Wrecks

Today I saw a sleeper on the west side of the park. A red bundle in the front seat of a grey pickup. Park and snooze. On my walk lap from the other side I watched the sleeper start up, eyes open, lights on, back up and head out the way it must have came in. West to who knows where. This is the parking, isolated part of the park. Lovers meeting, lunches dropped out the window, the occasional condom or tampon, one dropped out before the other after, I suppose.

You see a lot of cars and trucks at the park. Joggers and dog walkers parked, waiters, phone talkers now. Usually people park and walk to the university. They park and love, visit, eat. Then there are people who wreck and park, walk away with wounds. Wrecks usually happen at two places: the concrete overburden slab over the culverts where streets dead-end at the jogging track. Here street ends and park starts. If you don't stop you're in the park before you know it. But not before a barrier-non-barrier lets you know. A bridge for joggers like me; a front end masher for cars and truck drivers not quite paying enough attention. Not from here.

Most happen at night, as you would imagine, next day only marks, white chips, paint scrapings, yellow and white glass: evidence in the concrete. It gets you right at about the middle of your front tire, bottom of your bumper, about where the steering rods attach, if you're not in the air by then. Today I loped over about a 4-inch tire scrape across the concrete. Just as deep and dark and scarry as you could imagine. Looked like a car, the concrete edge chipped away clean and white where it smacked. and then the ground the park torn, ripped up, dug into about 30 feet in the grass. The car gone now but its evidence left there, a chunk of grass pulled up and dropped that has taken, now, a week or so to wash away. Probably when you think about the trauma of that person's jolt, that whack into the park, the sudden running out of street, it will take a lot longer for that memory to wash away than it will what happened when this wheel and bumper and undercarriage dragged across the concrete. It will be gone in a few months.

I remember another wreck a few years ago on the other side, the southbound on Hanover. I saw the truck parkedn on the opposite side of the street, one tire missing, just the rim there and it scraped and muddy from rolling and digging. I backtracked the scrape across the street, to where it hit and had been driven out of the park, back across the road, limping, parked across the street and left in the cold, wee hours. Let's come back later. Okay. The big pickup painted in camoflage, stood out on the street. It had hit the concrete non-barrier barrier, flown I think, because you could see other dark tire marks a good 15 feet in where it landed. They must have been really flying. until they flew. And then down into the park along the drainage sluice, one tire still uselessly braking. Then a lot of churning up, a lot of muddy turning, backing, up a lot of indecision, eyes straining, tires spinning, trembling hands, of let's get out of here, of holy shit stuff going on in there, and then finally, they could limp out, the truck finaly bouncing and slamming off the curb back on the street, its off road adventure at an end across the street parked and then off on foot, picked up, who knows. Come back and get it the next day.

This on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed reconstructing the event. I thought to call the city, but figured it would get called soon enough. The sleeper today had parked carefully, out of the traffic, and left quitetly, having to turn twice to check out of the park motel.