I was probably 28 at the time and my running partner was about 25 or 26. I was dating a 33 year old at the time.
We were doing a carpentry gig south of Seattle and we were close to running out of work and planning on heading north to Alaska in a few days. I was driving my rusty 1962 Dodge half-ton stepside with a brand new salvaged Slant Six under the hood. The truck was in shape for another Alaska Highway run, having been recently shod with brand new wrecking yard tires.
Anyway, I forgot where we were headed but it was a three lane section of road and I knew I was going to make a left up ahead at the intersection. I was paying attention to my driving.
My running partner was paying attention to 4 teenage girls in a convertible that were running alongside us. I had gotten a glance at them and wasn't interested. They were far too young for my tastes.
The light at the intersection was red and I slowed down and the convertible slowed down to stay alongside us. I wondered why my pard was wasting his time fooling around with kid until I realized he was just being himself. He'd likely done the same to a carload of octogenarians on their way to a sewing circle meeting. He had them smiling and laughing.
I was going pretty slow when the left turn green arrow lit so I started to speed up and about the time I started my left turn I heard the screech of metal being twisted and torn and a loud scream. I knew what happened and a quick glance confirmed it. The driver hadn't been paying attention and had rammed into the rear end of the car stopped at the light.
Instinctively I knew the way that one would go down. Even though I had done nothing wrong the blame game would begin so I sped up and knew they were too shook up to get my tag number. I simply kept going and checked with my pard for an injury report. He said they were probably uninjured but pretty shook up. We kept moving and cleared the AO as quickly as I could.
I remembered that it wasn't likely they could chase us down easily because I remembered that the address on my registration was some kind of a flophouse in Sedro-Woolley that I have never set foot in.
Upon further though, there was no way we could be blamed for anything. The teenaged driver was simply not paying attention to her driving, plain and simple. Had she tried to blame it on my pard it would have a been an admission of guilt on her part.
We drove staring straight ahead for about a mile and I pulled into a parking lot and the pair of us stared at each other and burst into complete and total laughter. We were both incapacitated with laughter and sat there laughing ourselves sore for several minutes.
I think the laughter was mental relief. After we settled down I grilled him for a damage report and he said it looked to him like car damage but no real injuries. Cars can be replaced and suffer no pain.
The following day was another rare Pacific Northwest beautiful day and I said to my pard, "Yesterday was funny as hell. Let's do it again." He gave me a sheepish look. Then the laughter started all over again. He asked me how she was going to explain that to the police and her parents. More laughter.
Hopefully the teenager learned to pay attention that day.
Still, almost 50 years later I got a call out of nowhere from my old running partner and the subject came up and we were again paralyzed with laughter. The reason I wrote this post is because he asked me to when we spoke.
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