My brother took me back to the scene where he experienced the scariest moment of his life. It was a beautiful day as the sun lit up the road revealing the markings of what had taken place the night before. There were long black marks on the road where his tires squealed as he mashed down so hard on the breaks hoping it would be enough to stop before he hit the ditch. I remember looking at the ditch where the metal of his jeep slammed into the fine undisturbed mound of dirt. A little ways down the ditch there were more marks in the dirt from where the jeep came crashing down after flipping backwards in the air. The jeep was totaled and was taken to a junk yard in the back of a dealership. Looking at the markings and recreating that night in our minds he found a rock that looked misplaced and wedged in the dirt. He picked it up and held it in his hands then turned and looked at me. A few days before the crash, his girlfriend had given him a rock which was with him when he wrecked. Although it was just a rock with a simple message engraved on it he was overjoyed to have found it. It was a weird feeling how such an insignificant place a few days before could hold so much meaning to his and my life today. He was a lucky person to be standing looking at the place where he could have lost his life.
A few days after visiting the long and winding road where he wrecked, he took me to the junkyard to see the jeep. Walking up to the wreckage I remember it was still in one piece, but badly broken. The jeep was sitting upright on its tires now when a few hours before went soaring through the air and landed on its fiberglass top which saved my brother’s life. The whole jeep was bowing in the middle and looked almost like it was going to fold in half any second. There was mud splattered so thick over the windows it was hard to see inside. The fiberglass hard top was torn up in the spots where it hit the ditch as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Looking at this simple piece of the jeep it was amazing that it is what saved my brother’s life. The police reported that if the soft top been on the jeep instead, there is little chance my brother would still be alive today. The back glass window was busted out which is how he and the two other passengers got out of the car.
As I opened the passenger door and looked inside I saw the back seat was completely busted out as if it had never been there. The roll bar, which is the bar going across the top middle portion of the jeep to protect the top from caving in, was situated perfectly as if it hadn’t been moved. As I looked at the fiberglass top of the jeep I saw where my brother had laid after he blacked out. He described it to me as when the jeep hit the ditch his head slammed forward into the steering wheel breaking his nose. He blacked out as the jeep flipped in the air and landed upside down. He woke back up and unbuckled his seatbelt with the hand he had free. His other hand was clamped between the top and a metal bar of his jeep causing three of his fingers to break. As he unbuckled his seatbelt he fell to the top of the jeep where he blacked out once again. When I was looking at the jeep it was evident he had broken his nose by of the amount of dried blood contrasting against the white top. He can’t believe he made it out of the wreck alive, and the police were just as astonished. Looking at the wreckage we all realized how lucky he is and how quickly life is jeopardized by the simple mistake of driving too fast on a dark winding road.
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