Hitting Home

Today's Thoughts by Jeff Head 6/19/14 Hitting Home

Driver in the Wal Mart Crash speeding in a construction zone and now we have another person dead.  Ok, after reading the article, I am finding this a little bit hard to write as the anger slowly grows inside of me.  Is anyone even listening to me, to us, the safe and legal truckers out there?  There are times I know for a fact, that some are.  Other times, like now, I do not think they even care.  Just too upset to do this now but I want everyone to please read the following from my book "Running Legal Blues".  I made a promise to myself to this little girl to try to make a difference.  To try to stop yet another little girl like her from losing their family.  That is the number one reason I wrote book. 

"Running Legal Blues"   Little Girl.

I made the river bridge ok, then to the split onto Interstate Twelve and into a construction zone.  The speed drops to sixty mph, so as usual I back out of it.  The truck behind me does not.  It jumps into the left lane and blows by me, right on the ass of a four-wheeler (car).  They pass the truck in front of me and I am watching.   I decide to back out of it some more because people are starting to act stupid.    It is a good thing I did, because another four-wheeler gets wild and passes the truck and car that passed me in the right lane.  Then it tries to go between the car with the truck on its ass and another truck back into the left lane so it can pass that truck too; but there is not enough room. 

The car that passed everyone hits the front truck on the left rear side pushing its ICC bumper into the duals and the tires explode. The first car, being tailgated by the truck, runs into the second car that just hit the front truck and the truck doing the tailgating pushes both cars down the highway.  By this time I am in the smoke and debris and locking it up.  I stop about thirty feet behind the truck in front of me.  The other driver hit the ground running.   Before I can get out of my truck, people from both sides of the interstate are all over the wreck.  

But I do go up to see what can be done.  As I get there, one of the drivers is pulling out this little girl and handing her out to another driver. The rest of the scene I think I will pass talking about. I will say this though; I drove my first truck in 1980 and over the years I have held a dying man in my arms with his skull crushed.  I have stood and listened to a man scream for two hours after he pulled out in front of a big truck.  I have seen what was left after an air-born body met the sharp end of a guardrail.  Saw some people that came out one windshield and went into another.  I have seen four-wheelers that met big trucks the wrong way on the interstate, and on and on.  I have seen bloody sheets so many times over the years that, well, you kind of learn to deal with what you see and move on.

But today, yes, today would be different. And it really did not hit me hard until I was halfway across Mississippi. You see, that little girl was about five years old. A stranger pulled her out. A stranger that, without fear of his own life, climbing through the wreckage just seconds after it happened, past the crushed bodies of what used to be her family, and handed her out to those that were standing outside.   Then, everyone gathered around to make sure she was okay. She was, by the grace of God, seemingly uninjured.  The two cars had just been pushed down the interstate, crushed and ripped apart, unrecognizable, and she came through it without a scratch as far as anyone on the scene could tell.

A few minutes later she started to come around to her surroundings, wondering who all these strange people were.  She started crying for her mom.  No one had thought to move her away; they were so concerned whether she was hurt.   She turned and saw what was left of her mom lying there halfway under the minivan.  Trying to pull away from the strangers, she fought screaming to reach the mangled body that used to be her mom.

I walked away.  Hours later, coming into another construction zone again I backed down and again they came out from behind me to speed on through.  My thoughts went to that little girl, and I cried.   That was something I had never seen before.   I hope it is a long time before I hear another child cry.

Thanks for reading.  Today, as I learn that yet another trucker refused to slow down in a construction zone, my mind goes back to that terrible day in my life, that little girl.  And once again I find myself crying.  People, and I say this as elegantly as I possibly can right now,   slow the fuck down.   

God Bless America

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Books by Jeff Head

Running Legal Blues

Drive Safe

Available on Amazon,com