I’ve been inspired by Scott to write about a past event. I will warn you that this story wasn’t funny when it happened, and although a long time has passed, it’s still not funny.

When I was a sophomore in college my car committed suicide. It was only 9 years old. That’s the only explanation I have. It caught on fire one afternoon when I was driving home from the university at spring break. I went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yep, a Cornhusker.

I bought this car when I was in high school. It was a 1979 Plymouth Horizon. Like the car at the bottom of the picture. It was white with red trim. Manual. Boy, did I love the control and power of the manual transmission. I haven’t had one since. The car began breaking down more often after the first year I bought it. Little things at first, like the clutch. When I went to college, I never knew when I’d arrive at my mother’s or school.

The car liked to break down in the middle of nowhere. But really, anywhere between Grand Island and Lincoln on I-80 is the middle of nowhere. The car had a knack though for dying somewhere between exits. The next exit might take you to a very small town about 20 miles off the highway. With all those break downs I accepted rides from anyone who could help (truck drivers to police) and then had the car towed. I never thought about how unsafe that could possibly be at the time. I never had a problem.

On this particular day, it was unseasonably hot for March. The car broke down just before I was halfway home. I got the car to a garage. I called my mother because the mechanic told me it would be hours before it was fixed. They fixed it in about 45 minutes. I left the shop and passed my mother on the way. It’s a good thing she was following me that day.

I noticed something funny about 30 miles from home, which meant less than 25 miles from the shop. The engine light came on again, but when I pulled over, I had no brakes and smoke began to fill the car. I parked the car on a pole. You know those poles on the side of the road. I didn’t want to have the car go onto the grass. It was dry and would have caught fire. Luckily I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. It always stuck. The smoke was thick almost immediately. My mother stopped and a truck driver stopped. The guy ran with a fire extinguisher, but it was too late. The three of us grabbed my stuff out of the car and watched it burn.

The police finally showed to move the cars over a lane. The fire leaped into the second lane on occasion. Before the police came people just kept going, using both lanes of the highway. The fire department from the local small town took 45 minutes to get there. During that time, we watched the glass pop, the tires explode (tires sound like guns when they blow) and the nosy people hanging their heads out the car. I found that the most annoying. It seemed to me that people wanted to see a body.

The car was burnt to a barely recognizable version of itself. The chrome on the wheels was gone. Not in a puddle on the concrete. Gone! Evaporated. After the fire was out, we opened the hood—all the aluminum was gone. Evaporated. All that was left of the tires were the steel belts.

I had nightmares for two weeks after that. This time I was caught in the fire. When I got back to school, I failed a test in a class I had an “A” in. I got a “C” by the end. I felt lucky to not have been hurt, but it took a long time to stop thinking about it. It was several months before I had another car.

I was lucky with all the problems with that car that nothing ever happened. I’m not unique. I’ve met lots of people who have had near misses. They are all thankful for a while, maybe even change a few things in their lives. Then they go about business as usual. So have I.