Thursday, August 20, 2009

Death by accident?

My more immediate concern was staying alive. I felt more and more insecure, and I had a real concern that an attempt would be made on my life. That fear was soon to be realized. The Saturday following the arrival of our furniture, Ursula and I decided to drive around the area. After our damaged had furniture arrived, I began letting Ursula drive our newer Datsun 260-Z sports car to work while I drove the older Camaro to work. Since their goal had been to inflict a lot of damage to our furniture, I was afraid the new sports car would be dented or otherwise mutilated in the RAM parking lot. As we started out on a winding back country road, a slight rain began to fall the roads became damp. Since I knew the roads would be slippery, I was not driving the car as fast as I usually did. As we headed into a turn, the car started to swerve and as I tried to bring it back under control, we slid
completely into the oncoming traffic lane. By the time I got the car back under control, we had traveled a couple hundred yards in the wrong lane. Fortunately there was no other traffic or we would have had a head on collision doing about forty five miles an hour. I eased the car back into the proper land and continued on. Anita sat there looking white as a sheet. As I drove on, I jerked the steering wheel and the car swerved violently.

“Something is wrong.” I said. “This car normally handles well and today I can hardly keep it on the road. The roads are pretty dry now so it is not the road conditions.”

Ursula commented that it did not seem right to her the previous day coming home from work. “Maybe we should stop at a garage and check it out”. She said.

We drove to the nearest gas station where we stopped and I inspected the car. The first thing I noticed was that the right rear tire was very low. I got the tire gauge from the glove box and checked each tire. They were all about 50 percent under inflated. I also noticed that all of the valve stem covers were missing as if by design so that I would know for sure that the car had been tampered with. Anyone who knows anything about cars, knows that badly under inflated tires can cause a car to handle poorly and is a dangerous situation. That coupled with the knowledge that I usually drove the sports car fast could be used to arrange an accident. The fact that I didn't hit anything was pure fate. Had another car been coming towards us when I lost control, I would most likely be dead. Even so, the fact that the car had been tampered with served to generate more fear, anxiety and anger. After I inflated the tires, we headed back home and neither of us said much of anything.

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