Unplanned vacation

It was a long New Years weekend in 1972 and we had a long stretch of cold that year. I felt housebound and needed to get out. I lived in Pennsylvania at the time and worked in New Jersey. I was home for the weekend and felt rather depressed at the cold. It was 15 degrees and snow on the ground. I was thinking I needed to take a drive south until it warmed up.

I had a 1969 Datsun 510 so I left the house around 7 or p.m. without telling anyone. I filled up at the farm gas tank, kicked the tires, and took off, heading for Philadelphia. As I was driving on the Schuylkill Expressway, a car suddenly rear-ended the car in front of him and the following car bumped into the second car, but no one stopped. It felt like an omen and I was determined to be careful driving.

I found Interstate 95 and drove south to Delaware and that’s where I spotted a hitchhiker in a white sweater thumbing for a ride. I stopped and offered a ride. He was heading for Orlando, Florida. Suddenly I knew where I wanted to go. I told him, “I have relatives in Orlando.”
I questioned him enough to trust him. He took over the wheel when I got tired and I slept for a couple hours during the daylight hours. At a rest stop he paid for breakfast.

At Orlando I dropped him off and I was alone. I knew my mom’s aunt and uncle, John and Mary Forman, lived near Winter Garden but I didn’t know where that was. They were living as caretakers at Coomer's Orchards. I went into town to ask and finally found my way. The weather was delightfully balmy.

I remembered the address anyway. Coomer’s Orchards. I drove into the lane. By the light of the headlights I could see ripe oranges (Tangelos) hanging from the trees on both sides. It was heaven. I drove up to the house and checked my watch. 9 p.m. Lights were on so I knocked on the door. Mary answered the door and was quite surprised to see me.

We sat and talked for awhile. She said that the Coomer’s were away and didn’t really want visitors to stay in their house but she showed me the guest room for the night. I did not see much of the outside because of the darkness.

The next morning I woke up around six and looked out the window. Birds were singing, flowers were everywhere. I saw orange and grapefruit trees. It was like summer. Mrs. Coomer showed up and was quite pleased to meet Mary’s grandnephew. I stayed there all day while her husband John made orange juice and told about his younger years, lapsing into German every once in awhile. I’m not fluent in German so I kept steering him into English.

It was quite hot at 80 degrees. I reveled in the summer weather—a far cry from the winter weather I escaped from. But my conscience was bothering me. I didn’t tell anyone I was here. Around 5 p.m. I told them, “I have to leave, to go back home.” Surprised, they said, “So soon, but you just got here.” I insisted, so Mary got a box of oranges for me to take along. “Don’t tell Mrs. Coomer.” I stored them in the trunk. Then Mrs. Coomer found out I was leaving and offered a box of oranges, “You could put them in the trunk,” she said. “No, the trunk is full,” I said, so we put them in the back seat, and more in the front seat.

After a hasty goodbye, I took off. Now I was alone and it was going to be a long trip back. It grew dark and in Georgia I suddenly realized the headlights were getting dim. I turned on the interior lights and they too were dim. I stopped at a service station. The attendant was about ready to close up but he charged up the battery and told me there was an all-night service station. "They should be able to fix you up." The bolt had fallen out to anchor the generator.

It took another hour or so before I was all fixed up again. I hadn’t slept since around 6 that morning and I was too nerved up to take a nap. I took off like a bat to make up for lost time.
I passed through Glennville, GA, noticing speed restrictions but who is out that late. Just then I saw flashing lights behind me and I had to stop. Officer Cantrell strolled up to my car and said, “Ah dint know a Datsun could go that fast; follow me back to town.” I meekly complied and drove to the police station and he escorted me into the office. As he filled out forms I checked my wallet—$10, and I had to travel through the rest of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. I noticed a room with bars on the doorway to my left.
He finished his paperwork. “That’ll be $25. You were going almost 70 miles an hour but I put you down for 60—in a 35. I thought that was neighborly of him, but I said, “I don’t have $25.” He looked crestfallen. “You could stay in that room for the night until the Justice of the Peace comes at 9.”

“No, I have to get home. No one knows where I am.”

He thought for awhile, “Do you have Triple-A?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your card,” and he took the bail-bond certificate attached to it. “Triple-A will pay it, and you’ll reimburse them.” Then he said, “The speed limit through the entire state of Georgia is a law-abidin’ 50 miles per hour. If you get stopped, they’ll bring you back here, and I won’t be so lenient.”

So—that settled, he went to the filing cabinet to file his paperwork. I headed for the door and, on an impulse, I said, “I appreciate that you were nice to me, although I broke the law.” He straightened up, adjusted his officer’s cap and strode toward the door. “Come on, I’ll escort you to the road.” I got into my car, and he got into his and turned on the overheads, and escorted me all of 80 feet to the road.

I took off and as soon as I was out of sight of town went up to speed—my speed. But it was late, and I was tired. I opened the windows to cooler air to keep awake. Sometimes I dozed off for a second. I watched the North Star rise out of the north. I stuck my head out of the window at times for fresh air. In North Carolina I thought it best to call home. It was around 5 a.m. I found a phone booth and dialed the number. In my sleepiness I heard "75 cents". I put in 75 cents and the operator repeated it, “2.75.” “I don’t have it,” I said. But enough time had elapsed for my Dad to answer and overhear it. “Reverse the charges, operator,” he said. He asked where I was and I looked on the phone and told him. Later I found that he and my boss were perusing maps to find the town. I didn’t tell him what state.

It was around 1 o'clock in the afternoon when I approached the Baltimore Tunnel in Maryland. It was over 30 hours without sleep and I started to slow down from the traffic ahead. Just then there was a screech of brakes in the tunnel. The car in front of me hit the car in front of him and I was a bit too close, and I collided. The oranges in the front seat hit the floor; back seat oranges were shaken up. What did the trunk oranges look like? The accelerator pin was dislodged and I could only coast along in idle which was too slow. A tow truck towed me out.

At the other end of the tunnel, we three drivers involved had to fill out accident reports, and I called my insurance company. A mechanic fixed the accelerator pin and I was able to drive, with a sizeable dent in the front. I tried to take a nap before I drove home but it didn’t last long. I drove to New Jersey, pulled into the company parking lot and walked into the office, and waited for lightning to strike. Insurance gave an estimate on repairs; I had a $100 deductible and I found someone to repair it for $100 less than the Insurance estimate.

That’s not the end of the story. A few weeks later I got a letter from a lawyer in Baltimore saying that the plaintiff (the driver of the first car) was suing both drivers for $100,000 each and the Mrs. was suing $25,000 for loss of consortium. The printing company had just completed a printing contract with GPO in Washington and I drove the order down to Washington and stopped in Baltimore at the lawyer's office on the way back.

The lawyer asked me, “Did you cause the accident?”

“No, I had been on the road for a long time and I was slowing down as I entered the tunnel but the car in front of me hit the plaintiff’s car first.”

“What was the attitude of the plaintiff at the scene of the accident?”

“He was the happiest guy there. It was a company car, and he was filling out the papers with a flourish. The second car was an elderly couple and the missus was complaining of whiplash. I was rather shy about it and didn’t really say anything.”

A few weeks later I got a notice that the case was closed. My insurance did not increase. He must have lost the case.

I do not regret this adventure. It certainly expanded my horizons, but it would have been better to let people know my intentions. They thought I had run away. I found out that there is warm weather somewhere in the dead of winter. I also was able to visit with people I knew and appreciated. It was the last time I ever saw them.