My Childhood Collection Revisited
You know, I was a strange puppy growing up. Hell.... Ask people who know me now and they'll say I haven't changed. But I digress.
Everyone collects things when they are young. Girls may collect dolls or little artsy-fartsy stamps to make cute little designs in their diaries. And everyone knows they collect jewelry. In my sister's case it was boyfriends.
Boy’s collections, on the other hand, could vary substantially. (I not saying this isn't true for girls.......trying to be PC now) I knew some guys that collected baseball cards. Some collected bugs (a collection that didn't last long). Some of the smart ones collected comic books. A group in our neighborhood built a couple of forts in the woods. There they collected nudie books. These guys were cool!
For awhile it was marbles. (This is the first form of gambling addiction. You show up for a game and before you know it. You've lost your marbles.)
My brother collected beer cans. Of course he was a little older, but he made money doing this. Did you know a 1st generation Budweiser can, will sell for 100's of dollars?
Now, this brings me back to myself (My favorite subject.) I had a scrapbook. After years tucked away in an old box at my mother's house, I found it when we visited over the holidays. I'm sure it dates back to '71 or '72. I believe I was 7 or 8 at the time. I collected newspaper articles. I kept them in a photo album. They were articles (mostly pictures) of car crashes.
I remember this one picture to this day. It was a couple of late '60's passenger cars. In those days trucks were not as prevalent so you really never saw them involved in an accident. At least, I don't recall.
I can't remember if anyone died, and my curiosity does not include the blood and gore. I was once the first on the scene of a rollover in the Arizona dessert. The one occupant was still crumpled in the corner of the cab, head titled strangely from a broken neck. No, I don’t want to see the people involved. I'm fascinated by the physics involved to bend metal this way and that. To actually see metal that has torn like a piece of paper that contains a "Dear John" message. I can sit and stare at a wrecked car just imagining the forces that have worked on the structure and wondered which piece gave way first.
Back to my scrapbook. This one particular photo depicted an all too often familiar scène. You could tell it was a rainy night as the pavement glistened in the light. Two cars set facing one another only 15-20 feet apart. In front of a pitch-black background the work lights from the emergency equipment lit up the scene. The photographer's flash created sparkles on the wet pavement from the bits of glass sprinkled throughout the crash site.
On the right side of the photo was some kind of car (the make was impossible to tell).
The driver's side was facing the camera and the hood had landed against the back door and quarter panel. The front door was missing (presumably cut away by the rescue workers). The front wheel had melded into the metal that had once been the front end, frame, suspension, and radiator support. The firewall had been shoved back a couple of feet and also pushed in towards the middle. It didn’t seem if the driver’s compartment existed anymore. The car basically looked like a right-triangle shaped blob of metal with sharp edges. I can't recall the other car. It was facing the opposite direction and the damage looked minor from the passenger's side.
I looked at this picture for hours over the years each time running the details through my mind. Wondering, how can a car are destructed so completely, only in a matter of seconds. The scrapbook contained more spectacular accident scene photos. I must have collected these photos for a year.
The subjects of my scrapbook's picture changed from the accident scene photos to photos of the Mustang racecar my father partly owned. I soon added some family pictures, taken with the cheapest 110mm camera a kid's allowance could afford.
This morbid fascination continues to this day. Not only do I go looking on You Tube, but I work for a company that also owns a fleet of wreckers. Our town is connected to one of the busiest interstates on the east coast. The amount of traffic, both cars and 18 wheelers, leads to a substantial number of accidents. These accidents along with accidents on the winding country roads in our area supply a never-ending collection of wrecked cars temporally stored at our company's yard.
I only collect the images in my mind now. But, at times I wonder if this would be my dream job. Accident investigator.........................Kewl.
Everyone collects things when they are young. Girls may collect dolls or little artsy-fartsy stamps to make cute little designs in their diaries. And everyone knows they collect jewelry. In my sister's case it was boyfriends.
Boy’s collections, on the other hand, could vary substantially. (I not saying this isn't true for girls.......trying to be PC now) I knew some guys that collected baseball cards. Some collected bugs (a collection that didn't last long). Some of the smart ones collected comic books. A group in our neighborhood built a couple of forts in the woods. There they collected nudie books. These guys were cool!
For awhile it was marbles. (This is the first form of gambling addiction. You show up for a game and before you know it. You've lost your marbles.)
My brother collected beer cans. Of course he was a little older, but he made money doing this. Did you know a 1st generation Budweiser can, will sell for 100's of dollars?
Now, this brings me back to myself (My favorite subject.) I had a scrapbook. After years tucked away in an old box at my mother's house, I found it when we visited over the holidays. I'm sure it dates back to '71 or '72. I believe I was 7 or 8 at the time. I collected newspaper articles. I kept them in a photo album. They were articles (mostly pictures) of car crashes.
I remember this one picture to this day. It was a couple of late '60's passenger cars. In those days trucks were not as prevalent so you really never saw them involved in an accident. At least, I don't recall.
I can't remember if anyone died, and my curiosity does not include the blood and gore. I was once the first on the scene of a rollover in the Arizona dessert. The one occupant was still crumpled in the corner of the cab, head titled strangely from a broken neck. No, I don’t want to see the people involved. I'm fascinated by the physics involved to bend metal this way and that. To actually see metal that has torn like a piece of paper that contains a "Dear John" message. I can sit and stare at a wrecked car just imagining the forces that have worked on the structure and wondered which piece gave way first.
Back to my scrapbook. This one particular photo depicted an all too often familiar scène. You could tell it was a rainy night as the pavement glistened in the light. Two cars set facing one another only 15-20 feet apart. In front of a pitch-black background the work lights from the emergency equipment lit up the scene. The photographer's flash created sparkles on the wet pavement from the bits of glass sprinkled throughout the crash site.
On the right side of the photo was some kind of car (the make was impossible to tell).
The driver's side was facing the camera and the hood had landed against the back door and quarter panel. The front door was missing (presumably cut away by the rescue workers). The front wheel had melded into the metal that had once been the front end, frame, suspension, and radiator support. The firewall had been shoved back a couple of feet and also pushed in towards the middle. It didn’t seem if the driver’s compartment existed anymore. The car basically looked like a right-triangle shaped blob of metal with sharp edges. I can't recall the other car. It was facing the opposite direction and the damage looked minor from the passenger's side.
I looked at this picture for hours over the years each time running the details through my mind. Wondering, how can a car are destructed so completely, only in a matter of seconds. The scrapbook contained more spectacular accident scene photos. I must have collected these photos for a year.
The subjects of my scrapbook's picture changed from the accident scene photos to photos of the Mustang racecar my father partly owned. I soon added some family pictures, taken with the cheapest 110mm camera a kid's allowance could afford.
This morbid fascination continues to this day. Not only do I go looking on You Tube, but I work for a company that also owns a fleet of wreckers. Our town is connected to one of the busiest interstates on the east coast. The amount of traffic, both cars and 18 wheelers, leads to a substantial number of accidents. These accidents along with accidents on the winding country roads in our area supply a never-ending collection of wrecked cars temporally stored at our company's yard.
I only collect the images in my mind now. But, at times I wonder if this would be my dream job. Accident investigator.........................Kewl.
posted by Mddhattr at 2:14 PM
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