One Saturday morning we got a State Police call to a tractor-trailer/automobile collision, which is never a good call.

We came up to the scene, which is at the entrance to a local general store on a major east-west route, and the car is sitting in the center of the road, completely destroyed and cut up by the "jaws of life", looking like a fatality.

We stopped to speak to the officer in charge, who informed us the driver was taken to the hospital, but did not mention his condition. We proceeded to load it onto the truck and strap all the scrap debris onto what was left of the car.

Once the vehicle was loaded, I inquired as to the name of the driver as we had picked up his personal belongings, including skis, cds, etc. The officer told me the man's name and it dawned on me that he was my son's coach. His brother is a firefighter/EMT who helped extricate him from the car. As it turns out, he was only slightly injured and very shook up. Apparently, it took a great deal of effort by the local rescue squads to release him from the twisted lump of metal that used to be his car.

When he was released from the car, he wanted to walk to the ambulance, but the rescue workers refused to allow that, to prevent possible further injury.

Within 2 hours of us returning from the accident scene, he was back at our lot examining his vehicle. A few days later he brought several of his students to view the wreck as an example of inattention on the road, as he was looking to the right at some cedar logs while turning to the left to get a cup of coffee before his last skiing trip to Sugarloaf of the year - straight into the path of an 18-wheeler moving van. The tractor-trailer was going about 50-55 mph, which is the speed limit in that area.

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