Imagine

Let me draw you a picture of what I saw on I-180 just southeast of Williamsport today as I drove home.

Have you ever watched steer wrestling at the rodeo? The mounted cowboy and a steer are placed in chutes side by side. When the cowboy gives the go ahead, the two doors are flung open. The steer makes a mad dash for freedom and the cowboy spurs his mount alongside. The cowboy slides himself from the saddle, grabs the steer’s horns, twists the nearside horn into his belt buckle while digging his heels into the arena’s soft earthen floor. The cowboy’s goal is to get that steer off his feet and laying on his side. The steer wants no part of it. In the process, the steer’s head is often looking over his shoulder toward his tail and the cowboy’s belt buckle just as he totters over with his body falling away from the cowboy.

Now, replace that steer with a red Chevy Blazer (the head) and a 27-28 foot long travel trailer. The cowboy was long gone. (Unless that was the small car in the ditch a quarter mile back up the road.) That trailer almost toppled over on its right side but the red tow vehicle was looking back up the road—over its shoulder so to speak—and its weight prevented the whole kit and caboodle from going over. That and the fact that the hitch area (where the red vehicle and trailer were joined) was smack dab on top of the end of an overpass abutment.

Didn’t seem like anyone was hurt. There were no fire engines, ambulances or anything like that. Just the two police cars and several guys with flags waving cars through the small gap between the butt end of the trailer and the side of the bridge. (Larger trucks were being diverted to the west bound lanes to return from whence they came cause there was no way they were getting through the gap. I cleared with maybe a foot to spare.)

I, of course, didn’t think to grab either my digital camera or my cell phone to snap a picture. But, hey, I hate rubber-neckers as it is. Bunch of ghouls and vultures. I will say that all I could think of when I saw the wreck was, “That poor bastard. Glad it’s not me!”