We had a sleet storm roll in
Sunday evening. It might put the kibosh on lunch with my best old
ex-teaching buddy Mabel on Tuesday. That's today! I'll let you know how
it goes. As of Monday afternoon, Farmer H declared that we should be
able to make it, though the road is curvy, hilly, two-lane blacktop.
He's overconfident with his driving skills, you know.
In
fact, Farmer H couldn't wait to get up Monday morning and hit the road
in SilverRedO. He went to town for reasons unknown (probably Casey's
donuts). I didn't see the necessity of that trip. He had plans to drive
down to Bill-Paying Town after noon, to meet up with a buyer for the gun
he bought Sunday afternoon. I swear, the population of Hillmomba is on
one big firearms merry-go-round.
Anyhoo...I was not at
all happy with Farmer H cruising around in inclement weather. Scads of
schools were closed. The state patrol spokesman was on TV, recommending
that people stay home if they didn't have to get to work. Sadly, three
people were killed Sunday evening, a few miles from the Mansion, due to
ice on the highway. Farmer H saw it on the local newspaper website.
Seems that a car lost control and went off the road. Another car stopped
to help. A third car went off the road in the same place. Then a fourth
car went into a spin and turned over, hitting the helping people. That
driver was injured, but the helpers were killed at the scene.
You know Farmer H. He's a helper. I gave him strict instructions.
"You
are not to stop and help anyone. There are first responders trained to
do that. You can pull over a safe distance away, and call for help. But
you are NOT to get out to help someone in this weather."
"Yeah. It seems like it's always the helpers who end up getting hurt."
Farmer H returned unscathed. I was relieved to have him underfoot again. He said he made a $100 profit on his transaction. In my opinion, not worth risking your life for.
However, since he gets excited when he makes a few dollars profit, I'm sure he thought it was worth his trip to make $100 in profits...
ReplyDeleteWhat's the saying? No good deed goes unpunished. That's a shame the people were killed. It was slippery and dangerous Sunday-Monday. Today I ran around town doing errands, even though it was apparently too slippery for school to be in session... Not that I'm complaining.
I'm always sorry to hear of road deaths, no matter what the cause is, but when helpers also get killed that's worse, somehow.
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteHe was chomping at the bit to meet that dude. I think he's related distantly. Anyhoo...the dude had a doctor's appointment, but it got canceled due to the weather. But he drove to town anyway. So he MUST be related to Farmer H.
Yes, I don't think people had yet realized how slippery the roads were getting Sunday evening. We'd been waiting all day for it to arrive, and got a false sense of security when it was four or five hours later than the forecast. People probably thought they had time to make it home before it hit.
Our road was horrendous, but the paved roads had been plowed, and were passable Tuesday morning. School is called off again for Wednesday, though. I think it was worse farther west of Hillmomba.
***
River,
They thought they were doing the right thing. That's the saddest part. And the guy who hit them, only because his car also skidded in the same place, will have to deal with that every day.