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"
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"UNCERTAIN
STOMACH
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Each small PHILLIPS' TABLET
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III!
Prt
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TABLITS J
l)ini.irrii t
NO WATER NEEDED
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Every month P&mv wis
j
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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.
Christmas Seals
I ? mstmm I
I sutu I
mNT TWtROrtOSIS
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DeWitt's Pills may be just what you
need to relieve backache miseries i
help you avoid getting up nights.
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