Been sitting on this one for a week now. This story has a prequal; an incident, nearly three years ago, when a van came crashing through my living room wall. I was sitting at my computer on a peaceful Monday morning when the van presented itself, within inches of my chair. But that's a different story.

Last Sunday morning, July 30th at 6 AM, I was again sitting at the computer. There was no traffic at all outside, but there came a tremendous sound that at first struck me as that of a lion's roar. Got my soft sole mocassins on and headed out to see what had happened. Looking down the highway, I saw a large dust cloud along the curb, so I followed the dust and came to the neighbor's house, two doors down. Their front yard is a tight space, fenced in and cozy. There, next to the pumpkin patch and the wishing well, sat a small black pickup truck, upside down with tires spinning and steam billowing from the radiator. It was one of those surreal moments as I regarded the scene and thought, "Hmmm, that doesn't belong there".

I could write at length about the following three hours, but concise will have to do for now. The irony was in the fact that this was the third house in a row, along this side of the highway, that had been assaulted by errant motor vehicles. Neighbors came out to see what the fuss was. Before the State Police arrived, I was standing near the truck while a group of others gathered a bit farther down, where the ground transformer had been ripped away by the out of control truck. I heard the moaning first, and called 911 for the third time to request an ambulence.

The man that crawled out through the flattened window was covered in blood. One man tried to get him to sit down and relax, but the driver hightailed it out back of the house and disappeared into the orchard, then over the back fence. He came back a while later, but again disappeared, outrunning a State cop. No one has yet heard if they ever found the guy, but one of the cops had a vehicle registration, knew the guy who owned the truck, and the guy matched the description I gave to the cop.

The driver had not used the brakes as the truck veered off of the road and over the sidewalk. It took out half of the US Mail cluster box, plowed through the transformer, missed the gas meter by about ten feet, and rolled over upside down as it slid across the fence, laying down some trees as it slid. It's position in the yard looked as if it had been placed there intentionally. The whole thing was just plain weird. Mom even unplugged herself from her food pump, donned her robe, and came out to hang out with the old Spanish men and discuss what had happened.

It was one of those odd reminders of just how delicately balanced life is. Of how swiftly things can change, of how swiftly life could come to an end. I'd experienced that when the van came through into my living room. Only 30 yards away, and three years later, another wayward vehicle had raised similar doubts in my mind. I'm still scratching my head over this. Luckily, this is a peaceful little hamlet on the outskirts of town. Weird.