This happened over a year ago.  I just put the finishing touches on it and decided to send it out.


I was checking the light switch in the dining room on my way to bed, Sunday night,  It was about 11:30 PM.  I heard a loud crunch and then something that sounded like metal being dragged on the pavement in front of our house.  I soon heard the gunning of an engine and I figured someone had dropped their muffler and was dragging it down the road and trying to pull over.  Our son leaves a hundred feet behind us and he was still up and heard it, too.  We live about 100 feet from the street and it is a very busy north/south 4-lane road that is heavily traveled.  We have had many wrecks of cars and trucks during the 32 years we have lived in this house.

Once, a runaway driverless van came rolling down the hill from the gas station a 150 feet to the south of our front door.  The driver had been working on his engine with it running when the van slipped into gear, ran over him, dragging him 50 or 60 feet, and then, leaving in an empty field next-door to us, crashed into our concrete front porch.  It fortunately rammed the porch on the corner with the thickest amount of concrete sticking up, about 18 inches, which kept the whole van from running up on to the porch and right into our picture window.  My youngest grandson, about 6 years old at the time, and I were walking together passed the window when the van hit.  One wheel rose up on our porch and knocked down a iron support post designed to hold up that corner of the overhanging roof.  It felt like an earthquake and the boom it made sound like a jet breaking the sound barrier.  The first to arrive on the scene was a firetruck with paramedics to tend to the injured man laying in the field next door to our property.  The van engine was still running when the police arrive in about a dozen police cars.  An ambulance loaded the unconscious man aboard and took him to the hospital.  Fortunately, we sustained no damage to the house and the firemen, using a sludge hammer, pounded our support post back into place.  And to think I almost bolted the iron support into the concrete once.  The roof would have caved in on that corner of the overhang if I had done so.  There is more to that story but you have heard enough to realize that we live on a busy street and have witnessed many wrecks and crashes, as well as other things, such as shootings, and the like.  So Sunday night was no different overall.

Our son told us the rest of the story Monday during a cookout at our daughter’s house.  Two motorcycle gang members were riding their bikes at a high rate of speed and coming north toward our house.  About 200 to 250 feet to the south of our front door is the corner of an intersection.  There is a stoplight there but it is a manual light.  That means, when my kids went to school across the street years ago, they would push a button and the light would change to red and stop all the traffic.  If there are no pedestrians, the button is not pressed, so the traffic sees green all the time unless someone is trying to cross the street.  Anyhow, I got carried away but I am trying to explain what it is like living on a busy street.  Back to the story.

The two motorcycles came roaring at a high rate of speed going north but you could easily hear their racing engines more than a block away.  A Car was just turning east at the intersection.  Why the bikes did not slow down is a mystery but the didn’t.  They possibly could not slow quick enough do to their high rate of speed.  The tail end of the car was still partly in the intersection when the lead motorcycle rammed the back of the car and slid by; crunching the bumper and trunk of the car.  The biker had a girl wearing just a helmet, for protection,, on the back of the bike.  In other words, she  was not wearing any leather jacket or pants or leather protective gloves in case of a crash.  The motorcycle laid down and slid for 100 feet, the girl falling off the back  but the driver trapped under the bike.  Such enhanced motorcycles can weigh anywhere from 500 to 750 pounds.  My sons Honda 1000, for example, weighs 650 pounds and a Honda Gold Wing weighs 750.  These gang style bikes, or club motorcycles, are often stripped bikes, and built up engines but they still weigh several hundred pounds.  The crashed motorcycle, with its driver, slid from the intersection, clear to our mailbox at on the edge of the street which is on the north corner of my property line.  He was killed instantly.  Our son saw  the other biker  as he rode back and forth and taking pictures of his dead friend.  I don’t know if this was being done for legal purposes or not but they later tried blaming the driver of the car who was just turning the corner.  For a bike to slide 200 feet, you can’t be doing the 35 to 40 mile per hour speed limit on that street.  My son estimates they were doing 90 Miles Per Hour when they crashed.  The biker who was killed lay in the street and my son said his helmet face plate was crushed down into his face.  Everett also said the biker may have tried driving out of the fall, that is, speeding up to try and center the bike but it was already tilted too far over to recover.  The girl was still alive when they put her into the ambulance .  He thinks she may have fallen off the back of the motorcycle closer to the crash so she wasn’t dragged as far as the bike driver.  Soon, the gas station was filled with dozens of bikers watching the traffic police working the scene.

Monday night, the biker gang return to the scene for several hours.  They rode their bikes up and down the street, about 100 of them stood around at the gas station next door.  Others rode their bikes to the spot where the guy had lain in the street, stopped, revved their engines to an ear splitting pitch, and then did a burn out.  This is when the engines are run to a high revolution and the breaks set so the bike cannot move.  The  breaks are then release and the back wheel spins, burning rubber off the tire until the tire finally catches.  Then the bike burns away at high speed.  Other times several pulled up to our mailbox where their buddy had died and just cranked their engine to high speed over and over again.  Some people got off their bikes and blocked traffic.  We were one of those.  Coming home from our daughters cookout, we got into the middle of the traffic jam in front of our house.  Our son said  some of the people were holding lighted candles.  As I said, the bikers were slowing and blocking traffic by dismounting their bikes and walking in front of cars that had to stop while others just parked and sat crossways on their bikes; all to let people know they were mourning the death of one of their own.  I lost my ability to smell years ago but Sandy said the smell of burning rubber almost made her sick.  They conducted their burn outs less than 100 feet from our front door and they still do burn outs in that same spot to this day when driving back, day or night, more than a year later.