A Drive Down Memory Lane . . .

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. . The Vanishing Point
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Sometimes it does not take much
Just the faintest suggestion
The softest touch of a hint
To bring the memories flooding back
And this sometimes is why we blog
To exorcise those ghosts ?
To let a bit of one's true self show ?
Fearing to say too much
Wanting to say more
Hiding, hiding
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I wonder some nights
If I may be a cat
With nine lives
Some of them gone by now
Which could explain
Why certain days
I simply hate to drive
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The road through the forest
Is long and straight
Built by Romans to last
Even if the builders did not
As I drive that road at night
At the very far visible end
There is often a point of light
The vanishing point
Invariably it says to me
You too will reach
Your personal vanishing point
One day, one night
Yet I drive down that road
Do not turn back
And the vanishing point
Draws near but recedes
For now
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If nine lives had I
Then at least four are gone
In four wrecked cars
I was a passenger in
Which could explain
Why I hate to drive
Flying is safer by far
Even if sadly
Entire aeroplanes
Sometimes fall
From the sky
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Age 19, an afternoon
Spent with friends
At a racing track
Stupid kid stuff
Driving home from there
The driver thought
He was still on the fast track
He missed the second half
Of an "S" turn at 60 mph
Hit a tree bounced off
Slid up the road 75 feet
The guy next to me
In the back seat
Fractured his skull
I was just dazed
Fell down when
I tried to walk away
From the smoking wreck
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Age 20 after a college football game
Spent drinking whiskey in the stands
Four idiots piled in a car to go
Who knows where
One minute later the car plowed
Into a bridge pillar
One idiot from the back seat, me,
Flew forward and broke
The rearview mirror off
The windshield
The next morning he was found
Lying in a dormitory hall on the floor
With a white chalk outline around him
Like the corpse after a shooting
Having no idea how he got there
Fortunately, a girl took him in
And nursed his wounds that day
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Age 25, hitchhiking in France
A BMW to take me from Macon
to Bourg en Bresse was t-boned
At a blind intersection
The driver was hospitalized
Me, I just had a sore neck
The car was totaled
The frame was bent
Broken glass all over
Car wrecks are an awful sound
Usually preceded by
The protesting squeal
Of rubber burning
From skidding tires
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Age 28, coming home
From a visit to the grandparents' place
My father was driving
Trying to pass a pick up truck
On a back New Jersey road
When the truck turned left
Down a side road
The impact was hard
And sent us into the trees
I had been trying to sleep
In the back seat
Took off flying into
The back of the front seats
Wrenched the neck again
To this day
Have trouble sleeping in cars
And my neck still hurts
When it rains
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Four wrecks as a passenger
Never as the driver
But that could change tomorrow
Driving is an awful lottery
Far more dangerous
Than flying
Sometimes I think
I can taste my death
And it tastes like blood
From punctured lungs
Coming out in fine drops
Around broken teeth
How many lives do I have left
I wonder
As I gaze up the road
At the vanishing point. . .
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And I apologize if in writing this and posting these pictures here that I took in a junkyard, if I have appalled anyone; but car wrecks are an appalling subject, and more people have been victims of crashes than one might imagine, with varying degrees of gravity, and varying levels of post traumatic stress disorder. My intention is not to be maudlin or depressing, this is catharsis. This is therapeutic. These days I try to forget all that, and try to laugh over the little pleasures in life. . . but some days, the memories are there, and will not easily leave.
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So tell me, has it ever happened to you ? Are we not lucky to still be here ? Yes, I think . . .
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Hard to believe this was ever actually an automobile at all . . .
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The scrapyard blues . . .
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Rites of Spring !

On Gry's Photos Blog there are some very amusing shots of two pigeons that just got married, . . and then embarked right away on their honeymoon then and there. Engaging in certain eternal rights of spring. . . the birds and the bees. Gry is another great Norwegian photographer. I don't know why I'm suddenly stumbling on Norwegian photorgraphers these days, but there you go. Take a look through her back posts, there is some beautiful work there. . .
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In any case, a few years back in the Spring I took this picture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even in junkyards the residents get a little frisky when the sap is rising and the flowers get to blooming, and the birds are singing and the bees are out in force. . .
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Now, I know I shouldn't do this, but what would life be if we never took risks ? Just to further illustrate the above discussion, I found the following photo on the internet, and have no idea who took it, so can't credit properly, well, smack my greedy little fingers. . . and please, excuse my French, sometimes strange things occur in nature, and sometimes truth is stranger than fiction :
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Canary Car Disposal. . .

Having spent a week on the Canary Island of Tenerife in 1994, I can attest with these photos that at that time they had a little bit of a problem with wrecked car disposal. Every time I turned around there was another car cadaver in view, many were badly mangled. I had to wonder what was causing so many wrecks on such a small island ? Was it due to tourists partying too heavily before heading back to their hotels ? Was it local people drinking too heavily to forget about all the tourists ? I can only hope the island has been cleared up a little since I was there. May have to go back one of these days to do a check up visit. . . could use a little sun. . .

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Tree May Need Tree Surgery. . .

If you compare this car wrecked against a large tree with the similar pair of photos posted several posts earlier, you will see that it is not the same car, although both accidents happened along the same stretch of road, City Line Avenue, near Philadelphia, and both times I happened to go by with a camera in hand. I had no news about the drivers. What a huge car. . . I feel sorry for the tree, too.

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Worse For Wear . . .

The Canary Islands are beautiful place, but as with many islands, making large pieces of scrap metal junk disappear is not always as easy as it is on the mainland. That difficulty may tend to contribute to a "laisser faire" attitude, if not even a "laisser pourrir sur place" approach, which is to say, just do nothing and let it rot or rust away in situ. I noticed on Haiti and Guadeloupe that wrecked cars also tended to stay where they came to rest after whatever accident happened. But this one on the island of Tenerife, at the foot of a steep slope with a road at the top was particularly grim. I didn't try to see if skeleton hands were still gripping the steering wheel. . .

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This image could also be an analogy for the international banking system. Looking a little the worse for wear. And a pox on that particular brand of thieving vultures, who seem to have a predilection for purchasing homes on islands. . . like the gentleman who helped bankrupt Lehman Brothers, precipitating the meltdown. And unlike this sorry car, we may not have hit bottom yet.

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Cautionary Tales. . .

Around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sometimes the police were a little slow to have car wrecks removed from visible places. Wrecks like this one were not always hauled away until days after the fact. . . perhaps serving as cautionary tales to remind people of the dangers of driving ? Having survived four serious car accidents myself, each time as a passenger, I am sensitive to images like these, and more than aware of our fragility, our tenuous grip on life.
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Although, one could say these are not photographs of a wrecked car at all. . . this is the worldwide banking system at present. The question is, can it be repaired, or will it have to be written off as a total loss ? ? ?
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The title on this post could also be : The Tree Won
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