When I was 15 years old living in Lafayette, Indiana my friend, Sally Shropshier’s engineer dad built an amazing green dune buggy from scratch. Sally lived down the rural winding street in Meadowbrook Estates about 6 houses from my house. I had a lot of friends in my neighborhood from school and was really happy after we had moved from Chicago not long ago. Sally was chubby like me and my mom told me that her mom was ashamed of her. Mom said she wasn’t ashamed of me. Mom always said she was a butterball when she was my age. They put me on a weight watchers’ diet, and I lost 25 pounds and now was in perfect form doing sit ups in my living room too. About this time, I started wearing makeup and everyone always told me I was so beautiful. I’m a natural strawberry blonde and my eyelashes and eyebrows are gold and too light to show. Everyone in my family were thin, with darker hair. I’m different. I’m the middle child. Sally wasn’t even pretty. She was sweet and kind and caring. I wonder whatever happened to her. Her mom wasn’t much to look at either. What an unloving thing to say about her daughter, Sally. I’ll bet Sally grew up to be gorgeous thin and rich. She had a nice personality.
One evening, 16-year-old Sally invited me to go for a ride in her new dune buggy. Sally drove with her brother David in the back holding onto the rail above and wasn’t really making any noise. Sally drove us into Lafayette to the middle of town close to Purdue University. She drove straight through a red light at a five-way crossing and the buggy was demolished. Sally was thrown into the middle of the street at least 30 feet away. David jumped out immediately and went to his sister. There was vomit coming out of her nose and she was unconscious. I was sitting in the passenger seat with a broken seat belt and my chin stuck in the radio nob in shock. I pulled my leg from the radio and ran to Sally. I don’t think Sally had her seat belt on. I would have been dead if I didn’t; or have gone through the windshield and been seriously injured. I lived with a massive bruise across my entire belly and a massive scar on my chin. I was kept out of school for a few weeks after. My parents could have sued for damages, but they never brought it up; or at least I never heard.
When my first husband Michael and I rented out our beautiful home in Glendale, Arizona we left in the summertime heat to spend summer in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, south of Missoula. At first, we arrived in our Airstream International to Hamilton, Montana off Highway 93; the same valley the Lewis and Clark expedition travelled through.
One afternoon, I put my daughter Lily into my brand-new Buick Roadmaster with her seat belt on and headed down the 93 into Hamilton to do some shopping. As I’m driving, there’s a massive car crash on the same lane I’m on in front of me. I pull over immediately after I tell 5-year-old Lily to stay in the car and lock the doors. I run over to the men. No one else stopped and no one was around. The driver was injured but mostly in shock and appeared to have broken a leg. I tell him to stay still and don’t move. Lay down and breathe deeply. Then I run to the next man who was trying to sit up. All of his guts were out of him, and he was bleeding everywhere in misery. “Please lay down and don’t move. I’m going to help you now.” He’s still trying to sit up. “Don’t move. Lay down and breath. I’m going to stop the bleeding. You’ve been hurt bad. Please don’t move. The ambulance is on the way.” The young man in his 20’s was in so much pain but breathing. I see there is another man lying far away by the railroad track and I run to him. He had no color in him at all. He was a different color I’d never seen. I checked his pulse. He was dead lying sprawled on his back. I ran back to the young man with his guts spilled all over while I’m looking to make sure Lily is still in the car sitting. She was.
I asked the driver with the broken bones what happened. He had pulled over and didn’t check his mirrors to see if it was clear to pull out and was hit by a car legally going 80 miles an hour. Two very young men died that day. It took an ambulance over 45 minutes to arrive because it was allergy season and many were having asthma attacks. Keep this in mind if you move far out from a hospital or from town. It takes longer and there are less ambulances in small towns. Paramedics are paid basically nothing, and you don’t know their skill when they arrive on an accident scene either.
In rural areas, this is the case. An ambulance takes a lot of time to get to you. At this same time living in Montana, two pioneer sister Jehovah’s Witnesses on Highway 93 miles north of Hamilton were hit head on by a concrete truck and died when they were out doing the disciple making work.
Around this same time, an entire family living on hilly magnificent rural Hamilton Heights Road in the beautiful Big Sky country of Hamilton, Montana pulled out of their driveway and were hit and all died. The location of their driveway was terrible because there wasn’t an adequate view of the road where they pulled out on. It was a hill and you couldn’t see who was coming at all. An entire family died that day.
There was a car full of teens who died after prom night on that same highway 93. I recall they were drinking. What a tragedy.
Psalm 103:15-17 “As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him”
Don’t drink and drive and always wear your seatbelt. Remember too that if you pull over to the side of a highway to always look both in your side mirror and turn your head to make sure it’s clear to pull out. Love yourself and others. Drive cautiously.
Always Christian with love from Anne Fisher Foundation.