Friday, August 31, 2007

My date with the Home-Wrecker

So there I was, heading to work on a fairly uneventful morning. I was traveling North on Meridian Road a little before 5:30am. As I approached the intersection at Victory, I noticed flashing yellow lights from a couple of pilot cars. One of them swerved and came to a stop slightly in my lane. The car in front of me stopped and I came to a stop quite a ways behind him (maybe50 feet from the actual intersection). A couple cars were passing in the lane to my right so I just stayed where I was. It was dark out and other than the truck pulling it, there were no lights on the oversized load.

Just before it reached the intersection, the pilot cars took off and headed South. The car up a bit in my lane pulled around and took off. I could see that the load was a very wide one-story building. There were three empty lanes beside me and the house was comfortably taking up residence within them. That is until the driver decided he wanted to take up even more room and swerved toward the center of the road as he went through the intersection. About that time I also noticed that the steel I-beam that was supporting the house, was also protruding a couple feet beyond the structure itself, heading right toward me.

As the house barreled down on me (30-40 mph I'd guess), my destiny was clear, I would share the same fate as the Wicked Witch of the West. When CSI showed up, they would find me under a house with only my legs visible, my converse sparkling in the moonlight.

I reached for the shift lever to slam it into reverse, but I never made it that far, because I didn't have time to see if anybody was coming up behind me or in the other North bound lane. Then Holy-Basements Batman, the house was practically on top of me and BAM!

I was jolted back a bit but then just sat there shaking my head, thinking "That didn't just happen". I limped my truck to the side of the road and saw that the house had stopped (basically creating Meridian Road Cul-de-sac). "Sheesh!" I said to myself, "this guy must not be House Trained." About then, a lady came running around from the back porch (the drivers side) and was very apologetic. She asked if I was ok, said "I'm so sorry" and was more than happy to write down her name and number on the back of the gas receipt I handed to her. She seemed to be the "My house is your house" kind of a person; up until I asked for her insurance, that is. She said "Well, see, that's the thing...I'm gonna have to pay you out of my pocket".

Hmm, yeah, I've heard that before. I took it as "I'm sorry I don't actually have any insurance, is that a problem?" I pondered that for a moment: Would a homeowners policy cover this? About that time she turned and looked at the cul-de-sac and said "I gotta get this outta here." As they drove away, I thought "There goes the neighborhood".

So I called my wife to let her know what happened and see if she could come and save me. The truck made some noises as I pulled it to the side of the road and I couldn't open my door, so I hadn't gotten out yet. While she was looking up the number for the county sheriff, I saw one stopped at the light behind me, so I jumped out the passenger side to flag him down. Apparently somebody had called and told them that there was some dude (me) sitting on the side of the road in a wrecked truck, so the cop was coming my way already.

He had no clue what had taken place so the first thing he asked me was "So, what happened?" He was very friendly, but I sensed a bit of apprehension in his voice and couldn't help but think that he figured I had been drinking and rammed something, then pulled over.

"Well," I said, "I was stopped in the road right there and along came this house and hit me."

I thought to myself, "Wow, that might not have sounded very convincing" and had visions of walking a line and breathing into a straw.

To my surprise he didn't make me touch my nose with alternating fingertips, but instead kind of chuckled as he looked around and said "Uh, where's the house?"

In response, I pointed off into the darkness and eeked out a "Headed toward Kuna."

By this time another other police officer (from Meridian Police Dept) had joined the festivities and stated "I'm going to go after the house."

It was all very humorous in a not-so-funny sort of way.

More police stopped by briefly, including a traffic cop on a motorcycle, before continuing on to the site where the building had been pulled over.

Soon, with Dionna and the girls there to pick me up and a tow truck to pick up my now snub-nosed Silverado, I gave the officer my completed accident report. I instructed the towing guy to drop the truck off at the Chevy dealership in Boise on Fairview and we all parted ways.

On the way home we saw the house, which was now entirely blocking Amity road, hanging over onto both shoulders of the two lane road. There were a handful of miscellaneous cops there; city, county and state with lights flashing to help keep an eye on the whole process. House arrest, I suppose.

At 9am, I looked up "Chevrolet of Boise" on Fairview and called them:
The receptionist transferred me to the Service Department, which had no clue what I was talking about and said that nothing had been dropped off that morning. So I asked for the number to the Chevy body shop. He fumbled around and asked a few other people, but couldn't come up with the number. So I called the receptionist back and asked for the body shop. She sounded confused and ruffled through some papers before finally giving me a number to call.

I called that number (which answered Peterson Body Shop), they said they had no truck but that there were "two" Chevy of Boise auto body shops and she gave me the number of the other one - the number she gave me was the same number that had given me her number.

I called first number again (they answered Lithia) and they told me they didn't have a truck and furthermore didn't have a body shop any longer. She went on to tell me that Peterson Auto had purchased Lithia just two days ago and now all body work was done across the street at Peterson Body Shop (which is now technically the only Chevrolet of Boise body shop).

I called AAA to get the number of the towing company.

I called the towing company. The dispatcher chuckled and told me she had just talked to the driver about this and that, after some confusion, they told the driver to leave the truck at Chevrolet of Boise, space 23.

I called the first Chevy number again and they said that they hadn't gotten any keys turned in and that they don't even have a body shop on site.

I called the second Chevy number and they reassured me that they don't have the truck and that they don't even have numbered spaces anyway. I asked a very strait forward question: "OK, tell me one thing. Are you Chevrolet of Boise?"

To this her answer was, and I quote, "Ummm, I don't know."

Come on, even the "Would you like fries with that?" girl at McDonalds knows where she works.

Well, getting nowhere over the phone, we had to drive down to the Chevy dealer, locate my truck in the back lot and show them where it was. Both places are supposedly owned by the same company now, but didn't seem to have any coherent communication.

The Peterson Body Shop wasn't very professional and just seemed very lackadaisical (cool word). The young receptionist was more interested in how Dionna did her hair in the morning, what kind of curling iron she used and how much hair spray, than helping me. As we waited for the appraisal, she went back talking specifics about hair, then finally moved on to playing checkers on her computer (and actually told us how much she liked play games on the computer).

We did end up taking the truck to a different body shop. One that actually seemed to knew who they were and what they were talking about.

That's the story for now...here is a photo that I like to call "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition":


5 comments:

Dionna said...

Yah - I was trying to humor the receptionist so that they'd like us... HA!

Angela said...

I can't believe she just left! I can see needing to move the house out of the way, but didn't she realize that the police would be called? That is weird and then the police had to go after them...
hmm.
I would have been so frustrated with that receptionist! I would have been desperatley trying to hold back some things that needed to be said...in fact I am getting pretty angry right now. I better stop, I am sure you were frustrated enough for the both of us. :) In conclusion, I am so thankful that you are okay!

Anonymous said...

haha, with your luck at these sort of things, I'm beginning to think that god just likes to get at laugh at your pessimistic story telling. Sorry that happened. Kinda off topic, but your writing reminded me of Blue Like Jazz. You should read that book- its by Donald Miller. You might like it.

Dionna said...

Okay - so where's the picture of this hot new rod you got?

Anonymous said...

I really liked the article, and the very cool blog