Of all the cars purchased by Earl Olson for his progeny, the orange Chevy Citation was one of them.
It was Ruth's car from the time she went to Ricks College to her graduation from the ISU cosmetology program. But when she got her first job cutting hair, one of her first acts of independence was to buy her own car, at which point the Citation returned to the Olson inventory, and it eventually made its way to me when I made the decision that I couldn't afford the gas it took to run the step-side Chevy pickup. The Citation served me faithfully into May of 1993 when Julie graduated from the ISU nursing program. But before she could become a registered nurse, she had to take the professional nursing exam in Boise.
In the early morning of the day before the test, Julie had just finished her night shift, so I put down the back seat in the Citation and set everything up for her to lay down in the back with Erik and sleep while I drove to Boise. As we left Pocatello, we had to drive through that thick stinky morning fog that often collects by the Simplot plant. Visibility was really low on the freeway, but the traffic seemed to be flowing okay, so I kept up a speed of about 50 just to avoid having someone rear-end me in the fog. Unfortunately, 50 was still too fast to react to a multiple-car wreck that suddenly appeared ahead of me. A jack-knifed semi truck that was at the front end of the pile up, which about five other cars that had all piled into each other. I slammed on the brakes and tried to steer past some of the cars ahead of me, but I ended up hitting one and it spun me into another car. I remember how it felt like the driver's side window broke in slow motion as we came to an abrupt stop. Then my brain suddenly snapped into normal speed, and I heard a woman screaming. When I saw that it was a pregnant woman trying to get out of her Jeep with her husband's help, I yelled at Julie to take Erik and get as far away from the freeway as she could. Julie gathered up Erik and got out of the back door. When I saw them reach the edge of the road, I then ran back into the fog to try to stop the oncoming traffic.
In order to be seen by the drivers, I basically had to be right on the edge of the road only about four or five feet away from the cars driving by. I stopped two cars, then an RV, then a few more cars, and then a fully loaded semi truck--all of which would have definitely plowed into the pile up of cars if I hadn't stopped. I kept running down the freeway, waving my arms and screaming for people to stop, even stopping a state trooper that had been dispatched to check out the wreckage. I didn't stop running until the fog broke and I could see that all of the cars on the freeway had come to a stop.
I ran back to the wreck and found that Julie and Erik had been taken in by the couple in the RV. They thanked me for stopping them, because they said they would have hit everyone if I hadn't given them those few extra seconds to stop the RV. Other people thanked me for stopping them too. Julie said the pregnant woman had broken a leg or something and couldn't move very quickly, so she would have been hit and killed by the RV if I hadn't run back into traffic.
The state trooper talked with me about the accident and took some pictures. I ended up being the last driver to hit anything, so the Citation was the last in a pile-up. When the tow-trucks arrived, ours was the first to be taken away. We rode with the driver back into town, paid our respects to the orange Citation that was hauled into the junkyard, and arranged for rides to get back home. We ended up taking somebody else's vehicle to Twin Falls, where we left Erik to be babysat by Mom. Dad gave us another big car to drive to Boise so that Julie could take her test. When we got to the hotel, I flipped on the TV to the music channel, and "Fields of Gold" was playing. And I remember thinking how I had nearly lost my wife and son in that crash, and I felt really grateful that I still had time left to "walk in fields of gold" with Julie and Erik.
After that trip to Boise, I purchased a tape of "Ten Summoner's Tales"--a literary reference to "The Canterbury Tales," as well as a reference to his own last name of Sumner. I listened to "Fields of Gold," as well as all the other songs, a lot while I was driving around town and doing after-hours work at Irving Jr. High. There are other hit songs on the album that got airplay, including "Shape of My Heart," "It's Probably Me," and "If I Ever Loose My Faith in You," which has one of the best lyrics on the album with the lines, "You could say I lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me." There is one song on the YouTube playlist that wasn't on the album sold in the U.S.--"Everybody Laughed But You." It's not a bad song, but I don't feel robbed that I missed hearing it all those years.
The album was Grammy nominated for Album of the Year, but it lost to the Whitney Houston soundtrack from "The Bodyguard." But it won three other Grammys for things that people really don't care about. It was also the last album by Sting that I paid any attention to. He's put out ten more since this one, and he's had some songs chart off of them and won more Grammys from them. But this is my favorite Sting album, because every time I hear it I'm reminded of the wife of my youth, my young son, and the orange Citation that gave its life so that we might walk together in fields of gold another day.
Wow, what a harrowing tale of heroism! I had forgotten about this incident, and forgotten about the car, too. (Although the photo did jar some memories.)
I've always equated "Fields of Gold" to being on a combine in the wheat fields at harvest time. (Yes, I know the song says "fields of barley," but I spent much more of my time in wheat fields, and the few times I harvested barley with the combine, I was so damn worried about putting the header down into the dirt and rocks, because barley was so much shorter than wheat, that I was always on edge.) Plus, wheat makes bread, and barley makes beer, so give me a wheat field any day of the week. (Except Sunday.)
Concerning that line from "If I Ever Lose My Faith," I have to wonder what the hell game show hosts ever did to Sting that he'd insult them so egregiously.
One of my favorite songs from this album is "Seven Days." It's a fun little ditty, but I especially love the way Sting uses the fade-out to add some of the lyrics from "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." ("Do I have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days since we first met. It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.") It's a fun and clever little bit that Sting pulled at least one other time. At the end of "Love Is the Seventh Wave" from the album "Dream of the Blue Turtles," Sting ends the song by poking some fun at "Every Breath You Take" during the fade-out by singing, "every cake you bake. Every leg you break." Sting can sometimes be a pretentious bastard, but he also has a pretty good sense of humor. ("Be careful, James! GoldSting doesn't like to lose!")("The pretzels are no longer complimentary.")
Wow, what a harrowing tale of heroism! I had forgotten about this incident, and forgotten about the car, too. (Although the photo did jar some memories.)
ReplyDeleteI've always equated "Fields of Gold" to being on a combine in the wheat fields at harvest time. (Yes, I know the song says "fields of barley," but I spent much more of my time in wheat fields, and the few times I harvested barley with the combine, I was so damn worried about putting the header down into the dirt and rocks, because barley was so much shorter than wheat, that I was always on edge.) Plus, wheat makes bread, and barley makes beer, so give me a wheat field any day of the week. (Except Sunday.)
Concerning that line from "If I Ever Lose My Faith," I have to wonder what the hell game show hosts ever did to Sting that he'd insult them so egregiously.
One of my favorite songs from this album is "Seven Days." It's a fun little ditty, but I especially love the way Sting uses the fade-out to add some of the lyrics from "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." ("Do I have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days since we first met. It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.") It's a fun and clever little bit that Sting pulled at least one other time. At the end of "Love Is the Seventh Wave" from the album "Dream of the Blue Turtles," Sting ends the song by poking some fun at "Every Breath You Take" during the fade-out by singing, "every cake you bake. Every leg you break." Sting can sometimes be a pretentious bastard, but he also has a pretty good sense of humor. ("Be careful, James! GoldSting doesn't like to lose!")("The pretzels are no longer complimentary.")