“Brady’s fine.” Those are words you want to hear; however, you suspect there might be a “but” coming. There was. Brady rolled his SUV a couple weeks ago and the first words out of David’s mouth when he called to tell us were “Brady’s fine. He rolled his car but came out of it without a scratch. He’s lucky. He handled it very well.”
Brady was going too fast for the snowy conditions, came to the end of the road and a stop sign that required a right or left turn, couldn’t stop, and tried to take the turn unsuccessfully. He rolled the car. It’s totaled.
While we spoke, David remembered he too had car trouble when he was in high school. He was going too fast, came upon a stop sign, tried to stop, but instead took out the sign. He drove the car home and was sobbing when Ruth and I pulled in a few minutes later. Ruth’s first words were, “Where’s Michael?” She was afraid Mike had been with his brother and was hurt. He wasn’t.
After confirming Michael was alright, David recounted the stop sign story. When he finished, I asked about the sign. David had knocked the sign down, gathered himself, and drove home. I said, “We’ve got to get that sign back up or someone might get hurt.”
We drove back to the site, put the sign back up, and came home. The damage to the car was minimal compared to what could have happened. Ruth and I were happy no one was hurt. That’s always the first thought.
Our recounting of the stop sign story reminded me of the time David broke down just a couple miles from the stop sign site. For no apparent reason the car just stopped. Luckily, a county sheriff deputy and his partner came upon David and the car. The deputy called a tow truck and waited for the truck to arrive. The car was taken to a local Devils Lake garage for repair. It was a Nissan, and the locals didn’t service “foreign cars”.
David got a ride home from a friend and shared the tale with us. Ruth called the Adrian location that usually serviced the car. It was late afternoon, so they made arrangements to have it towed to Adrian the next day. Ruth stopped by the service station on her way to work and told them to call her as soon as they diagnosed the car’s problem.
She received a call a couple hours later. The car was out of gas. David didn’t check, the two deputy sheriffs that helped him didn’t check, and two different tow truck drivers didn’t check. It was an expensive two tow truck experience. Moving forward, if the car won’t run, check the gas.