My error in Judgement
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"They don't make 'em like they used to!" If you're like me, then you've heard this phrase a thousand times, lamenting the cheap construction of toasters, cars, women, mainframe computers...everything. Apparently, in these modern times, no one can get it together enough to build any thing of quality, including, I might add, fences.
"No no no...back in 'the days' there was no Home Depot, no purveyor of cheap, wooden posts and picket fences! NO! We used rocks, big rocks that we'd drag from the stream bed and haul across miles of countryside to line our pastures and property!"
Westchester county, NY, is criss crossed with these monuments of hard labor, sweat and tears. Fieldstone walls are the bread and butter of our local landscape.
Picture if you will, a little town in the mid 1700's. A local man has subdivided his land to create some additional pasture. Of course, another pasture means another stone wall or two. Oh well, this is life before Home Depot (BHD) and with a resigned shrug, he finishes off his morning eggs and heads off with his seven strapping sons to build the new wall.
Four weeks and two hundred trips to the creek later, the wall is complete. Time marches on. One hundred fifty years have passed. The farmer is long gone, merely another name in the family bible. But the wall is still there. And there are roads now too. Along one edge of the property runs a dirt lane called "Guard Hill Road." Along the the other edge, adjacent to Guard Hill, is another dirt lane called, inexplicably, Succabone (pron. SUCK A BONE, I'm not kidding). Now another hundred fifty years have passed. A lone seed carried along by the breeze comes to rest at the base of the wall. It sprouts and begins to grow into a quite a strong, young plant. In fact, in all the world, this is the finest example of a roadside shrub that has ever lived.
Now it is 6:30pm on November 6th, 1991. A little black BMW is has paused to rest at the junction of Guard Hill and Succabone. Its rear wheels are firmly implanted in the dirt of the this little country lane. The chasis is buried about an inch or two in soft dirt and the front wheels hang in a ditch. The nose is jammed up against the stone wall, having trampled the shrub.
Its mine. For three hundred years that wall has been waiting for me to make a big error in judgement on Succabone road. Fate? Were all the cosmic forces aligned and working against me that they should build a wall and a road, and have me travel down it on my way home from work? Nope, I was just a victim of loose dirt and trailing throttle oversteer.
The damage is about $2,500, including the replacement of a lower frame tie arm. I've changed my tune about collision insurance. I am definetly thankful that I have it. I'm also thankful that I own a BMW. I hit the wall at about 40 MPH. A passerby in a Checy Blazer pulled me out with a rope. Except for having to pry the air dam away from the tire, I was able to drive away from the incident with no fluid leaks or anything. The car is not even out of alignment!
The moral of the story? "They" don't make things like they used to...its true. "They" also don't usually make cars like BMWs. Oh, and watch out for oversteer on dirt roads.
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