It Could Have Been Worse

The husband had an eventful day yesterday, and not in a good way. I was cooking dinner around 4 pm when the phone rang.

“I was in a wreck. I need you to bring the white truck down and get me.”

He assured me that he was not hurt. I hung up and called our friends Tom and Marcie to see if Tom could go with me. They were in Bigfork, so they told me where they would be waiting when I came through and I could pick Tom up there. I put everything away and went and got the white truck.

[The husband has two Dodge cab-and-chassis pickups with flatbeds on the back. The gray truck—the one he was driving—is a 2014 Dodge 5500. The white one is a 2008 Dodge 4500. I drove a Dodge 3500 MegaCab for a number of years, but mine wasn’t a dually. I’ve been driving little station wagons for the past decade, so it took a few minutes to adjust to driving the Titanic again, but it’s rather like riding a bike.]

I stopped and got Tom and we drove down to the accident scene. The wreck happened on Highway 35, which is a state highway that runs along the east shore of Flathead Lake. It is a winding and narrow road. MHP had shut the highway down, but they waved us through to the accident scene.

The husband was not hurt. His truck, however, is totaled:

I don’t care about the truck. I am grateful it protected him. The airbags didn’t even go off.

The husband had been down in Polson, on the south end of Flathead Lake, at a job he is working on there. He said he was coming back up the highway, following a Subaru, when they approached a curve, but instead of negotiating the curve, the Subaru went straight and crossed the center line into the other lane, into the path of a Ford truck towing a trailer. The driver of the Ford tried to miss the Subaru, ended up going sideways, and hit the husband’s truck. I think that five vehicles ultimately were involved. The ambulance transported the driver of the Subaru to the hospital. Everyone else appeared to be okay.

He was towing our (thankfully empty) dump trailer, but it’s damaged, too.

We transferred all the tools from the gray truck to the white truck and waited while the various tow companies came and got the vehicles out of the road. The highway was shut down for close to three hours, and it was after dark by the time they got our truck loaded up. Marcie had dinner waiting for all of us when we got back.

He’s going to have to replace the truck. I am sure insurance will cover it, but this is not the best time to be looking for another truck. He takes good care of all our vehicles precisely so they will last as long as possible. At least he has the white truck and can keep working.

It could have been worse.

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I am past the halfway point of quilting the red Candy Coated. I’d like to get it done today if I can. My original plan was to make a Cordura cover for the generator that was on the gray truck, but I’ll postpone that for obvious reasons.

I also started putting the Churn Dash rows together. I can probably finish that assembly today, too. I got the comforter tops from Pat last week and will start basting those together for the comforter-tying party next Saturday.

No peeps yet. It’s been a game of musical broody hens—one day I went out and there was a black Australorp sitting on the eggs, and for the past couple of days, one of the Light Brahmas has been parked on top of them. I don’t care which hen hatches the eggs as long as she takes care of the chicks.