Tweet
I've been away for a few weeks, coping with some serious family issues. (Related note, I think my post makes sense, but I haven't had much sleep lately, so if I'm talking gibberish, somebody please tell me!) But I had to pop in to share this one.
First, some background that's needed to understand the depth of the WTF moment that the police and I had the other night. I live in the house I grew up in, renting it from my parents. It's a corner house, and for 20 years, people have drag-raced down both our street and the side-street, in the middle of the night. It's also not uncommon in my city for non-racing drivers to suddenly lose control and crash through somebody's house or fence. And three of my siblings, as kids, used to sleep basically against the street-side walls of our house. This made Dad very nervous.
So he built a cinder-block wall. Not just any wall, either, because Dad is an engineer. This is the wall other walls want to be when they grow up. Wall-zilla. Bat-wall. Wall-hammad Ali. (I hope none of those are offensive... they're just what we kids actually named segments of the wall, and now that I think of it, I'm not totally sure we didn't commit some kind of sacrilege there.) The footing extends three feet into the ground, the re-bar goes even deeper. The backyard wall extends six feet above ground level. The holes of the cinder blocks are all filled to the top with re-bar and cement. Around here, your fences have to be about 2 feet away from the sidewalk, so Dad also built knee-high planter boxes from the wall to the sidewalk, and reinforced those the same way. The front yard got similar treatment, with formidable pillars at the corners and driveway. Mom laughed as he designed it. Sister and I rolled our eyes. The neighbors called him flipping insane.
Until 2:39 this past Saturday morning when the police came to my door and asked, "Was that your wall on the side of the house?" Umm... was? Past tense? That can't be good. I go out there and find... my neighbor's ex-car parked curbside on the side of my house, with tire tracks up the side of the driver's door and over top of its hood. And, about 10 feet beyond that, an 8-foot stretch of my "planter box" wall was broken and partially uprooted but still standing. Whatever moron lost control of their vehicle, didn't get more than 3 inches past the edge of the sidewalk. And the vehicle that did the crashing and smashing... gone. Hit-and-run. Big shock, I know. (Also, if anyone cares, it was Wall-El that died in the accident, and I'm not into Superman, so I'm pretty much okay with this. Little brother is bummed.)
What I can't figure out is this. I live at the corner of a T intersection, but the left-hand side of the T's top, is only about 180 feet long, and it terminates into another T intersection, so it's not like you have a whole lot of road to work with. How did anybody get enough speed to drive OVER the neighbor's Lincoln and continue right into my wall, in 200, 230 feet of road? And how, in the name of all things holy, did they have enough car left to drive away from the scene, leaving nothing more than tire marks and one scrape-mark of red paint?!
Bonus suck: Last evening I went grocery shopping. A few cars ahead was a car doing that thing where you zip from lane to lane, cutting people off, and generally making an ass of yourself without actually making any forward progress. After about a mile, I caught up to him at a red light. And realized... across his back window, he had those pop-out sunshades that are meant to go in the front window while the car is parked in the parking lot. The kind that are not even a little bit see-through. Now I know why he was nearly taking off the bumpers of cars he was cutting in front of, I guess.
First, some background that's needed to understand the depth of the WTF moment that the police and I had the other night. I live in the house I grew up in, renting it from my parents. It's a corner house, and for 20 years, people have drag-raced down both our street and the side-street, in the middle of the night. It's also not uncommon in my city for non-racing drivers to suddenly lose control and crash through somebody's house or fence. And three of my siblings, as kids, used to sleep basically against the street-side walls of our house. This made Dad very nervous.
So he built a cinder-block wall. Not just any wall, either, because Dad is an engineer. This is the wall other walls want to be when they grow up. Wall-zilla. Bat-wall. Wall-hammad Ali. (I hope none of those are offensive... they're just what we kids actually named segments of the wall, and now that I think of it, I'm not totally sure we didn't commit some kind of sacrilege there.) The footing extends three feet into the ground, the re-bar goes even deeper. The backyard wall extends six feet above ground level. The holes of the cinder blocks are all filled to the top with re-bar and cement. Around here, your fences have to be about 2 feet away from the sidewalk, so Dad also built knee-high planter boxes from the wall to the sidewalk, and reinforced those the same way. The front yard got similar treatment, with formidable pillars at the corners and driveway. Mom laughed as he designed it. Sister and I rolled our eyes. The neighbors called him flipping insane.
Until 2:39 this past Saturday morning when the police came to my door and asked, "Was that your wall on the side of the house?" Umm... was? Past tense? That can't be good. I go out there and find... my neighbor's ex-car parked curbside on the side of my house, with tire tracks up the side of the driver's door and over top of its hood. And, about 10 feet beyond that, an 8-foot stretch of my "planter box" wall was broken and partially uprooted but still standing. Whatever moron lost control of their vehicle, didn't get more than 3 inches past the edge of the sidewalk. And the vehicle that did the crashing and smashing... gone. Hit-and-run. Big shock, I know. (Also, if anyone cares, it was Wall-El that died in the accident, and I'm not into Superman, so I'm pretty much okay with this. Little brother is bummed.)
What I can't figure out is this. I live at the corner of a T intersection, but the left-hand side of the T's top, is only about 180 feet long, and it terminates into another T intersection, so it's not like you have a whole lot of road to work with. How did anybody get enough speed to drive OVER the neighbor's Lincoln and continue right into my wall, in 200, 230 feet of road? And how, in the name of all things holy, did they have enough car left to drive away from the scene, leaving nothing more than tire marks and one scrape-mark of red paint?!
Bonus suck: Last evening I went grocery shopping. A few cars ahead was a car doing that thing where you zip from lane to lane, cutting people off, and generally making an ass of yourself without actually making any forward progress. After about a mile, I caught up to him at a red light. And realized... across his back window, he had those pop-out sunshades that are meant to go in the front window while the car is parked in the parking lot. The kind that are not even a little bit see-through. Now I know why he was nearly taking off the bumpers of cars he was cutting in front of, I guess.
... at first I thought it was your neighbour's ex-car that had done the damage until I re-read your post (which is fine, by the way; I'm reading on the run here ... 
)
Comment