Chapter 3 – Freedom!!
I had planned on going on a little road trip, maybe heading down through Kentucky and into tennesee, and then I don’t know where. I just wanted to go for a drive, with no particular destination. I had my car, my savings and a road atlas. How was I to know that this trip would change many lives, forever.
My best friend Sam from school wanted to join me, we could split the driving and costs too. I figured that two people are better than one when it came to traveling with no goal in site.
We set out from Ohio with the sun to our backs on Monday April 14th 1996.
Getting out of Ohio was the first step, heading south through Cincinnati during rush hour was not my idea of fun and it delayed us by about an hour. Finally, we made it to Louisville around 10pm that night. I had planned out where we should end up with a little room for side trips, so driving in a strange town after dark should not happen too often.
Being two young adults without elder oversight (our parents nagging us), we stayed up half the night searching out what we wanted to do. I had picked up a ton of brochures on tourist things to do. We had it all planned out.
“Dude, lets see that place they make the baseball bats” Sam said, “Then do the Jack Daniels tour, maybe they will let us sample some product, ya think”
“There is no way they are going to let us sample JD, we’re not 21” I said and threw the brochure at him. “We were going to the baseball bat factory the next morning and then on a riverboat ride in the afternoon, then head further south. We cannot even get into the distillery tour, they don’t do them during the week”
I never knew how much went into making 1 baseball bat; so much waste wood. The riverboat ride was nice and calming, but got cut short when it started raining.
Sam wanted to drive, but I insisted on driving since it was my car and I knew how she handled in the rain. We drove into the evening, and choose to continue past our pre-planned stop. Since we had cut the riverboat thing short, we had more time to get to nowhere…..
Somewhere around 8pm we were through all the rush hour traffic and things opened up a bit. Sam growing more impatient with the traffic was happier, “ok now show em what she really has and quit driving like my gramma” With the roads still wet, I knew better than to open her up and show him what she can really do, so I didn’t.
“Hell no! the one thing I don’t want is to wreck my car, are you crazy? This car can get sloppy on a wet road if you are not careful” I said trying to reason with him; afterall this was my car, not his. Him being the one who wrecked his car the first week after graduation.
“Jesus Christ!!” Sam yelled as this semi barrled right by us “where the hell is he going” as the semi cut right in front of us. I eased off the gas and let it wind down to give some distance. The next thing that happened has been a blur for all these years.
I remember a white blur pass us on the left, I seen his brake lights pop on, then the semi sliding, and then it goes very vague. Next thing I remember a voice saying “Don’t try to move, just lay still” and there was an upside down face above mine, I noticed he had army fatuges on “Just stay still, the medics are on their way” I blacked out and back in several times.
I heard sirens and people talking, people were doing things to me. But I only seemed to have pain in my upper back and neck, nowhere else. “where’s the bird? Call the M.E. out here we got one more”
Next I remember a lot of pain in my head, neck and upper back, and lots of white light. “Where am I at” I thought, My body seemed to be just floating here, I was breathing, but did not feel the air enter my mouth or nose. I tried to turn my head and it just would not move.