My heroic moment came at the back end of a group of us driving like asses.
I’m in my senior year of high school and I’m in a four-car convoy crossing Missouri on Interstate 70 to go to a speech tournament. The teacher/coach is leading the way in a Pontiac 3-seat station wagon packed with him and 9 students. I’m behind in my trusty Rambler Classic with 5 other students, with two other cars similarly packed with teenagers behind me.
We’re about halfway through our 250-mile crossing and cruising the left lane at a steady 85 on flat highway through corn country. The trailing two cars were passing and jumping each other, sometimes running the shoulder to jump a slot in the convoy.
Not wanting to be any part of this, I moved closer to the lead wagon to close the distance and keep these clowns from cutting me off. That meant about a two car distance from the back bumper of the lead wagon, which was way too close, but we were cruising at a steady 85 and I thought it wasn’t that big a deal.
That is, until a semi cut off the wagon passing a 55 mph truck planning to pass him at, like, 56 mph. And both trucks immediately nailed the brakes.
Wagon locks the brakes. I hit the brakes to settle the car on its nose, then looked to the left shoulder, which had just disappeared. We’re closing on the car fast, and the eyes of the three far back seat passengers facing us grew to pie pans as the tail of the wagon pitched up and my car was hurtling toward them.
I took a glance to the right and there was just this much room between the back of the slower semi and the car behind him. I took my foot off the brake, pitched the car into a barely controlled slide across the right lane, straightened the car on the shoulder and then slid the car to a stop even with the cab of the right-lane truck.
That’s when I saw traffic was at a standstill in front of both trucks. It was just a lucky guess and a desperate, decisive move that kept us all from certain calamity. The other three cars in the convoy slithered to a stop behind the left lane semi, and nobody hit anybody. the only minor injury was a headache for my right-front passenger as the side of his head smacked the window when I straightened the car on the shoulder.
I pulled my heart back out of my throat, and we started to roll once again. The right lane trucker happily waved me into the right lane in front of him, and gave me a thumbs up as I got into the lane. Once the convoy got back in formation at the end of the mini traffic jam, we all slowed to saner speeds and maintained appropriate distances.
When we finally got to Kansas City, the coach put his arm around my shoulder, walked me away from the team and cussed for the first and last time I was ever with him. “You saved our ass back there. Great driving,” he said, then walked away.
The driving helped, but I still believe nothing short of divine providence saved us that day.
