This may be a little long, but worth the read!
Many moons ago, in my early twenties. I was driving with a friend in my '83 Ford Escort out to a ski resort. Other friends were in another car. We also had a case of beer in the back seat.
Soon after hitting the road we hit rush hour traffic and lost our friends. The only "logical" thing to do was to crack open a few beers to help pass the time. Bad idea.
An hour later and many beers past before we realized we were simply driving around the countryside and had missed the resort. We were in a deserted part of the mountains. As I drove, the road we were on would be intersected by other roads. Instead of stopping for the stop signs, I would simply look each way down the intersecting roads to see if there were any oncoming cars. There were none, so I just flew through several intersections with no problem. Until...
The last interection looked the same. But as soon as we entered it, we realized that it actually
ended at a "T"!!! We were doing about 50 mph at the time. Directly in front of us was a telephone poll. I swerved to the right, mssing the pole. Only problem was that there was a two foot high stone fence. Luckily there was enough snow embanked in front of it to act like a ramp.
We hit the wall doing 50 and were immediately ariborne. For a couple seconds there was complete silence and we could see nothing but blackness. Then we landed. Hard. Steam was coming out of the hood and the car stalled, but we were both okay.
We got out to access the situation. Best as we could tell, we were in a farmer's field. The nearest house was 1/4 mile away. We dumped all the bear bottles and got into the car. It actually started!! But we had to get back to the road. The field was covered with snow, but the Escort didn't get stuck. We headed towards the only light we saw, the car bouncing over and over the furrows in the field. Eventually we got up to a little road. But there was thick bushes between us and the road. "Hold on!", I yelled. I gunned the engine and drove straight through the bushes onto the road!!
We stopped just in time to see the sillowette of a man standing a few feet in front of us. I slowly rolled down the window. "Landed in the field, did ya?", he asked. "Yup", I answered. He paused and we held our breath. "Aint the first time that's happend. That's my neighbor's field. He's in Florida and he's an *********. So y'all can just leave."
We thanked our lucky stars and left. We then conjured up a "believable" story about why we were so late to ski and made it back to the lodge. Neither of us ever told our friends what happened. Later I looked at the car for damage. A wire attached to the telephone poll had run down the left side of the car and sheared the side view mirror right off the car! I also needed a new radiator.
I only told a couple friends this story late last year-- fifteen years after the fact!
Oh yeah.
Don't drink and drive!!
PS I've got a couple more stories, but maybe I should hold off for now to protect my "image"!
