Hey Folks:
This news was in the Charleston Gazette. If you ever wanted to know what the people of West Virginia and life here are like, this story (with photo) wraps everything up in one bundle.
http://wvgazette.com/News/201003050935
And our families asks why we don’t move back to Pennsylvania.
They don’t have jackets, hair-dos, and cool sunglasses like that in PA?
that is hard to believe, innit!
Where did they go?
For a visual, I think it might be hard to top this . . .
“It was like a big rabbit tire,” she said. “It was hopping and hopping and it just hopped right onto my truck.”
I didn’t really find much odd about the article. One of my relatives lost a tire like that, going down the road, some years ago, and it went into a schoolhouse, where class was in session.
OK, I’ll provide my analysis of this article. In our newspaper, the photo was on the second page, so maybe that matters.
This lady (and she is a lady, not a women, more about that later) has composure. She sees a big giant truck tire coming at her and she doesn’t panic and doesn’t flip the truck. She probably should have slammed on the brakes but I know that portion of interstate mountain highway, she might not have had any options other than to pace herself and dodge the tire but the story doesn’t say anything about that. From the looks of the damage, she may have almost succeeded in dodging the tire.
She was ready to meet her maker. Religion and a personal relationship with their Lord and Savior is very important to people here. Life here can be pretty dangerous and people live with the fact that dangerous freak accidents happen all the time. This is the second time someone in her family was hit by a tire. She doesn’t grieve about the other person, it’s just a fact a life. So many folks are struggling here that I think a lot of people around here wouldn’t mind a quick trip to the afterlife.
I’m with Lambchop on that visual of the big rabbit tire.
The picture is what really shocked me. I wasn’t expecting a picture at all and the picture that we got was something else. I had imagined a poor mountain woman in a cotton dress and hair pulled back in a ponytail. Instead we get this woman, the new mountain woman. I wonder if that lady smudged her makeup in the accident. I know the hairdo survived the accident, but I wonder if she got an emergency appointment at the beauty shop to get a touch up. A lady like that has connections.
Emm can make fun of the outfit and 'do all she wants but I wonder how much emm would have bothered to put herself back together or even refused to have her picture taken if this happened to her. This lady has a certain type of class.
I know of an instance when a truck tire come off, managed to crash through a window of a house next to the interstate, and killed a child in the room.
BTW - the house was there before the interstate was built.
Like Walden, I didn’t see anything odd with the newspaper article or the photo with it. Similar articles appear in our Indianapolis Star almost everyday. The story merely reinforces the idea that driving on the interstate along with heavy truck traffic is dangerous. It a good idea to keep your fingers crossed and carry a rabbit’s foot with you when you drive.
There are a couple of things you can do to improve safely, and my wife thinks I am a nut when I even mention about not driving at night on the interstate unless you really have to. I notice that the woman in the story had the mishap at 9 pm. At night you can’t see anything lying on the road that you could easily see and avoid in the daytime. Driving over a brick or a truck tire retread fragment could easily cause you to have an accident, not to mention running into a deer. Also, I try not to hang out around trucks when I am driving on the interstate. The fast left land with all of the traffic tailgating each other trying to drive a little faster is the lane for stupid drivers, in my opinion. I think that trying to drive with the traffic and making a point to not follow trucks too closely makes sense to me. When I do have to pass a slower truck, I don’t creep by the truck in cruise-control. I step on the accelerator, quickly get around the truck, and then reset the crusie-control if the traffic permits. My general attitude is to stay away from trucks as much as I can.
If the product she’s using is as OSHA-approved industrial as you suggest, a “touchup” would require the Jaws of Life. Which, now that I think of it, would be something cool to see indeed. I’m in.
My favorite quote comes from one of the policmen interview for the article: