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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 15, 1963)
V. After seeing the crumpled bodies, I started running from the sight and smell of death. "Steve's cough was keeping us both up nights" - .' ; Jl .-7.' : 'AC 4k "UNCERTAIN STOMACH When your stomach feels uncer tain from indigestion, heartburn, gas, nausea or other symptoms of excess acidity, remember this: Each small PHILLIPS' TABLET consumes 37' more excess acid than the leading candy-type roll antacid tablet. III! Prt phiujps: i TABLITS J l)ini.irrii t NO WATER NEEDED PERIODIC PAIN Every month P&mv wis j dismal twciuse ol functional menstrual distress. Now she iust takes Midot and oes her way In comlort because Midol laoieis contain: An exclusive inti- inturuH that Cnwdiww . Utl f miyippiuTW mBuimis inn ruum 1 HfAMCHC AND BACKACHE . . . CAIM jUHPt Ntavts A special, mond-bright enini medication that Chasis "Btuts". Y WITH i 'y Minni ILLUSTRATION BV RAY PROHASKA Two days before last Christmas, I smashed into the side of another car and killed the parents of three small children. For those three orphans as well as for my own chil dren the holiday season will always be a time of bitter memories. Christmas is easy to destroy; I did it with two beers and a moment of inattention. It never occurs to any of us that we might be the in strument of someone's death. Certainly it never occurred to me when I left work that night a year ago. The rush of Christmas customers had kept me late at the clothing store where I was a salesman, and shoppers still clogged the streets as I drove home. Sometime during the hectic day, I had picked up a nervous headache; and by the time I'd gotten through the worst of the traffic, I also could feel burning knots of tension in my stomach. When I came to a neighborhood tavern, I stopped almost automatically. I had two beers. No more. My headache eased, and the knots dissolved. Perhaps my reflexes also dissolved a little bit, but at least I was relaxed. When I got back into my car, I even remembered to fasten my seat belt; and when I pulled back onto the road that led to the main highway, I was happy to see that snow had started to fall. It would be nice for the kids. I glanced down at the speedometer; I was going a little over the limit, but just the 5 or 10 miles over it that most of us drive. I didn't worry about slowing down. When I came to the main intersection, I didn't even think about the stop sign that I'd seen so many times be fore. Then the other car was right in front of me, and it was too late to stop! A man and woman were inside a young couple. They seemed very close, frozen there just across the hood of my car. In the eternity of the horrible moment, their faces 14 Family Weekly, December IS, 1963 I Destroyed were burned into my memory nice faces that looked only slightly startled, not the faces of people who knew they were about to be killed. I shifted my weight to stab at the brakes, but it was too late. I slammed straight into the side of the other car ! My body wrenched at the seat belt as it tried to tear free and shoot on through the windshield. I was just be ginning to feel fear when both cars began dancing across the highway with a crazy life of their own and it was too late for fear. Even if there had been time, the people" in the other car couldn't have felt any more than I did only that terrible numbed shock that spins rapidly toward unconsciousness as the car's glass, knobs, and tearing metal begin chewing you to death. Fof an instant, I could see the other car ahead of me as it went up on end, spinning off toward one Bide. Both cars seemed to be rolling through the air with a slow and deliberate heaviness. The thought was half-formed in my mind that this was good because no one would be hurt if we moved slowly. After A very long time, the grinding and the screeching . of metal stopped. My car was back on its wheels again. Only one headlight was working, but it was pointed di rectly at the car I had just hit. That car was also upright but it was crumpled like a deflated football. It took me a couple of minutes to get out of the car. I was numb, far away, and couldn't remember how to work the seat belt. I imagined that my legs were broken. Then I was loose and stumbling toward the other car. I wish I had never looked inside, but it would undoubt edly save endless lives on the highway if everyone could look into a car like that, even if he weren't responsible for the accident. Right then I would have felt more like a mur derer if they had looked more like people. But there was Christmas Here is a shocking but true story which every driver should read; the author, who was an ordinary, decent family man, is now behind prison By BRUCE CLINE No. 108094, Stat Prison of Southern Michigan little of humanity left about their crum pled, broken bodies. I turned and ran and was sick while I ran. There was no question of being able to help them. AH I could think of was getting away from that place and from the Bight and the smell of death, I ran until I came to a service station three or four blocks away. There was a phone booth there, and I hid myself in side it. I would have kept going if I had had the strength, but it wouldn't have done any good. With the numbness and shock wearing off, I couldn't hide from the knowledge of what I had done. I knew it; still it was so hard to believe. This is me, I kept telling myself. I have a wife and two kids who are waiting for me to come home. The day after tomorrow will be Christmas, and that horror doesn't really exist down the road. I'd had two bottles of beer and could walk and talk as well as anyone. I wasn't one of those irresponsible drunks you always read about in the papers. I'd never even had a parking ticket. Kill someone? Other people did that sometimes, but not me or any of my friends. Even when I put my hand to the blood stiffening on my pants leg, I couldn't be lieve it. And when the ambulances howled by outside, I tried to pretend that I didn't know where they were going and that they had nothing to do with me. But I did know with a terrifying cer bars tainty where the ambulances were going and what they would find in that car on the highway. Yet a lifetime of being just a normal person like anyone else, a lifetime of not hurting others let alone killing them wouldn't 1H me accept it. I don't know how long it was before I left the phone booth and made my way back downtown. But it was four hours after the accident when the police arrested me for leaving the scene. THAT WAS a year ago, and the tragic ef fects of that single instant of inatten tion are still felt by many people by my family and by the parents and children of the young couple I killed. Perhaps it will be another year before' I am out of prison. In the meantime, I realize more clearly every day exactly what I did and I remember it most clear ly at Christmas time. I think of the crushed packages that were tied with silver-and-gold string and stamped with pictures of Santa Claus. I remember a Christmas doll without a head, soaked with the blood of the parents who bought it. Killing someone by accident or through carelessness is a thing that always hap pens to the other guy. This time I was the guy, but the next time it could be you or a person you know. There are a lot of empty graves and a lot of empty cells in this world : it takes only a careless instant to fill either one. SLT family-Weekly. December IS, mi "I didn't mind so much for myself, but Steve's coughing and blocked breathing were waking him up in the middle of the night, Just when he needed his sleep the most!" Mrs. Patty Sue McCool of Ashland City, Tennessee, told us. "Nothing seemed to really work until I tried new Fletcher's Cough1 Syrup. I guess the biggest differ ence was, Fletcher's Cough Syrup not only relieved Steve's nagging cough, but It also opened his stuffed nose and eased his blocked breathing with Neo-Synephrlne. Another Important thing to me: Fletcher's has no narcotics of any kind. And It has a nice cherry flavor Steve likes." Unlike ordinary cough syrups, syrups without Neo-Synephrine", new Fletcher's Children's Cough Syrup relieves both nagging coughs and blocked breathing. That's how It helps promote restful sleep... actually relieves sleep-disturbing cold symptoms most cough syrups are powerless to stop. Now available at drug counters everywhere, this new Children's Cough Syrup is made by Fletcher's, the oldest, most dependable name In children's medicines. If I) Now Stove McCool, age 6, of Ash land City, Tenn., can sleep when ho ha a cough and cold. 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