Overnight Rain Recalls A 37-Year-Old Memory

Having worked midnight shift for most of my career, I'm often up and around long before the rising sun colors the morning sky. This morning it was 0400; surprising, because most of yesterday was spent driving home from Easley, South Carolina after a 4-day visit with Mom, my sister Chris and brother Jim. I was exhausted, having began my Sunday at 0315; I also prefer driving during the very early morning, as there's no traffic to speak of and the all-night AM radio talk stations abound.

Drinking my usual cup of Tim Horton's black gold, I sat in my very comfortable old leather recliner, reading the bottom-of-the-screen running banner rather than hearing the talking heads on the twenty-four-hour news station that flickered on the TV screen; I keep the volume very low so as not to awaken my bride as she sleeps in our upstairs bedroom. The stillness was only broken by the soft snoring of my old pal Roscoe as he dozed on a blanket in Stacy's recliner.

It began to rain; it had been, off and on through the night, but this time the rain was a steady downpour, its volume heightened as it fell on the vast rows of corn that stand in the field across the road. I strolled out into the sun porch, where its north-facing, large window was partially opened, to better hear the rain's song as it fell on the orderly rows, the descending sheets visible in the light cast by a lone street lamp keeping silent vigil on the corner.

Standing and staring, coffee mug in hand, my mind's eye whisked me back to late spring of 1982, when I was but a young pup at Ontario PD, recalling a night very much akin to the scene just outside my window.

I had been at the State Patrol academy on 17th Street in Columbus, which sits directly across from the Ohio State Fairgrounds, attending a week-long course on traffic crash investigations. Believe me, there's nobody better at accident investigation than our State Highway Patrol and, as I weaved my white cruiser through the pre-rush hour traffic northbound on I-71, I wondered how I'd ever get to sleep when I got home an hour later; I was due in at midnight for my shift.

My rest was fitful, and a mere 90 minutes before the alarm went off at 2300 did I fall into 'true' sleep. Pat Benatar on Cleveland's WGCL jarred me awake, asking me to hit her with my best shot from my bedside clock-radio; I showered, shaved, dressed and crammed a couple of slices of turkey down my throat as I headed out the door a half hour later.

It was raining heavily.

Wonderful, I thought as I wheeled my cruiser into the rear lot of the old station/village hall on Park Avenue West. I'll have to remember to get my rain coat out of the trunk and also throw the waterproof cover on my eight-point hat.

No policeman ever, past or present, likes working in the rain.

I exchanged good-natured insults with the guys on the outgoing afternoon shift, read the radio log and checked my mailbox for messages as I downed a 12-ounce soft drink; finishing, I headed out to the cruiser and signed on the air in the steadily-falling rain with a simple "112, signal 2", wondering how I'd ever pass the time in the next eight hours. The rain would slacken traffic passing through the village which, at that time of night, had only Denny's Restaurant as an attraction, and I would be bored out of my mind.

How wrong I was.

At 0100 hours, a mere ten hours after successfully completing OSHP's accident investigation course, I was dispatched to a semi tractor-trailer versus car accident at the intersection of West Fourth Street and Rock Road.

It was a fatal accident, the very first I'd ever seen but, over the next three decades, far from the last.

As I slid to a stop on arrival, what I saw nearly overwhelmed the senses: the tractor trailer was just past the intersection, the rear end of the trailer blocking the westbound lane of Fourth. The car that was struck was twenty yards into a field on the northwest corner of the intersection, its back end sitting on the rear axle, as both rear wheels had been snapped off from the force of the commercial rig slamming into it as the car attempted to cross West Fourth in front of it. The right rear passenger area  of the car was crushed inward, two of its occupants milling aimlessly outside it, no doubt dazed by the impact. A female was screaming/wailing; Springfield Township fire and rescue apparatus, sirens blaring, rolled up, along with several firemen who arrived in personal vehicles, having responded directly to the scene from their homes. As I ran up to the car, mindless of the cursed rain and mud, a young female who'd been a passenger clutched my raincoat, screaming, "JIMMY'S NOT MOVING!"

The rain became torrential.

There had been four occupants of the car when the accident occurred, the crash resultant, I'd discover later, of the drunken teen driver's attempt at playing 'chicken' with the truck as it approached from the east. As the westbound commercial vehicle neared, the car's driver floored the accelerator and shot out in front of the truck, the rig's right front bumper striking the passenger side of the car just back of the door post.

'Jimmy', the sixteen-year-old right rear passenger who'd snuck out of his house after his parents had gone to bed, took a direct hit from the behemoth truck. He lay slumped to his left, a lone trickle of blood fleeing the corner of his mouth; aside from that, he looked as if he were merely asleep. Later examination by the coroner would find that he'd died of internal bleeding, caused by organ laceration when jagged broken ribs were driven inward by the force of impact.

One other passenger, if I recall correctly, suffered a broken hip.

The panting of Roscoe joining me on the sun porch broke that nightmarish memory and the events of the rest of that terrible, rainy night...

...and the thought that I would never again, for the rest of my days, be faced with similar horrors took its place.

For that, I thank God.