It was about 11 PM on a Saturday night in Endicott, NY, and I was out with a couple of buddies, driving around in my dad’s car. I was in the process of making a left turn onto a street that passed between two IBM factories when the guy sitting next to me (the three of us were all in the front seat) put his knee up against the steering wheel, effectively freezing it in the left turn; luckily there were no other cars to be seen. I hadn’t see him do it, and panicked when the wheel didn’t rotate back as expected. I froze as the car continued through the turn and headed for the curb on the left side of the street; my friend had already removed his knee.
The IBM factory building loomed up in front of me. It had three floors above ground and deep window wells surrounding it to allow natural sunlight to enter the below ground level basement area. I was aimed directly at a window well, which was about eight feet deep. A shouted “STOP!” yelled by the other guy in the car brought me to my senses just as the car jumped the curb, blowing a tire in the process. I jammed the brake pedal to the floor and brought the car to a stop as it banged the wrought iron fence surrounding the window well.
We all got out of the car a bit shaken, quickly looked around for witnesses, and discovering that there were none, I backed the car off the sidewalk and drove it a short distance to where we could change the tire. My dad’s car now had a dented bumper and a damaged tire, and I had no excuses. We found a nearby service station that would repair the tire, but they weren’t selling excuses so we had to make up our own.
I can’t remember, to this day, what kind of story we cooked up, but the guy who had blocked the steering wheel volunteered to come home with me to help sell it to my dad. I thought it had gone pretty well when dad suggested that I drive my friend back to his house; he’d go along just to be sure I didn’t do any more damage to his car.
The short trip was uneventful until my buddy left the car and went into his house. I was about to drive away when dad said. “Turn the ignition off.”
“What?” I asked.
“You heard me… turn it off, and tell me what really happened; I didn’t believe that bullshit story for a minute.”
I experienced one of those moments of clarity… lying would be absolutely futile, so I told him what had happened. He asked if anyone had seen us, and when I said no one had, he refined the question, asking, “Did anyone inside the building see you?” I had no answer for that. He then said, “OK, start it up and drive to the police station.” Dad was a former State Trooper… enough said.
“Drive where?”
“You heard right, the police station, you’re going to report your little mishap. If someone inside the factory happened to see you, they’ll probably call the police to report the damage to their fence.”
“But… it was just a little dent.”
“Tell that to the police.”
The station was only four blocks away, and we walked through the door before I had a chance to get my thoughts in order. Anyway, I was expecting dad to sort of smooth the way; I would have had better results if I had wished for Santa to appear. It went something like this:
“Hi Tom (dad knew all the cops), this is my kid, he has something to tell you.” After that little introduction, dad went over to the waiting area, picked up a magazine, and proceeded to ignore me. I had to start the story from scratch, beginning with my name.
It went rather well, considering, and ended with Tom telling me that he would get in touch with me if IBM filed a complaint; if not, I shouldn’t worry about it. He told me that I had done the right thing by reporting the incident, and then went over to shoot the breeze with my dad while I tried to stop sweating.
I never found out if I had been spotted by anyone in the factory, but I never heard from Officer Tom either, so there must be some truth in that old homily “All’s well that ends well”. I did, however, learn a couple of valuable lessons that night.
F. A. Zedik
12-15-03