Dark forces

(Photo by BobbaLew.)

All of the few automobile accidents I’ve ever had, all minor — I never was injured — occurred on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.
My first accident was December 24, 1961, when I slid our family’s 1953 Chevy, the infamous “Blue-Bomb,” into the rear of a Mercedes sedan on icy pavement at a railroad crossing in northern Delaware.
I had got my license earlier that year, and the “Blue-Bomb” was the car I learned to drive in.
I was 17, and was on my way to a church function alone. By then, the Blue-Bomb was our family’s second car.
The Mercedes wasn’t damaged at all, but the front of the Blue-Bomb was punched in, the radiator holed, and a headlight and turn-signal broken.
I drove home despite the slightly leaking radiator.
I was embarrassed more than anything.
My father got the front of the Blue-Bomb pulled out, had a shop fix the radiator, and replace the broken headlight.
It wasn’t a cosmetic restoration.
Since then, I’ve always left plenty of stopping-distance in front of me, probably more than the average driver.
Enough to get my blowhard brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, loudly incensed.

A poor daily-driver (my car was also British-Racing-Green).

On December 24, 1968, shortly after starting as a management-trainee at Lincoln-Rochester bank in Rochester, I was driving home from their busy Ridge-Dewey branch in the city in our 1968 Triumph TR250.
I was driving south on Dewey Ave., signaled to turn left onto a side-street.
A car coming the opposite direction had also stopped to make a left-turn into an opposite street, so I started turning left.
Suddenly a Camaro swept to the right of the stopped car and plowed right into me.
Her lights weren’t on, and it was dusk.
Since then I’ve held back until I see it’s clear, and I look for such people.
E.g. I don’t pass a stopped bus, because someone getting off that bus might walk in front of me.
I’ve seen it happen.
Our Triumph was somewhat damaged. It was drivable, but would need a body-shop.
The side-door was caved in, and the window broken.
The door-jamb was also pranged, and the right-rear fender damaged.
What I didn’t notice was the right-rear wheel was knocked out-of-line.
The aluminum swingarm had been bent. —The TR250 had Independent-Rear-Suspension (IRS).
The bend was slight, but I noticed later. The tire was toed in. Since it was IRS, it could do that.
I had to replace the aluminum swingarm.
The body-shop pulled the pranged door-jamb back, but it was still damaged.
The door had been replaced, plus the right-rear fender.
Everything looked fixed with the door closed, but the body-shop had done a sloppy job.
The body-shop should have replaced the door-jamb, and noticed the rear-wheel misalignment.
On December 31, 1969, I drove our TR250 out to another Lincoln-Rochester bank branch where my wife was working.
It was snowing and icy.
A car backed into our Triumph in the bank parking-lot lot and dented the trunk.
I saw it happen, and the miscreant tried to get me to accept $50 to forget about it.
I refused. I correctly guessed it would take more than $50 to fix the dent.
Which it did.
I was noticing a pattern.
I surmised I shouldn’t be driving on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.
So I didn’t for a while. We had to schedule things so we wouldn’t.
I eventually decided doing so was silly.
That dark forces weren’t at work.
Eventually I decided to drive on Christmas Eve and/or New Year’s Eve.

One of the most satisfying cars we’ve ever had, even though it rusted to smithereens.

By then it was a different car, our red 1972 Chevrolet Vega GT (illustrated at left).
Nothing happened. Both days came-and-went.
So today (Friday, December 24, 2010), I piled everything into our Honda CR-V, and drove to the Canandaigua YMCA.
Again, nothing happened.

• “Ridge-Dewey” is on Ridge Road near Dewey Ave. in Rochester. The Ridge-Dewey branch was across from Kodak’s massive manufacturing facility.
• “Independent-Rear-Suspension” is to suspend the rear wheels independently. Most cars use the tractor layout; a solid rear axle between the rear-wheels, with a center differential (same as the Model-T Ford). —With IRS, the differential is mounted to the car-frame, and the wheels work independently on half-shafts. The wheels mount on A-arms (in the case of the TR250 aluminum swingarms — a TR250 is rear-wheel drive), and are driven by universal or constant-velocity joints. During the ‘60s IRS was considered to be superior to the tractor layout. (With the tractor layout, both sides are effected by a bump to one side.)
• “Toed in” means the front of the tire is closer to the opposite tire than the rear. (Same with the front wheels.)
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)
• I have had at least two other accidents, but neither on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. One was fairly serious, a rollover.