This is another account of a first time with me. I have had a number of accidents in moving vehicles and there are some that I have walked away from that may be considered miracles. The one I’m going to write about now could probably be described that way. It wasn’t exactly my first, but it was my first wreck that was something other than a ding and scratch mishap. I hit a train with a Volkswagon. That even sounds kind of bad doesn’t it? I not only walked away unscathed, but the three girls who were with me were not hurt either.

When I was a Senior in High School my Dad got me a good deal on a used Volkswagon. Someone in his church had one he was willing to sell for $300.00 and I had just ruined my three speed on the column, hand brushed painted blue Ford by going over a very rough railroad track at a very high rate of speed. I blew out all four tires and bent all four rims. I needed a car and the Volkswagon came to my rescue.

My Volkswagon was a 1963 turquoise 4 speed with a real metal bumper. I loved that little car. I took it places most cars wouldn’t dare to go and it was not uncommon to see me chasing some school kids on the sidewalks. I wasn’t known for my careful driving in those days, in fact, some friends of mine who were on the more squeamish side wouldn’t ride with me at all. But I had lots of friends and found that I could fit eight of them in my new car with me and still drive relatively well.

I made it a point to find places where I could drive fast and crazy without hurting anyone. One such place was a hill out in the country with a railroad track sitting on the top of it. I had found that if I was going about sixty miles an hour and then hit that hill I could actually leave the ground and land on the other side…that was soooo cooool. I had always done it during the day though, never at night.

The night of the accident I had three girls with me and I wanted to show them the hill I had found. The girl up front with me was the one I was in love with and the two in the back were my friends (actually I ended up dating the other two eventually). They were into it and were actually excited about trying this stunt of mine. We headed down the country road until we came to the straight away where the train tracks lay in wait for us. I started speeding up so we could get the full effects of the jump and the girls were yelling, “Faster! Faster!”.

We were just about to the hill going around sixty five miles an hour when I noticed a wheel go by. My head lights were even with the top of the hill and it was incredibly dark due to some overcast, so all I saw was a wheel go by…a train wheel. About the time I was slamming on my brakes one of the girls screamed, “TRAIN!”, and then they all started screaming.

I was trying to get the car stopped but I could see that we hadn’t seen the train soon enough to get the job done. I was skidding right into the moving train. The train wasn’t going very fast, but to me that didn’t really matter much at the time. Since I knew we were going to hit the train I maneuvered the car so that the driver side front bumper would be the first to hit. I had gotten the car slowed down to a crawl by this time and it almost looked like we were actually going to get stopped. As fate would have it there was some loose gravel on the top of the hill and as soon as we hit that the car slid right into the train. BOOM!!!

What we hit was one of the ladders sticking off the side and it ripped the driver’s side fender off and flung the car the opposite direction so that the passenger side fender was put into harm’s way. We sat in amazement as we watched the ladders going by pounding the passenger side fender. I yelled at the girls to get out because I feared that the train would grab the car and drag us to our certain deaths. After they were out I tried to pull the car away from the moving train. It wasn’t budging. It was still in gear and I couldn’t move it. Suddenly there was a loud crash and me and the car were knocked back down the hill. Apparently one of the ladders was sticking out more than the rest.

The girls were crying and I was telling them everything was alright. None of us were hurt, not even a scratch. I looked at my car and even though it was missing one fender and the other fender was just hanging onto the electrical wiring of the headlight, the car wasn’t damaged all that much. The trunk (which is the front of a Volkswagon) was ajar, but it did close. I picked up the driver’s side fender and ripped the other one off the rest of the way and placed both of them in the back seat. I got in to see if the car would start…it did! The girls piled in and we all set in the two front seats. We set off on our journey back to town with no headlights and no one said a word.

Miracle? You tell me.