It does seem like we are awakened by various odd things in the middle of the night. Fireworks, strange bird calls, an accident.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was hearing coming from a deep sleep to consciousness. It sounded like an explosion and at first I thought our neighbors’ house had blown up. I glanced at the digital glow of our clock on the dresser: 1:30 a.m.

I got up to look out the window and could see a car by one of the pillars that stand on either side of our driveway. There was someone yelling (STOP! I think) and I think I yelled out something similar because something gave me the impression that the person was going to just drive off.

Rick and I scrambled to get into our clothes, turned on the front lights and headed up the driveway to see what had happened. We quickly realized is was our neighbor’s son and his girlfriend. His girlfriend was leaving in her car and attempted to back into our driveway to turn (obviously at a high rate of speed), missed the driveway and ran into the pillar and completely knocked it out of its base! Holy Backup Batman!

She was sobbing pretty hysterically (I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll pay for it …) with blood running from her nose. We asked if she was alright and she said yes. Her car did not look alright. Obviously our stalwart brick pillar reigned supreme in this incident even it was lying there like a tomb, it was surprising unscathed. Her back windshield was gone, the whole back of her car smashed in. It looked undrivable to us. Plus, it was leaking some kind of fluid onto the road.

We asked how it happened and her boyfriend basically said that she had “punched it in reverse.” A lover’s quarrel? Alcohol involved? Yes, probably but can’t say for sure. No reason to be going fast enough to knock the thing right out of the ground! It was a terrible sound I can tell you that.

We headed back in the house while they came back and picked up some of the bigger chunks of wreckage and moved the car off the road. Needless to say it took us both several hours to get back to sleep after such commotion.

This morning we surveyed the damage in the light of day. In this pic you can see the pillar in relation to the street.

Glass everywhere.

And here you can see the trajectory of the light that used to be on top of the pillar and the light base as if they were thrown by Atlas. (Note: the red is part of her tail light.)

The light: amazingly the glass is intact!

And the light base, also amazingly intact.

Here is the pillar on the opposite side of the driveway and how it’s supposed to look.

It will be interesting to see what Dennis (our mail person) does when he delivers the mail today!

Honestly, for living in such a small and quiet community we seem to have more than our fair share of excitement.