Friday, September 21, 2007

Denton Tall Tales #31

We passed a lot of time by drinking and driving. We were teenagers, had just received our licenses and were pretty bad at driving, so this wasn’t exactly the safest pastime. There were a lot of accidents.

My favorite accident involves one of my oldest friends, Urn. (His real name is Aaron, but all of the locals pronounce it “Urn”, so that became his nickname.)
Urn was visiting a girlfriend, they were drinking and most likely “necking”. He had stayed at his lady friends house until the early morning hours and decided it was time for him to hit the road. He was very drunk and it was raining. There was a sharp turn in the road and Urn swerved, ran off the road, and hit 3 mailboxes that were at the end of a dirt driveway. To impress his lady friend he had borrowed his grandparents Lincoln TownCar, so he immediately got out to check the damage. Miraculously there wasn’t any damage except for a small scratch on the bumper. He got back in his car and got the fuck out of there. That was a close one.
After about a half hour he sees some headlights come up behind him. It’s a cop and he turn his lights on. He immediately thought he was busted for the mailboxes, he was still quite intoxicated, and scared shitless. The cop comes to the car….

Cop: “Hello Sir. The reason why I pulled you over was because you were swerving pretty badly back there. Is everything alright?
Urn: “……”
Cop: “Wait….Urn is that you?! Well, holy shit boy, what are you doing out here drunk as a skunk. I thought this was your grand parent’s car. They would shit a brick if they knew you were out here like this. I’ll follow you back to your house just to make sure you get back ok…”
Urn: “ OK” (That was a close one)

So Urn made it home. Two crises’s avoided, thinking, I am one lucky son of a bitch. He laid his head on his pillow, and the phone rings, its 3 am. On the other line is the state police, they’re out front, and they want to know if he hit some mailboxes this evening. Urn, in his hurried state to leave the scene of the crime had forgotten one thing…..THE LICENCE PLATE. It had fallen off during the crash.

My other favorite Denton car accidents are when Patrick drove his car into my grandmothers house because he started it in gear; When ‘The Abbott’ found one of our friends in a ditch, car wrecked, techno music blaring, asleep and with pissed pants; and when Patrick and Urn flew into a ditch so hard that the front of the car stuck in the ground, the backend was completely off the ground and no one got hurt until Patrick slammed his hand in the door.

4 comments:

urn said...

Good story. I have a couple things to clear up, but trying to get out of the office at the moment and don't have enough time to cover everything. Check back this weekend. Need to have a couple beers to get in the frame of mind for this story.

Snaxxx said...

there could be a couple things wrong. i want to hear it straight from the horses mouth.

urn said...

Ok Snaxxx, here is how I remember it although your story was very accurate.

Back in 97 I was dating this girl in college (UMES) named Chung Li. I know I know the name sounds like a character from Mortal Kombat or one of those video games, but she was pretty cool and not bad looking either. We hung out a lot during the spring semester and for most of the summer break.

Chung Li liked to drink a lot when we hung out, which usually meant I had to keep up with her. During the summer months I was living with my grandparents, who more or less became my psuedo parents during my parents divorce. At any rate I didn't really have a good ride so I would always borrow my grandmothers 95 Linclon Town Car when I went out. Compared to my 2 previous vehicles - a Ford Festiva and a Chevy Astro Mini-Van, this ride was dope, leather seats, good stereo system, comfortable to ride in...

On one summer's evening with nothing better to do I headed over to Chung Li's house which was about an hour away. During the drive down I almost ran off the road on one of the side streets about 5 minutes from her house. The road was so bad I made a mental note of it for later, which wouldn't really matter as you will see...

Before I left the house and headed over to this girl's house for the evening my grandmother asked me not to stay over night and bring the car back, normally she wouldn't care, but she was pissed about something else I did so I promised her I would be back later that night....(First dumb decision)

Got to Chung Li's house around 6 or 7 and she mentioned that one of her friends was throwing a house party. We decided to hit it and picked of one of her other friends on the way. At this party I must have had so had a lot of rum, gin and who knows what else. I was pretty drunk and so was chung li, so her friend (can't remember her name) offered to drive the Lincoln Town Car back to Chung Li's house. Once we got back to her house we passed out but I woke up around 3a.m. in a panick and I all I could think about was getting the car back home. To this day I kick myself wondering why I gave a flying fuck about getting the Linclon back... but I was seriously intoxicated so who knows what I was really thinking.

I jumped in the town car and started driving back. About 5 minutes into the hour long drive I came up on the bad road I almost ran off of earlier but totally forgot about it until it was too late. The pavement was wet from heavy rain and the next thing I knew the Lincoln Town Car had crossed over the center median and was over the left shoulder on some front lawns taking out mailboxes like a tank...Eventually I came to a stop in someones lawn. I got out and inspected the damage. Nothing too bad from what I could tell. I looked at the back of the car and saw a license plate, looked at the front of the car and didn't see a license plate. Now before this happened I couldn't remember if this car had a front license plate, for instance some states don't require them like Florida. So in a drunken stupor and wanting to get the hell out of there before cops showed up and gave me a DWI, I just assumed that there wasn't one and took off.

At this point I was driving through the city of Salisbury, MD - very drunk, in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. I ran a red light while a police car was going the opposite direction. He saw me and put on his brakes like he was going to turn around, then let off the brakes and kept going. I guess he figured the storm was the reason I ran the light. (Whew) That was a close call. Once I got out of town and into the open roads, I floored it to 80 or 90. I was about 15 minutes from home on this long stretch of road. Thinking to myself I am almost home and no sign of trouble. About 1 min later I saw a cars tailights in the distance up ahead but didn't pay them much attention, I figured I would pass the car eventually right. Well as I got close I realized it was a cop and I was creeping up on him a little too fast, I slowed down but it was too late. HE pulled over on the shoulder and waited for me to pass then put on his lights. "God Dammit" I said to myself.

THe officer came up to the Window and recognized me right away. It turned out to be an old highschool friend of my Uncles. I used to hang out with my Uncle a lot during football season so I would run into his friends during his annual Super Bowl Gatherings. Anyways "Brian" asked me if I was drunk, I said no, he asked me to come sit in his car, and did the "wave the flashlight in front of your eyes to see if you focus on the light or the police office in the periphery" sobriety test. I failed it miserably and he said "Shit Aaron you are drunk as a skunk", "you shouldn't be driving". So he took me back home in his car, woke my grandmother up, and gave her the rundown. Actually she was pretty cool about the whole thing and just glad nothing bad happened. I walked straight up to my room and just went to bed, hoping to sleep this thing off like a bad dream. The next day I got a friend to drive me to the car on the side of ROute 404, so I could bring it back. Shortly after I got back home, my grandmother called me over the phone / intercom system, and said "Aaron, the state police are on the line, you left our car's license plate at the scene of an accident involving several destroyed mailboxes", "You better talk to them and figure this shit out", "Me and your grandfather have seen enough shit already and don't need to deal with this" She was pissed, but got over it eventually...

About 2 weeks later I had to go to the State Police Barracks near Salisbury, MD to get my citations / tickets. I was being charged with 5 or 6 driving offenses, totaling 26 points. In Maryland at the time 12 points meant your license got revoked...I ended up going to court and the judge asked me "Son, I understand your are currently attending college, What is your Major?" I replied "International Business your honor"....Judge " Well if you can't even handle your business around here how the hell are you going to handle it anywhere else", "I'll cut you some slack, failure to avoid a collision, (2 points) $100.00 fine, next case" I dodged a major bullet on that one, but 4 months later I would get a speeding ticket that would cost me to lose my license for a year. This story ended an era of drinking and driving for me. That sums of one of my most notorious experiences in Denton...

Blog cabins aka Ricardo Jefferson said...

well done aaron...cant waide to see what you write next