Angie and Mike's Blog

What promised to be an exciting weekend started out with several sobering phone calls from my wife and father on Friday telling me that my brother, Timothy, was in critical condition at the hospital after being involved in a car accident. Fortunately, he's going to be alright. So is his friend, who was riding with him. But as you can tell from the picture, they're lucky. Or blessed. Or lucky and blessed.

He was driving west on Kellogg when his truck was clipped by another vehicle, witnesses told police. Timothy lost control of the truck and it flipped over the median wall, landing on Washington.

Everyone in the family realizes how close we came to losing Timothy on Friday. The truck, which has been in the family since dad bought it new in 1985, saved his life. This weekend a lot of good memories came back to mind, in no particular order, including:

•Dad taught me, and Tim, to drive in that truck. It was a three-speed manual transmission. Once, while driving in the country, dad told me to turn left. He never told me to slow down first and I took the turn at about 40 mph.

•We used to take day-trips to see Aunt Bearl in Manhattan. We took the truck a lot and it moved some of her stuff back to Wichita after she died in 2002. We hit a deer that night and it knocked out a headlight, which I re-installed with a metal coathanger before driving back to Manhattan in the middle of the night. It was so late, and we'd been up so long, that when we got to Abilene I stopped so that I could take a run down the block and back to wake myself.

•During my junior college days at Butler, I drove it to Sonic in El Dorado. The truck, a three-quarter ton, was nearly too big for the stalls. I got it to fit, but upon backing out hooked the right side mirror on the speakerbox and bent it back. I got it to push back into place, but left a chip in the glass.

•Big Red was used in the Homecoming Parade my junior year at South. It was well-known in the South High parking lot.

•Bumper sticker: "Don't Steal. The government hates competition."

•I rushed Justin to the ER in 1997 when he had an asthma attack. The doctors said he nearly died. Justin is still my best friend today and was best man in my wedding last year. I don't think the truck was ever driven so hard as it was that day.

•In high school, a friend and I sat in the back of the truck at the Dairy Queen which used to be at 31st and Seneca. A car full of girls honked at us and we thought we were pretty cool.

•I had my first wreck just four months after getting my license. I rear-ended a car on Seneca in a rainstorm after taking a friend home from school. I was too preoccupied with my QT Mountain Dew that I wasn't paying attention and slid on the wet pavement into the back of another car stopped to make a left-hand turn.

•Dad was driving back from Manhattan by himself one day when the rubber from a tire separated. He called us from Herrington and we met him in Florence with a spare. I was only about 12 at the time, but mom didn't know the way and I was able to get us there.

•On another trip back from Manhattan, before I was old enough to drive, dad picked up a hitch-hiker thinking it was the driver of a stalled vehicle we had just passed. As it turns out, the guy didn't know anything about the car and was just trying to get to Arkansas. I sat nervously next to him and a mysterious blue duffle bag he kept on his lap all the way to Florence, where he got out. I thought for sure he had a gun in the bag and was going to leave us for dead and take the truck.

•Dad let me borrow the truck more than once after I left home. I drove it for about a month in Manhattan and again in Topeka before I got the Camry. One night in Manhattan I drove Angie and two of her roommates to Bob's for a midnight food run. The truck only had an AM radio and I loved "jammin' out" to KOA Denver, WBAP Dallas and WBBM Chicago. That radio had great reception on a clear night.

The truck didn't have a lot of things. No AC, no cruise, no stereo, no get-up-and-go. But it had a special place in our hearts for many reasons. I'm not sentimental about my car now or about any other car that I've ever known. There's something special about the car you learn to drive in, especially if it's in the middle of the country on a dirt road with your father. My father has always worked nights in a factory and worked hard for everything he's ever had. He was proud of that truck when he owned it, and was proud to pass it down to my brother when he bought a new one in 2003.

He was proud of it again this weekend, too, when it saved his youngest son's life.

"That's probably the best money I ever spent," he said.