The Vehicle Accident

An insurance claims adjuster told me once that the odds are you will have a minor accident every ten years and a major one every forty years.  I got my major one out of the way early, in 1967.

I was working as a welder's helper at National Tank Co. and was on my way home from work about 5:00 pm one December day.  I was in Fisher Bottom about three miles west of Sand Springs on Highway 51.  As I was often prone to do, I was "tailgating" the car in front of me.  Suddenly, he swerved into the bar ditch and there was a Mustang in my lane coming right at me!

Apparently, I thought I had a better chance of missing him by going left, because that's what I did.  Unfortunately, my maneuver wasn't successful and we collided.  The driver of the other car was Maurice Rogers McSpadden, a disc jockey for a local radio station, who went by the name "Boomer".  His car wound up on it's top in the bar ditch and my came to a stop on the highway, still right side up but badly damaged.  In fact, both cars were "totalled".

In those days, we didn't have EMT's or paramedics so the local funeral home ambulance showed up.  I sat in the front passenger seat holding my arm, which was broken, and McSpadden was on a stretcher in the back. I remember that the untrained attendant told the driver that he thought McSpadden was dead.  They transported us to what was then called Oklahoma Osteopathic Hospital (now OSU Medical Center).

Someone passing by the scene of the accident recognized my car and called Mom and Dad and told them about it.  On their way to the hospital, they had to pass by the cars, which were still there.  When Mom saw the shape my car was in, she was sure that I must be dead!

Later that evening, the highway patrolman who had investigated the crash came to the hospital to talk with me.  I told him what had happened and that coincided with his initial thoughts.  While I was laying there with a broken arm, however, he did chew me out for not wearing my seatbelt!  I was surprised to find out that, while McSpadden had suffered numerous facial injuries, he was not critically wounded.

I had to have surgery to repair my arm since the break was where it could not be set.  However, I had no problems with either it or the follow up surgery to remove the pins that the doctors had put in.

The accident did have a significant impact on my life.  It provided me with the means and motivation to go back to school at Oklahoma State.  I had dropped out in 1966 after two years of having fun!  The settlement I received from the wreck, $10,000, was a huge sum back then, at least to me.  It was enough to pay my tuition and living expenses till I graduated.  The motivation certainly was helped by having been a welder's helper for a couple of years.

I never talked to Boomer McSpadden after the accident.  I always wondered whether the wreck had as much impact on him as it did on me.  Some 20 years later, my wife, Louise, and I were at the Tulsa State Fair and KVOO radio had a booth there.  We walked into the booth and there he stood.  I walked up to him, introduced myself and Louise, and told him how we were linked.  He just stood there like he was unable to speak and after about 30 seconds of awkwardness, we turned around and left.  To this day, I don't know whether he was afraid I was angry at him or whether he was traumatized by hearing who I was.

Mr. McSpadden died in 1999 at the age of 54.  Did our accident somehow shorten his life?  It seems that the older I get, the more questions I want to answer.