I Am In A Wreck
From James Donahue’s Journal
One weekend after I began working on the Prairie Avenue house, I was home with the children and Doris was away at work. I had a project planned for that Saturday but when I prepared to start the work, I realized that I lacked something I needed from a hardware store. I knew of a hardware on a little mall along Kalamazoo Avenue, the main road leading west out of the city. I packed the kids in my old Dodge pickup truck and we drove to the store.
On the way back, I discovered that I had to make a left turn against heavy traffic on a six-lane highway. There was no traffic light near us, so we had to wait for traffic to clear. We waited, and waited and waited. I began to lose my patience as cars on the left of me jumped out at every possible break in traffic and prevented me from completing my left turn.
At last it looked like I was going to get a break. There appeared to be only one vehicle coming from the left. It was a large van or truck that was slowing, with its right turn signal blinking, letting me know it was turning into the parking lot I was trying to get out of. A light had just gone green farther down the highway and a new barrage of traffic was quickly speeding toward us. I had to make my move or wait still more. I gunned the engine and the pickup truck shot out into the highway . . . right into the path of a single Buick that was coming at us like a dart. It had been neatly hidden behind that turning van. I could not get out of that car’s way.
The Buick hit my truck broadside, right behind the cab. The impact spun us around and we ended up slammed backside into the edge of the opposite side of the highway. That old truck didn’t have seat belts and the kids were not strapped in. Miraculously the passenger’s side door stayed closed and everybody remained in the cab so we all came out of it unhurt. The truck was a total wreck and that Buick took a lot of damage.
The speed limit in that area was 35 miles per hour and I was sure that the Buick was traveling much faster than that when it hit us. It was my opinion that both drivers were at fault at that accident. But when the police arrived, the officer spoke to the other driver by name. It turned out that the other driver was a Methodist pastor and the officer was a member of his church. I was slapped with the citation.
The Kalamazoo city ordinance at the time required that anybody ticketed after being in a traffic accident had to appear before a judge. So I had to take time off from work and go to court. The court was filled with people like myself that were forced to show up to answer to various traffic citations. They made me wait until I was the very last one to appear. I think it was because my driver’s license still listed my address as South Haven and I was considered an “outsider.” That judge was one mean bastard. He yelled and scolded almost everyone who appeared in his court that day, and I was no exception. It was an extremely humiliating experience.
I left that courtroom with a growing dislike for Kalamazoo and everything I knew about its crooked government.
From James Donahue’s Journal
One weekend after I began working on the Prairie Avenue house, I was home with the children and Doris was away at work. I had a project planned for that Saturday but when I prepared to start the work, I realized that I lacked something I needed from a hardware store. I knew of a hardware on a little mall along Kalamazoo Avenue, the main road leading west out of the city. I packed the kids in my old Dodge pickup truck and we drove to the store.
On the way back, I discovered that I had to make a left turn against heavy traffic on a six-lane highway. There was no traffic light near us, so we had to wait for traffic to clear. We waited, and waited and waited. I began to lose my patience as cars on the left of me jumped out at every possible break in traffic and prevented me from completing my left turn.
At last it looked like I was going to get a break. There appeared to be only one vehicle coming from the left. It was a large van or truck that was slowing, with its right turn signal blinking, letting me know it was turning into the parking lot I was trying to get out of. A light had just gone green farther down the highway and a new barrage of traffic was quickly speeding toward us. I had to make my move or wait still more. I gunned the engine and the pickup truck shot out into the highway . . . right into the path of a single Buick that was coming at us like a dart. It had been neatly hidden behind that turning van. I could not get out of that car’s way.
The Buick hit my truck broadside, right behind the cab. The impact spun us around and we ended up slammed backside into the edge of the opposite side of the highway. That old truck didn’t have seat belts and the kids were not strapped in. Miraculously the passenger’s side door stayed closed and everybody remained in the cab so we all came out of it unhurt. The truck was a total wreck and that Buick took a lot of damage.
The speed limit in that area was 35 miles per hour and I was sure that the Buick was traveling much faster than that when it hit us. It was my opinion that both drivers were at fault at that accident. But when the police arrived, the officer spoke to the other driver by name. It turned out that the other driver was a Methodist pastor and the officer was a member of his church. I was slapped with the citation.
The Kalamazoo city ordinance at the time required that anybody ticketed after being in a traffic accident had to appear before a judge. So I had to take time off from work and go to court. The court was filled with people like myself that were forced to show up to answer to various traffic citations. They made me wait until I was the very last one to appear. I think it was because my driver’s license still listed my address as South Haven and I was considered an “outsider.” That judge was one mean bastard. He yelled and scolded almost everyone who appeared in his court that day, and I was no exception. It was an extremely humiliating experience.
I left that courtroom with a growing dislike for Kalamazoo and everything I knew about its crooked government.