We had a nice and simple Thanksgiving this year. We had spent some time with good friends. Our son was sick, so we brought him some medicine and a plate of food to help nurse him back to good health. Our daughter was else celebrating Thanksgiving.
As Thanksgiving day was coming to a close, we were feeling good, relaxed, and grateful for our lives.
The next day, Danny and I were sitting on our couch talking about going to town to purchase a phone for our house, since our cordless phones had died a few days ago. As we were discussing what we should look at getting, we suddenly heard this loud sound we didn’t know what it was and our dog started barking like crazy.
We went out on our front porch, and we saw two young men running down the road that runs in front of our house. We knew these young men. They live on our road and in our little community here on Paint Creek.
We looked over to the right side of our porch and we were struggling with what our eyes were showing us. The truck that these young men had been driving had crashed into our camper and total the camper and they totaled their truck.
I turned back to the young men running down our road and called to them. I asked them if they were ok. One of the young men yelled out that someone had run him off the road, but he was ok. They didn’t stop, they just kept running down the road. They live about a half a mile down the road from us. I figured they were running home (and they were – which we find out shortly).
I went back into our house and called 911 and reported the accident, called my son, and one of our neighbors. Then I grabbed my camera and headed over to our camper, and joined Danny.
Danny and I were stunned at what we saw and were so surprise that these young men were able to walk away from this accident with out being badly hurt or badly hurting anyone else.
Then, a white car pulled up and a young woman got out of the car, along with the two young men who had been driving the truck. They started walking over to the truck and Danny stopped then and had them wait on the other side of the road. He told them that there were full propane tanks on our camper and he was nervous about them blowing and the law (local police) was on their way and he don’t want to disturbed the scene of the accident.
These young people started telling us several different versions of what they said happened. We didn’t say much, other than trying to get one of the to sit down, because he was complaining of his back being hurt. We told him should sit and wait for the law and the ambulance to arrive.
The law, the local fire department (I’m so glad give to their fund raising drive every year, these guys are great and so helpful), a ambulance, and a wrecker showed up.
The police officer in charged, spoke with everyone involved and a few witness to try and sort things out. The police officer arresting the young man who was driving the truck, and the other young man that was in the truck was taken to the hospital for treatment of his injuries (I couldn’t see visible injuries, so I’m not sure what they were).
The young man who was driving, we were told doesn’t have any insurance, and he was driving his girlfriend truck (the young woman who showed in the white car).
We are really happy that no one was badly injured, especially any innocent by standers. Since we live in a rural community, a lot of my neighbors, walk on our road (including me), ride bikes, ride 4-wheelers, and horses on our road. We have a lot of kids who like to walk and ride their bikes on this ride. Thank goodness there wasn’t anyone out on the road when this happened.
Our road is not a major road or highway. Our road is just for our community and it dead ends at the top of our mountain. There is one road – Green Mountain Road, that branches off our road. It is a gravel road that will take you toward Greeneville, but this isn’t a major road either.
We had purchased our camper over the summer and it was an older used camper, but it was in really good shape. Danny had spent the late summer and the fall working on getting the camper in tip top shape for traveling. We were planning on using this camper next year for traveling to art shows, which is how Danny makes his living. We didn’t have insurance on it, because we had it parked and weren’t planning on using it until next spring.
These two young men are always in and out of trouble. They have created turmoil that ripples through out our little community. Most of the folks that live in our community here are good folks that are just trying hard to make a good, but simple living and live in the best way that they know how.
Hopefully balance will be restore to our little community. Despite what happened yesterday, we still have a lot to be grateful for. We have a loving family, good friends and neighbors (for the most part), we live in such a beautiful place, and we have our health.
We will remember this Thanksgiving as a Thanksgiving with a few bad apples..
Living on Paint Creek 