Truck Struck: The Evil Driveway

As we all know, vehicles can take on lives of their own. Sensors act up, trunks pop open, parts fall off—well, at least they have for me. Where Bill and I lived, the bottom driveway was a straight shot from the garage to the main road. He warned me that it was on a slight incline, so minuscule you couldn’t even notice. I didn’t believe it because it wasn’t visible to my naked eye until one day when my red Mazda pick-up truck and I learned the hard way. I was working on it in said driveway, had it in gear, emergency brake not engaged—my bad. While crawling under the dash to replace a fuse, my arm hit the stick, throwing it out of gear. With that, she began creeping backward.

I jumped out, and the door hung open, catching a big loader that was parked next to it. The door hung up briefly, being pulled backward past the point of no return. Then it promptly took off, rolling at unrestrained speed backward toward the main road and the house trailer across the street. I wildly chased it, waving my arms, yelling like that would do anything, but shortly gave up. Unbelievably, there was no traffic as it gracefully crossed the road, sailing past the house trailer and continuing its journey into a field where it hit a lone cinder block and came to a halt. So, dang it, the driveway really was deceptively slanted, as Bill promised. I was so mad that, from that point on, I named it the evil driveway.

Once back home with the e-brake engaged, I surveyed the door damage. A new door was needed, but the only one the junkyard had was dark blue. We got it and put it on quickly as I had to be in Maryland soon. On my drive there, I sat at a red light, feeling rather hillbilly-ish with my two-tone truck. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spied another red Mazda pick-up identical to mine directly across from me. He got the green, and as he passed in front of me, he saw that I, too, had what he had—a red truck with a blue driver’s door! When he drove by, our eyes locked as if to say, “I feel your pain.” What are the chances? I wonder what his war story was.

Then there was the tree guy. He dropped his tree-trimming bucket truck off in the evil driveway for a brake job. I soon heard a squeak-squeak noise out the living room window, but why? I then saw the truck rolling backward, down the evil driveway, gaining speed and heading toward that house trailer, having safely crossed the road. I raced out but was unable to do anything but watch the phantom driveway have its way. No lie, it stopped about a foot from the front door of the trailer. Of course, the tree guy never choked the wheels—his bad, just like me. We didn’t charge him extra for the excitement involved in getting it back into the evil driveway with no brakes.

Last up is when a dump truck decided to take on a life of its own. This occurred in the backyard, but I think the evil driveway was exerting influence around our property at this point. Jack, the guy we were working with while replacing our roof, got a bit tipsy and, at the end of the day, backed the dump truck, loaded with old shingles, into a corner directly across from the kitchen. Shortly thereafter, I heard the infamous squeak-squeak, looked out the window, and what did I see but a dump truck coming right for me. It hit just below the kitchen sink, just missing the oil fill for our fuel tank in the cellar, and when it hit—BAM!—the silverware drawer, which was impossible to open, shot out of the cabinet like a cannonball, spewing its contents all over the kitchen floor.

After this, mice had a freeway into our dining room, cold drafts came in under the sink, and the nearby electrical outlet sparked and smoked, so it was put out of commission. The crack in the wall didn’t phase Bill as it did me. He refused to use the homeowner’s insurance, so there was no chance of getting a proper professional seal. I used spray foam and duct tape to doctor up the wounded wall. Jack later confessed he assumed the yard was level, so he never set the e-brake or left it in gear.

So we have now learned to never underestimate the power of ghost vehicles, the operators who don’t do their due diligence to keep things safe, and the presence of things unseen to the naked eye. Or as the expression goes, things are sometimes not what they may seem; even salt looks like sugar.