further down the street, where our garden is... The corn is just getting ripe...

As of today: our flattened mailbox has now been replaced with a new one, and the chainlink fence is up again, but we can now see when our mailman comes through a gap in the arborvitae...