The Morning I Almost Died
I lost my beloved car, but kept my only life.
It’s Friday and the sun is just beginning to rise over the fields of mostly grass seed farms. A crisp morning, sometime in mid September, 1999.
“Alright, I’ll see you there,” I holler at Tim as he closes the door of his car and I open the door to get in mine. I turn the key and immediately panic as ear piercing, chest thumping music blasts through my Rockford Fosgate subwoofers. Grasping for the volume knob, I yet again swear to remember to turn the stereo down before shutting off my car. A bumping stereo is great for late night cruising, but a brutal wakeup call at seven in the morning. Especially since I’m parked outside a friend’s house.
Whereas sleeping over was generally frowned upon on school nights, I spent the night at my friend Tim Spark’s home so we could study for the following day’s AP Calculus test. Plus, once you’re a Senior in High School, all the rules seem to change anyway.
Tim pulls out of the gravel driveway. I put my car in Drive and follow.
Now there’s three things I need you to know before the story continues.
First, I’d never been to Tim’s house prior to that night. He lived several miles outside the city, so the drive into school that morning involved back country roads I was unfamiliar with.
Second, as mentioned already it was early in the morning. Since it’s Oregon, of course there was morning dew, which meant condensation fogged up every window of my car. Especially the windshield.
Third, speaking of my car, she was my beloved. A 1987 cherry red Nissan Pulsar that I had spent the previous 18 months of ownership putting a lot of time and money in to. In addition to the ripping aforementioned stereo, those were the early days of the Fast ‘n Furious franchise. I was obsessed with the look of the cars in those films. I used all my funds from working at the Boys & Girls Club to spruce my Nissan up: I bought seven spoke chrome rims, added a spoiler, installed chrome siding and chrome wheel wells, painted the underbelly white, installed interior neon lighting, and since I worked in the sign shop at the high school I had access to a vinyl printer and I went crazy applying vinyl accent stickers everywhere.
Feel free to snicker, scoff, or tease.
I know she wasn’t for everywhere. But I was, and remain, secure in my affinity for my Pulsar.
In fact, while writing this post, and searching through boxes looking for pictures of it, I spent 15 minutes Googling “1987 Nissan Pulsar” just to read 35 year old reviews. Plus, NGL, I did a search to see if any are for sale near me. (If I had $9k lying around, I’d buy this yesterday).
I frickin’ loved that car.
And as I pulled out of Tim’s driveway that morning, eager to get to school before our Calculus studying wore off, I had zero reason to believe it would be the last time I drove her.
“Ugh, defrost already!” I groan at my windshield. The morning moisture has completely fogged up my windows. While a quick roll down of the side windows solve visibility to my left and right, no amount of windshield wipers can help with seeing ahead. I cautiously do I a sleeve wipe of a small portion at eye level, knowing it’s not a great long term solution but at least it gets me moving. Smeared and blurry, but better than opaque.
Pulling out of Tim’s driveway and on to a main road is simple enough, but as the road straightens out I quickly realize the problem. Or rather, the problems.
Whether or not Tim has better visibility through his fogged up windshield is a moot point: He knows these roads like the back of his hand. He drives them at full speed without a second thought. On the contrary, I have no idea where I am, so my only option is to follow him all the way in to town. (This was way before phones and GPS. Sure, MapQuest came out three years prior, but this was not one of those times where I printed out the directions on an HP InkJet Printer before leaving the house).
So not only is my visibility limited, but I need to drive faster and more aggressive than I would prefer under such conditions just to keep up. I lean forward, eyes peering over the top of the steering wheel. A small, half circle portion of the windshield emerges just above the vents of the defroster. I can see maybe 30 yards ahead. If I knew the roads better and didn’t require someone to lead me then I would slow down to 20mph until my windshield finishes defrosting. But Tim is going closer to 45. I do my best to keep pace.
Up ahead I can see I need to turn left because I see Tim’s white sedan out my driver side window. I slow down, take the turn, and accelerate to catch up. Turning left means we are now driving due east. Directly into the rising sun. My visibility goes from peering through a tiny portion of a defrosted windshield to squinting through the now glared half circle of glass.
It goes without saying but driving unfamiliar roads with a sleeve streaked, fogged up windshield while getting blasted by a sunrise is a terrible idea. Of course, if I knew then what I know now then I would’ve pulled over and waited for my windshield to fully clear. If I got lost, I got lost. Better safe-and-lost, then found-and… well…
I’m going 45. Hunched over the steering wheel like I’m impersonating a 90 year old driving an oversized Cadillac, and squinting through the only clear patch of my windshield.
By the time I notice the blob of red it’s much too late. From the corner of my eye I look up and to the right with just enough time to register the octagonal shape of a Stop sign, but with no where near enough time to do anything about it.
A sound louder than my stereo whips my head back to the left. Through the perfectly clear driver side window I see a massive front grille of truck. A large truck. Possibly a semi, and definitely coming right at me. It’s horn on full blast.
Some say they experience such moments in slow motion.
Not me. It was all about as bang-bang as it gets.
Red blob… a stop sign I am blowing past.
Horn blast… something coming straight at me.
Front grille… smash.
I’m knocked off the main road and sent careening toward a corner market, or so I discover later. In the moment all I know is loudness, darkness, and fear.
My car comes to a stop. No airbag. Airbags were optional in the Pulsar, and my model didn’t have one. Plus, I installed a cool custom steering wheel anyway. Style over safety.
I open my eyes. The once fogged over windshield is now utterly shattered yet still held together in one large piece. I vaguely see a building through the cracks.
A guy’s voice appears to my left. “Hey kid, are you okay?!”
I mumble something. Evidently it’s enough to signal to him that I’m alive and conscious. He rushes off, shouting he’ll call 911.
Later I learn he was the Snapple delivery guy, unloading crates of flavored iced tea at Millersburg Market when my red Pulsar came flying his way. He told the police that were it not for the phone-booth outside the store that stopped my vehicular projectile, I would’ve crashed through the market’s front window.
Time passes. A minute. Another minute. I’m conscious, but in shock. I can move my body, but I cannot get out. The driver side door has collapsed in on me, pinning me to my seat. I notice a small hole in the outside of my left knee. The plastic handle used to roll down the window was blasted off and the exposed metal bolt punctured my leg. I don’t feel the pain yet. I don’t think I feel any pain yet.
I shake my head and glass shards fall from my hair.
“Oh my God, Colby, you’re alive!” It’s Tim, he must’ve flipped a U-turn and come back for me. He tells me how he looked up in his rearview mirror at the exact time my car was hit. All he saw was my windshield go white and my car get swept off the road like a pile of snow from a mountain clearing snow plow. He leans through the broken window, puts a hand on me and prays. Amen. He steps away to call our parents.
More time passes, or at least I assume.
Next, a police officer appears. He looks surprised then relieved.
Later at the hospital, I learn that the policer officer, as he pulled up to the scene, was about to call in a DOA (Dead on Arrival). His experience, combined with the condition of my car, offered more than enough credible evidence to make such a call. His surprised look was genuine. He did not expect an alive—let alone conscious—human inside.
“Hey young man, can you tell me your name?”
“Colby.”
“Okay Colby, an ambulance is on the way. Right now I don’t want you to do anything, you just sit there and hang tight,” he says, as though I have any other choice. “We’re going to get you out, and you’re going to be okay.”
Get me out? Why is he saying it like that? Can’t he just open my door and give me a hand while I step out like normal?
More minutes pass. I have no recollection of any other interaction or conversations. Maybe they happened, maybe they didn’t.
I wait.
“Alright Colby, here’s the situation.” It’s a fireman now, I think. “We can’t get your door open, so we’re going to have use what are called the Jaws of Life in order to pull you out.” I have no idea what the Jaws of Life are, but I use context clues to make a decent assumption.
Thankfully, in addition to the power of the Jaws my car also had a T-top, which meant the top panels of the roof were removable—making the car a kind of convertible. Several firemen work together to peel off the panels. Then they use the Jaws to spread apart the remaining structure of my Nissan’s roof. Once they make the opening wide enough they reach down.
Multiple arms wrap around me.
They heave me up and out.
Hours later, while laying in the hospital bed, my mom swears that the lead fireman told her how, as they pulled me free, I joked to them about not messing up my hair. I have no memory of this, and yet I don’t doubt it for a second. If the truest thing about me is that I am Beloved Child of God, the second truest thing about me is that I would prioritize the state of my hair even while flirting with death’s doorstep.
I honestly don’t remember anything after getting extracted from the car. Not because I lost consciousness (I don’t think?), but I just don’t remember. I know I was taken by ambulance to the hospital, but I can’t remember anything other than the following interaction once my parents got there.
My mom stands at the foot of my bed. She got the call first and made it to the hospital— maybe even before the ambulance did?
My dad arrives. Leans over the bed to hug me. I begin to cry.
“My car is totaled,” I say through the tears.
Dad stands up, looks at me, “It’s just a car, son. What matters is that you’re okay.”
“But it was his car, and he loved it,” my mom says in response.
They are both right.
Of course it’s just a car. Dad was absolutely right that the state of its condition paled in importance compared to mine.
Yet as I’ve already told you, that car meant a lot to me. So Mom was also right, my grieving of its loss made sense.
I wonder how often parents realize that their disagreements can be gifts to their kids. What seems like competing perspectives between two grown adults can actually provide for their children the necessary conditions to appreciate the complexity of life.
While mom(s) and dad(s) fight about who’s right, sometimes kids walk away with the both/and nature of reality.
If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is.
I’m discharged from the hospital with miraculously only a handful of cuts from broken glass and the small hole in my left knee. Sore and shook, but able to get in and out of my mom’s car.
We drive home. With a little help I make my way to my bedroom.
I learn more about what happened.
Turns out the vehicle that t-boned me was a flatbed tow truck… that was also towing a car. That’s a lot of mass—going probably 50mph—to strike a small sports car.
The stop sign I blew through was only intended for me. As you can see from the map below, Conser Road was a two-way stop. The tow truck was on Old Salem Road, free to drive without stopping.
He hit me going full speed.
Here’s a couple Google images of that intersection from April 2025. Other than the Market changing names (and color), and the phone booth no longer being there (thanks to yours truly), it looks largely the same.
Several hours pass and my friends Roby and Dennis stop by to check on me. They tell me how word of my accident spread through the school. Everyone is glad I’m okay (everyone except for maybe Aaron, but that’s a story for a different day).
Mom says the junkyard called and asked when we want to come by and retrieve any personal belongings from the heap of metal previously known as my ‘87 Nissan Pulsar.
“Can we go now?” I ask.
So Dennis, Roby, my mom and I drive to the junkyard. Up to this point I hadn’t fully appreciated what had happened. What I’d been through. How lucky I was to be alive.
Shock and adrenaline (and drugs from the hospital) are powerful things.
But walking into the large warehouse of scrap metal that afternoon it finally caught up to me. As I looked at the twisted chaos of red paint, chrome pieces, and white accents, the full weight of my dance with death hit me.
I wept. Hard.
The grief of losing my car. The astonishment that I walked away from that. The gratitude for the officers and paramedics and first responders who took care of me.
Unbelievable.
I was inside that mess. Pinned down, but alive. Dazed, but evidently aware enough to make jokes about my hair.
And I walked away with naught but a limp for a couple weeks and a tiny scar on my left knee.
Miracle.
Exactly one year and 364 days after that morning I received a letter in the mail informing me that the tow truck driver was suing me (and my mom) for two million dollars. Claiming emotional distress and loss of work due to injury from the collision.
Obviously the accident was my fault, and my insurance already paid out for all damages. But the driver of the tow truck waited all the way to the end of the two year statute of limitations before attempting to extract more monetary gain from the incident.
Honestly, I don’t know that I judge the guy too harshly. I don’t remember enough details about the whole ordeal to have an opinion. If he didn’t get adequately compensated by mine (and his) insurance companies, then maybe suing is the right move? I have no doubt the event was traumatic for him. I can’t imagine how scary that would be to be on his side of our wreck.
That being said, the dude was also deceptive and grifting. Our lawyer was able to prove that he lied. His neck and back injuries were pre-existing, long before the accident. Once his fraud was exposed, he ended up settling for a far more reasonable amount.
C’est la vie.
After the loss of my first car, my first love, I pretty much gave up on driving nice things.
For the next… (counts on fingers between 1999 and Today)… 25 years I drove a series of clunkers, beaters, free vehicles, and at-least-it-gets-me-from-point-A-to-point-B cars. My current car, an 18 year old Honda Element with 220,000 miles I’ve driven for six years, is pretty much par for the course.
Since I travel often I end up renting a lot of cars. Every time I do I think, “Wow, I really, really love driving nice and new cars,” followed by, “but man it would suck if this was my car and it got totaled.”
Look, it’s not that I can afford a car right now anyway. I can’t.
But I do wonder when, down the road—assuming my financial situation will one someday improve and I can actually get a decent car—will I?
If I do, I’m sure I’ll hold it much more loosely than I did my ‘87 Pulsar, knowing that anything can be taken from us in an instant.
And yet, I think that will also cause me to appreciate it that much more.
Enjoy what you have when you have it, because you never know.
Both/and.
Though I promise you this: I will not deck it out in chrome or cover it in vinyl stickers.
Probably.
A scary morning, and I remember it very well!
AND, for those here who didn't know you then ... he really did have great hair!
That's a disturbing tale. God's grace that spared you with relatively minor injuries. Yet others didn't escape. My high school classmate was hit by an out of control driver at school. We witnessed his life snuffed out while walking on the sidewalk 10 days before graduation. Or my sister who fell against a glass door. If she hadn't held her head up, well, it would have been over. Or my encounter with a shooter at work. Why are some unscathed? Others snuffed out?