All Green Lights

When I was driving the Gravel Train I was doing upwards of 60,000 miles per year. At this point in my life, I’ve logged well over 1,000,000 miles behind the wheel between a four-wheeler (my cars) and the 42-wheeled Gravel Train. I’ve never been in any accidents (knock on wood), but I’ve seen a whole bunch. However, I’ve always said that I’ve had a guardian angel with me behind the wheel because I’ve been in myriad situations that being in an accident (some very bad accidents) seemed inevitable.

Not to mention, back in the mid 70’s teenagers getting killed in a car accident was 65% higher than it is today. Click here to check out some detailed stats on teenage death behind the wheel over the last 40ish years. Between all the pot smoking behind the wheel, the beer drinking behind the wheel, and just being hell on wheels I could easily been a statistic. But…I wasn’t. 

Everything Happens For A Reason

I never really believed that “Everything happens for a reason.” I mean, if you’re not a believer in anything that statement makes zero sense. Everything happens by happenstance is what I thought. Things happen more by accident than having any meaning is where my mindset was. However, looking back it’s pretty obvious that everything did happen for a reason. God single-handedly hand-picked me to share my story in the hopes that other people reading my story that think the way I thought might reconsider their spiritual journey in life. 

Miracle on I-75

My first car was a 1969 Buick Skylark four-door sedan. The tires were like slicks, but I didn’t care about the tires. As long as they had air in them, that’s all that mattered to me. Over the Christmas holiday in 1975 one of my best friends from the Leelanau School, Nick Bell, and I talked about getting together. We decided on getting together the week before Christmas and going to Mt. Holly to do some skiing.

It was a Saturday and the forecast was 8-12″ of snow. I loved being out in big snow storms and Nick wasn’t going to let that from us getting together. I jumped in the Skylark around 9:30 in the morning and headed down to Clarkston to pick up Nick. The snow was coming down hard; big heavy flakes. From Flint to Clarkston in normal conditions, it would take about 25 minutes door to door.

Because of the snow and weather conditions, it took me close to an hour to get to Nick’s house. When I got to his house Nick was like, “You want to get high?” I was like, “Hell yeah!” Nick made this oxygen mask contraption that had a bowl attached where your mouth was positioned. When you inhaled the pot you got it not only through your mouth but you got it through your nostrils. It was definitely a more intense “High.” We were in his backyard crackin’ up and bein’ all silly as big snow flakes feel gently to the ground. I’m like, “You ready to go skiing” with my eyes bloodshot from being stoned to the bone. Nick was like, “Yeah, let go. You okay to drive?” I told him I’d be extra careful and we took off.

When we hit the road which was probably around 11:30 am, the snow was still coming down hard. It was literally a “white out” as we hit 1-75 North heading to Mt. Holly which was about a 15-minute drive in normal weather it was going to take a good 30 minutes as I was being extra cautious. There was very little traffic on 1-75 northbound in that most people were staying off the roads because of the weather. You could see very little signs of pavement at this point as the snow was relentless and had no signs of slowing down anytime soon. I was truckin along between 40-45 MPH.

I passed someone that was in the right lane that was pluggin along around 30 MPH. Once I passed him I decided to stay in the center lane (there were three lanes). I decided to stay in that lane because changing lanes was a little challenging. We came to a section of the road where we were going uphill (the hills in that area weren’t that big). When we crested the hill, the downhill side was a slight “S” curve to the right. I took my foot off the gas because I didn’t need to gain any more speed heading down the hill.

We got about halfway down the hill and out of nowhere I felt the back end of the car lose traction with the road. Good thing there were no other cars close to us at this point as we start spinning clockwise on I-75 at about 45 MPH. The problem was we weren’t spinning straight down the middle of the road. We were spinning to the right and since we were still up toward the top of the hill, there was a pretty steep ravine on the other side of the emergency lane on the right-hand side which is where we were headed.

We spun around not one time. Not two times. Not three times. Not four times. Not five times, but six times. Since Nick was in the passenger seat he could see what was about to happen. I had no control and we were heading off the road on the next revolution and looking at a rollover into the ravine. Nick freaked out because he could see he was going down the ravine first. The Skylark had a bench seat and Nick about jumped into my lap as he wanted to get away from the passenger side door.

When we came out of that last revolution and expected to be rolling sideways into the ravine I felt this “Bang” that felt like we hit something on the right rear of the car. We had stopped spinning and we were headed in the right direction on the emergency lane in the road. We looked at each other like, “What the heck was that?” I thought we hit a snow bank or the guard rail. When we came to a stop we both got out of the car to see what we hit. Much to our chagrin we didn’t see anything. There wasn’t a guard rail and there wasn’t a snow bank. There was nothing. Nadda. We got back in the car and just sat there for a few minutes trying to make sense of what just happened. 

Conclusion  

Since I didn’t believe in anything back then, I just wrote that off as “Mysteries of the Universe.” I mean, stuff happens right? Sure, we were high but something happened that was unexplainable. We both thought we were dead. We were spinning out of control and heading for a serious accident. And then…out of nowhere…we’re heading straight down the road like nothing happened.