| Wet Car
Story | | Here's the message that I posted to the Star Tribune's
Message Board section, edited and re-formatted. At the end you'll find
some pictures of my car taken the next day. Why? Because I have too much
free time. |
|
Al Iverson (invalid@example.invalid),
Minneapolis
| Tuesday, July
First, 1997, at about 8:20-8:30 pm. |
I work in Plymouth, and live in South Minneapolis. On my way
home from work, I stopped at a video store on 22nd and Hennepin. When I
left the video store, I drove around the block, where I hit a huge puddle
in the street. The car sputtered and died. I figured it was just an
ordinary semi-deep puddle and had no clue what was about to happen. It was
raining quite heavily and I didn't feel like getting out of the car, so I
coasted to a stop, parked illegally and planned to sit in the car, eat my
take out food I had just bought, and wait the storm out. I changed my mind
when I looked down to see the inside of the car slowly filling up with
water. By the time I gathered up the things I thought to take with me, the
water was up to the middle of the door (on the outside) so I rolled the
window down and climbed out the driver's side window.
I left one
window open a crack, and the other window open a few inches, so I could
retrieve stuff from inside, and so the car wouldn't trap air and float
away. (By this time I figured I'm screwed, the car is ruined, who cares if
it gets more wet on the inside.) I proceeded to wade across the street in
(by that point) hip deep water and some nice people at a youth shelter
called "The Bridge" let me come in and sit down. After a while I
realized I'd forgotton my cell phone, and a box of Lego bricks I bought
earlier in the day. So I waded back into this water and retrieved both
items, and discovered that cell phones don't float. I watched the water rise and rise and rise. By the time I
realized I could probably walk back to civilization the water was higher
than the dashboard--higher than the hood of my car. That's when my tail
lights went on and stayed on, underwater, until after I left. I stayed and
watched it for a while, praying to god it wouldn't float away and hit
somebody's nice car, and mess up my insurance. After a Dodge Neon bobbed
up and down, then halting floated down the block, and my car didn't move
or bob at all, I figured it wasn't going to and went to one of the
restaurants there and drank coffee until one of my friends came to get me.
We got a garbage bag from the video store and put it over the passenger
side seat in his car so I wouldn't totally soak it. He drove me home where
I showered for a really long time then threw out the clothes I was
wearing. At this point it finally hit me that my car is screwed and so am
I. I ended up taking sleeping pills to get to sleep, after staring at the
ceiling for hours.
The next day (Wednesday) I went back to take a
look at the car, push it to be legally parked, and salvage my CDs and
stuff from it. The entire inside is covered with mud, twigs, leaves, dirt,
and more dirt. Did I mention dirt? After seeing the car in the daylight, I
decided to write the whole thing completely off--the only thing I bothered
to retrieve that day was the parking pass for my apartment building. On a
whim I attempted to start the car and I almost got it started -- if I
really put some effort into it, I probably could get it going again. But
if you could smell the inside of it now, you'd understand why I decided to
abandon it.
My only question is, how can I get the city to impound
this car for me? I don't ever want to look at it or deal with it
again.
| Click on a picture below for a
larger version. |
For the last row, I added a blue line along where I recall
the water being. This should give some idea of what a fun time I
had.
Reports I heard afterwards indicated that approximately 4
inches of rain fell in about 45 minutes. This was the most
unbelievable torrential rainfall I've ever seen in my short
life.
|
