Excerpts from Electric Degeneration, Degenerate Press' semi-weekly e-zine, free and ad-free. A full episode contains sections for music reviews, upcoming events, blasphemy, classifieds, and anything else we feel like saying. If you'd like to subscribe just contact us.
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3/29/1996
SPECIAL REPORT
>Wow!!! I must say that you are truly "HELL ON WHEELS." I think an article
> detailing the history of "Fredrick's Smash & Bash Auto Detailing Service"
>would be a good addition to the elec-xcerpt / degen-xcerpt. You know start
>with the shit-mobile and reminisce through the years.
I was chatting with the passenger in our recent wreck and he said "That was the first non-intentional wreck I've been in!" I replied "Geez, wish I could say the same!" and started to flash back to all the accidents I've been in. Sometime later I got the above email and others wondering about the string of auto incidents in my life, so in approximate chronological order, here's a wreck list (NOT for the short of attention span!):
Age 5?, my uncle and his buddy decide to go four wheelin' in the pasture in his girlfriend's jeep. I go along in the back seat, the kind that face into the center of the car. They're raising hell and scaring the daylights out of poor Frederick when the entire vehicle rolls over. They'd gone off the edge of an embankment into a creek and ended up on the side opposite me. I'm dangling from the seatbelt staring down at broken glass and water trickling in. On the cold walk back to the house they converse as to the cause of the wreck. I run ahead inside and the rest of the clan asks what's happened.
"We wrecked!"
"How?"
"I don't know but they're blaming it on somebody."
"Who?"
"Jim and Jack somebody. I think it was Jack Daniels? Mom, is he a neighbor?"
Age 6 - 7 my mother owned a Jaguar that was a wreck magnet. One day we were cruising along and a VM minibus came down a driveway onto the road on my side of the car with a group of men chasing it. The parking brake had failed and it smacked into the fender just behind me. A few months later a Cutlass came around a blind turn and totalled the car. The only injury sustained was when my mom grabbed me and jerked me into the driver's side, bumping my head into the glass. To this day she says I'd have been hurt or killed had she not done that but I recall it differently.
Age 13 (I'm sure I'm forgetting a few in there) My stepfather is driving along with a tailgater on our butt. He decides to "teach him a lesson" and stomps the brake. A brief screech of tires and everything seems fine. A few seconds later he decides the tailgater is too close again and brakes again. WHAM. Damage to tailgater's vehicle but none to ours, judiciously.
Age 16 My less-than-trustworthy friend in highschool is driving his bitchin' camaro like mad. Some local redneck decides to give him a run for his money in a truck and is soon tailgating us. My driver cuts a corner but then there's the predictable oncoming truck. Swerving aside sends the camaro off the road into a ditch just shy of a huge tree.
Age 17 I inherit the family Datsun pickup, another wreck magnet. I back into a wall one week and screw up the rear corner. Two weeks later a woman pulls out right in front of me damaging the driver's side fender. Two weeks later I push the thing around a turn too fast, do a 360 into a ditch and destroy the rear bumper. Two weeks later I"m on my way to pick up the repaired bumper and see about the fender. Driving a bit too fast on a gravel road into a blind turn, I encounter a car-crushing Ford truck. It wins, sustaining trivial damage to the bumper and trim. Datsun loses, totalling the engine and frame. My passenger's head cracked the windshield but was far too hard to be injuried.
Age 18, in Atlanta for a U2 concert, I'm driving my friend's car and run into a guy that stopped unexpectedly in the middle of a green light. His head cracks his windshied and the bumper damaged a bit (again, thick skulled passengers are safe with me!), the wreckee is undamaged but gets out and says a classic line I'll never forget "Dammit, why is it a SURFER that always gets hurt?" The 'dude' is notably unhurt but insists on being a dickhead and threatens to "knock my lights out."
Age 18 I inherit the famed Shitmobile from my father. I'd been carless for the summer and would take ANYthing, including an aquamarine 1974 Datsun B210 with the passenger side smashed in so that everyone must enter through the singular driver's door, trampling the already wrecked interior. Until the Subaru, I never thought a car could take more abuse. We jumped it, we put it in ditches, we jumped up and down on it until the roof touched the seat backs, we rammed things with it, drove it witout oil, etc. The only repairs ever needed were a new water pump and to have the transmission brackets welded back on after they broke free as a result of the best jump we ever got out of it.
I don't recall wrecking the Toyota wagon I had. 5th gear had stopped working and the clutch was slipping when the engine finally exploded, leaving oil everywhere and naming the car "The Toyota Valdeze" from then on. The city towed it away as an abandoned car after it sat in front of the house too long.
The Toyota hatchback I had afterward was totalled and I wasn't even in it. I wasn't even home. I got back from dinner at some friends' place and it was smashed in and pushed up on the curb. VW parts littered the area and an officer's card was under the wiper. I got the accident report, some guy ran the light at the corner, bounced off one car into another then into mine which hit another. 5 vehicles totalled and the driver didn't own the car, it was his girlfriend's father's car. Soon to be EXgirlfriend's father's car, I guess.
The payoff for that bought me the infamous Subaru, payed off the toyota, paid the rent and enough for a 12 pack leftover.
The Sub was wrecked repetitively, intentionally, as many of you know. Video for many of these events is often shown at the Degenerate gatherings, for those who aren't aware.
The Saturn Wagon replaced the Subaru long ago, though the Sub stuck around as the recreational vehicle for the aforementioned entertainment. I wrecked the Saturn 3 days after picking it up. Ran it right into the guy in front of me while doing the "hey, look at me in my cool new car" cruising mode. Heartbreaking. I've bumped a couple of people since, none seriously, but now it's in the shop after some mad woman in a Geo pulled into me on my way from Dottie's the other night. Nailed us good and my passenger is complaining of neck pain.
Moral of the story? Hey, I was never hurt, why should there be a moral??
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