The ride down Highway 212 is usually uneventful and can even be a bit boring. You can drive mile after mile late at night on old 212 without seeing much traffic. It’s those times when you are glad just to meet an oncoming vehicle and know that there is another soul out there on the road. Those moments can be found on nearly all stretches of two lane highways in rural Minnesota. On the other hand, some of those two lane roads can get pretty busy at times and Highway 212 is one such roadway.
There’s always a wide variety of vehicles plying 212 including local farm trucks, long distance trucks, family cars, school buses, motorcycles and everything in between. Some are headed from one end of the state to the other and some are just “going to town”. Nearly every day has a busy time on the highway but there are days when the traffic turns frenetic. Fridays are almost always busy on Highway 212 and so it was last Friday when the wheels came off the wagon, so to speak.
We were headed to “the cities” and were traveling about 10 miles ahead of our son Seth who was also headed there. A few miles east of Brownton, he called my cell phone and was right to the point: “Something hit my windshield and I’m not sure if it’s going to be okay. It’s cracked pretty badly. I think there was some sort of accident, too.” He said he was okay and gave us a few more bits of info and we turned around and headed back west. His car was parked along the eastbound shoulder between Stewart and Brownton.
A semi truck was parked ahead of him a few hundred feet and his car looked to be okay except for the tennis ball sized crater that indented the top edge of the windshield above the steering wheel. The webbed pattern of cracks on the windshield that radiated away from the crater would make any spider envious. A spray of fine grained glass dust sparkled on the cloth of the maroon seat inside the car.
Seth said that he thought the semi had lost a wheel but didn’t really have any idea what it was that had hit his windshield. He said that it looked like an explosion when a westbound car was meeting the semi. That car was now parked 500 feet to the west on the highway shoulder and was badly damaged but the driver, Julie Schweiss, of Fairfax, was okay. Her car’s airbag had cushioned the impact to her and she seemd to be fine but a bit shaken. The car did not fare so well. The front end and the fender on the driver’s side were smashed and the tire was flat. The bumper was shoved into the engine and the car was a mess. The semi driver was okay but a bit shaken up, too.
The culprits in all of this were the rear dual tires on the driver’s side of the semi tractor. They had somehow come loose and flown off the wheel hubs at full speed right into the oncoming lane of traffic as her car met the semi. Those heavy truck tires and rims were rolling loose in one direction and her car was moving along in the other direction. The semi wheels and her car met head-on at a combined speed of nearly 120 mph.
Seth was headed east trailing a few car lengths behind the semi when this all happened. Some object flew and hit his windshield and it all happened very fast. Most remarkable was how the driver of the car managed to keep it from veering into the oncoming traffic. Despite a flat tire, a badly damaged car and an air bag that kept her from seeing much of what was going on, she guided it over to the right shoulder and out of the way of other traffic.
She should get the driver of the day award. We’re pretty thankful for that because her flat driver side front tire could easily have pitched her car right into the oncoming path of Seth’s car in an instant. Instead, she handled it like a stunt driver and came out of it able to find a way to laugh about the whole experience.
It was amazing.
A few cars stopped but most traffic just slowed to take a long look, driving through shattered car parts that had been transformed into road hazards. A while later, the McLeod County sheriff’s deputies arrived, as did a state trooper. Their flashing lights slowed traffic down a bit more but the cars and trucks kept on rolling, oblivious to any thought that some truck’s tire or load could come bounding into them.
This all might have turned out much worse than it did if those truck tires would have hit the car just a bit higher or if that flying object had hit Seth’s windshield a bit lower.
I used plain gray duct tape to cover the newly formed windshield crater. It wasn’t fancy but it got the job done and will last until the new glass arrives this week.
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On Wednesday night we joined a large crowd of folks who took in that annual late summer tradition known as the Wood Lake Fair. A good number of folks from every nearby town were on hand and the new edition of the hamburger stand was very busy.
As a kid we always looked forward to the Wood Lake Fair. You almost always ran into classmates that you hadn’t seen all summer and the rides were great fun set up right in the middle of downtown. Later our kids looked forward to the same thing.
We started that cycle all over again this year with our grandson Kian. What was a bit over whelming for him at first quickly turned into fun. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Wood Lake Fair.
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Labor Day usually means the end of the season for the Kiwanis’ popcorn stand but not this year. The popcorn spirits are willing, the demand is strong and the Kiwanis volunteers are eager to serve so there will be popcorn to enjoy each Friday, Saturday and Sunday through September. Don’t pass it up!
