Of Roads, Rides, and Wrecks

In 1926 a nine year old road was designated as US 31 that would eventually connect Spanish Fort, Alabama, near the Gulf of Mexico, with I-75 near the Mackinac Bridge, which opened in 1957 in Michigan. Originally part of the Dixie Highway, it has since become a major north/south thoroughfare, with bypasses around numerous cities, towns, and villages along its length.

The Bypass, as it is usually called, is mostly a four lane freeway from South Bend, Indiana, northward. After several plan changes it eventually worked its way into southwestern lower Michigan, bypassing Niles and Buchanan in 1979 and Berrien Springs in 1992. Various lawsuits hampered the project until it finally reached Napier Avenue, just northwest of Sodus, in 2003.

The next phase, if there is one, will connect this portion of the freeway, also known as the St. Joseph Valley Parkway, with I-196, also known as the Gerald R. Ford Freeway, just northeast of Benton Harbor, leaving only one last section in Michigan, between Holland and Ferrysburg, below freeway standards. The latest plan changes intend to avoid disturbing the natural habitat of the endangered Mitchell's satyr butterfly when the Bypass also intersects with I-94 at that time, at a projected cost of $90 million.

However, little progress has been made in the last ten years, and no money has been earmarked for it in the state's next five-year projected budget. It may actually become considered finished as is.

This is my story about how the Bypass affected my wife Carol and me.

In 1976 we bought an old farmhouse on Watson Road in Sodus, a quiet and peaceful farming community between Benton Harbor and Eau Claire. Although we only owned 1¼ acres, we had several large trees, open fields on either side of us, and woods across the street. People driving down our old country road couldn't even tell we were there until they were almost past us. The nights were incredibly dark, with only the moon and stars for light, other than what little spilled out of our own windows.

After a couple of years we began to hear noises about the Bypass coming, but no one knew exactly when or where it would actually end up, so we didn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. As a young family, we had other, more pressing concerns. After a while we simply forgot all about it.

In 1994 we finally found out where the Bypass would go when we and others near the planned route received official notices to attend a meeting at the Sodus Township Hall. Rumor had it that the state of Michigan would buy up some properties as they had elsewhere along the route. By then we were actually hoping to get an offer.

But it was not to be. The far corner of the adjoining twenty acre property just west of us was within the designated route, and the state would buy that part. But several decades ago our little portion of land was originally part of what had been forty acres, now only that twenty, and so even though we didn't get an offer, we got a notice, anyway.

The surveyor plans showed our house would be 400' from the state property and 700' from the nearest lane, not close enough for the state to buy but too close for our comfort. We were very disappointed. But then years went by during which seemingly nothing happened.

Later that same year, 1994, we bought a 1993 dark red Grand Prix. Carol loved that car. I got to pay for it but only got to drive it after work and on weekends. Carol's mother had a stroke, which took up a lot of our time helping her to live mostly independently over the next ten years.

In 1998 we paid off our house, and the next year bought a 1996 Buick Regal, which made our by then paid off Grand Prix my go-to-work car.

One day in the Spring of 2002, without warning, bulldozers began knocking down the huge, old, trees across the street in front of our house, knocking down our seclusion along with them.

Our road would soon become a dead end to make room for the Bypass, and so a new road, to be named Rock Edwards, was being readied. It would connect our road to the one basically parallel to ours but to our south, which was being refashioned and renamed Sodus Parkway.

Someone had decided that Rock Edwards would T-bone our road right in front of our house. We were not consulted, and we were not happy! We could see no reason why this new road couldn't have been placed fifty yards either east or west, T-boning our road in front of an open field either way. Why right in front of our house? I could find no one who would either take responsibility or give us a good answer. All we got was useless sympathy and an endless runaround.

Interestingly, the other end of Rock Edwards is less than a hundred yards east of the northbound entrance ramp onto the Bypass. Both Rock Edwards and that entrance ramp have the same basic shape and length, a gentle curve to the left about half a mile long, and are basically parallel to each other. That would come into play some ten years later.

Within days of the beginning of the construction of Rock Edwards our road was dead ended. For nearly the rest of that summer getting to and from almost anywhere became a huge, time-consuming, hassle. We had no choice but to take a circuitous detour several miles out of our way to the east in order to reach our normal destinations, virtually all of which were to our west.

The amount of dust that was kicked up by this road construction was also an unexpected hassle. It was like living in the desert with a gigantic dust cloud everywhere, every day, even limiting visibility at times. That summer was a real scorcher, and the constant south wind always seemed to take dead aim at our house. A thick film of dirt covered everything for months. Our cars were constantly in need of washing, and nearly every time we went anywhere we had to clean all the windows first just so we could see where we were going.

There was no hanging out laundry. Sometimes it was even difficult to breathe outside. Fortunately, our central air conditioning meant no house windows had to be open, so all that airborne dirt stayed mostly outside. But it was nearly impossible to look out our windows. Mowing the lawn often required taking a shower afterward, and getting dust in your eyes was a constant risk. Any rain was always a welcome relief.

Carol managed to talk one of the road crew bosses into spreading some of their excess roadway base slag over our dirt driveway, effectively building it up almost as if it had been paved. I think they did that in an attempt to make peace, to mollify her to some extent, and to show that they really weren't the bad guys. Carol could be a pretty strong force to be reckoned with when she got her dander up, and her dander was way, way, up. But that did pacify her some.

By late fall Rock Edwards was finished, and so was our privacy. At night, the headlights of cars would shine right through our front windows before turning onto our road. We talked to a neighbor about buying some tall evergreen trees from him to block the view, but it was too late in the year for that. Any other remedy we might try would have to wait until the following spring, in 2003.

We tried various remedies that following year, all of which failed. One idea I had was to make a fence out of 4'x 8' wooden lattice sections, propping them up vertically with the intention of planting ivy vines along the bottom so that eventually it would look like the outfield wall at Wrigley Field. I hoped in the meantime the wind would pass right through those lattice sections, but instead it kept knocking them down before they ever settled securely in place.

By fall that same neighbor we had talked to the year before helped a friend of his replace eighteen 8' long sections of a 6' tall wooden slat fence. He then stacked the old ones on a flat-bed trailer and offered them to us for free. I spent the next few days putting them up, securing them in place with 4”x 4” 8' posts, two per section, sunk two feet in the ground. We finally had regained some privacy.

I left the fence unpainted because I liked its weathered, rustic appearance, which seemed to blend in well with our trees. But Carol was still not a happy camper. She was sure that sooner or later some drunk would blow right through the stop sign and end up in our living room. I was sure our large trees would protect us, but still, the whole thing was mostly a giant nuisance. But not completely.

Both Rock Edwards and the refashioned Sodus Parkway were actually a lot safer in the winter than our old roads were. The Bypass really didn't increase traffic noise very much, and so far no drunk had ended up in our yard, let alone our living room. Our fence had restored some of our privacy so, all in all, we could live with the changes, albeit begrudgingly. It wasn't as if we had any choice, anyway.

In March of 2003 Carol became infatuated with Saturns, and also grew tired of our full-size 1996 Buick Regal, so we traded it in on a much smaller 2000 gray Saturn Sedan OS2. It was our Silver Bullet, and looked just like a real sports car, at least to us. Carol loved it. I got to pay for that one, too, but didn't get to drive it any more than I did the Grand Prix or Regal when they were our main cars.

Over the next few years some of life's difficulties seemed to increase. On Labor Day weekend in 2004, Carol's mother died at the age of 82. Among other things, we inherited her 1989 Dodge Dakota pickup truck, still known today as Grandma's truck. In May of 2007, two days before our 35th wedding anniversary, I suffered a mild heart attack. Just six weeks later, in July, we discovered that Carol had cancer, and after a gut wrenching, roller coaster year she died the following August in 2008 at the age of only 54. The next month the economy imploded, which eventually cost me my job the following July in 2009. This effectively forced me into an early retirement at the age of 58. On a relatively lighter note, in the middle of May in 2012 I was hit in the head by a golf ball that could have killed me, but fortunately didn't. But summers had evolved into a nearly yearly season of dread. What would happen next?

In April of 2012 I finally had to get rid of my old Grand Prix. I had had it for eighteen years, but the repair shop was afraid to put it on a lift anymore since, after nearly 300,000 miles, its overly rusty frame underneath was so weak. I felt a slight twinge of sadness as I watched it get carefully towed away. Until our Saturn, it had been the best, most reliable car we had ever owned. Now, with half the miles but also with $2000 in various necessary repairs, Grandma's truck became my second vehicle.

A month or so later, on the pleasantly warm but humid Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, I was at home watching the eleven o'clock news when suddenly I heard the piercingly loud screeching of tires followed by an even louder crash right outside my window. My son Josh and I raced outside and found a Blazer sitting nearly where my Saturn had been parked, which had been rammed from behind and knocked some twenty feet forward, sideways, and up against a small tree.

I opened the Blazer's front passenger door to see if anyone was hurt. Only one man was inside (I'll call him Martin.) Barely awake, he claimed he wasn't driving. I couldn't tell if he was drunk or high, but he seemed to be unhurt. He asked where he was and what had happened as I helped him out of his Blazer. “Oh, my God!” was all he could say when I showed him what he had done.

I also noticed that he looked and sounded Mexican. I secretly but uneasily hoped he was not one of the many temporary migrant farm workers we have around here every summer. It would increase my chances of this accident being made right if he was a year-round local with a full-time job.

Josh called the police, and while the three of us stood there, waiting, Josh and I decided to use flashlights to try to assess the damage to my car. While our attention was foolishly diverted, for just a minute or two, Martin quietly walked away into the dark night. I couldn't believe it.

About ten minutes later a police officer arrived (I'll call him Officer Williams.) I apologized for letting Martin slip away, but that didn't bother him. “You never know,” he smiled philosophically. “What if he'd had a knife or a gun?”

He radioed another officer and they both searched with flashlights along the roads and in the fields for over an hour to no avail. It was clear that Martin was not going to be found that night.

At one point Officer Williams was searching through the Blazer while the other officer was searching deep in the fields just to our west, next to the Bypass. Suddenly a gun shot cracked from that direction. Officer Williams hopped in his car and raced down a long dirt driveway toward the sound. It turned out that an older disabled lady who lives back there shot a raccoon and was surprised when two cops suddenly stepped out of the dark night and onto her front porch with their service revolvers drawn.

When Martin walked off into that same dark night he left everything behind, including a cellphone on the front seat of the Blazer, both of which were registered to the same name. An Eau Claire home address was on the Michigan vehicle registration, and workplace uniforms were in the back. I was relieved to conclude that he probably was a local with a full-time job, assuming all of this stuff was his and not borrowed or stolen.

There were also small, open and empty liquor bottles and marijuana in his Blazer. The police car's on-board computer showed that he had let his vehicle insurance lapse in January, and he had been arrested for DUI by this same Officer Williams just two years before. He was currently driving on a suspended license. All that plus his leaving the scene of an accident meant that he was in big-time trouble. Just as soon as he could be found.

Officer Williams called a wrecker to haul Martin's Blazer away. Then we all called it a night.

It turned out that Martin spent the night in a nearby field. Saturday morning he awoke to a misty drizzle and rumbling thunder, and then walked toward his house in Eau Claire about six miles away. The police checked several times over the next two days but were always told he wasn't there, and that no one had seen him. I doubted that that was true, but even so, eventually he would have to go home.

That same Saturday morning I shot pictures and a video of my car's extensive damage. The trunk was smashed in, as was the back window, but, surprisingly, the back seat was not caved in at all. My golf clubs were in the trunk, but only my putter got broken. My car's frame was sprung so neither back door would open. Neither would the driver door, since it was pinned against the tree.

But the passenger front door did open, so I worked my way into the driver's seat and started my car up. Twisted plastic and metal pressed against the rear tires, but not enough to keep them from turning, so I drove away from the tree, circled behind my fence and parked next to my driveway where my wrecked car could be easily towed away.

When Martin's wrecked Blazer bounced off my car it came to rest side by side up against Grandma's truck, denting in its driver door a little. But it still opened and closed, albeit not quite as tightly as before, and its unbroken window still rolled up and down, so I could live with that. With a bemused sigh of resignation I expected that I would probably win a cash judgment I would never see.

In spite of the light rain, or maybe because of it, Martin's skid marks could clearly be seen on the wrong side of Rock Edwards. Martin later admitted to Officer Williams that he thought he was on the Bypass entrance ramp and was accelerating when he suddenly ran out of road. Slamming on his brakes, he clipped about a foot off of my fence, just missed one of my large trees by about five feet that surely would have killed him, and plowed right into my parked Saturn. Being groggy, he hadn't seen the STOP AHEAD sign down the road, the STOP sign at the end of the road, nor the big, yellow, double arrow sign that's in my yard in time.

He also missed my house by only fifteen feet. I could just hear Carol saying,“See, I told you so!” Clearly, I really did need more protection, even if it did take a decade for her to be proven right.

Other than when I hit a deer in 1979, I had only been in two or three minor fender benders over the previous forty-five years. How many can say, as I now can, that they've actually had a car totaled while parked in their own driveway?

I called the Road Commission but they said they wouldn't put up a guard rail. They are designed only to run parallel with traffic to keep people from drifting too far off the road. They are not designed for head-on collisions. A rare exception is where Hilltop Road T-bones Red Arrow Highway. There a guardrail protects against a cliff before Lake Michigan, which someone had driven over to his death a few years ago. In my case, apparently a house and large trees aren't dangerous enough.

Nor am I as important as that Mitchell's satyr butterfly, at least not worth reasonable protection.

I thought about making a fake tree stump out of seven 4”x 4” 8' posts strapped together with thick, heavy rope and sunk about halfway into the ground in line with the end of my fence, right where Martin had crashed through, but when I mentioned it to the Road Commission and Officer Williams, they both pointed out that if someone hit it and was killed I'd likely be liable. I could lose my house.

I had to do something, though. So I bought the brightest, shiniest, most reflective white outdoor paint I could find. It took eight gallons and three days to paint that fence. Then I took ten 3” red, round, reflectors and screwed them onto the end of my fence next to my driveway in the design of a large, red arrow pointing east. Nighttime visibility was definitely improving.

On Sunday night, two days after the accident, Officer Williams stopped by to inform me that Martin had just been arrested at his house. I suspected he had been there all along but had finally gotten tired of delaying the inevitable.

Then Officer Williams offered to come by the next morning, Memorial Day, to take pictures of my wrecked car. I told him I had already taken plenty and a video, and asked if he had a flash drive on him. He did, so I invited him inside and copied my files onto it.

So far everything seemed to be falling into place. About all I really needed now was another car.

On Tuesday I contacted State Farm Insurance, but since my Saturn did not have full coverage, being twelve years old, they would not send an adjuster to give an estimate of its damage. Since I had taken pictures, they suggested I might as well get it towed away.

That was a little sadder than losing my Grand Prix had been. That Saturn was the last major purchase Carol and I had made together, and so losing it this way was an unexpected degree of separation from our past. Both cars she had loved were now gone in less than two months.

Later that week my brother told me that he no longer needed his nearly mint condition 2006 Grand Prix. He offered it to me for what he owed on it, which was actually slightly less than what Kelley Blue Book said it was worth. The timing was perfect for both of us so I bought it right away.

Virtually the same shade of gray as my Saturn and with similar sports car like styling, only a bit larger, it looks like a melding of both cars I had just lost, only updated and much improved. I know Carol would have loved this car most of all.

Early on she had bought a black metal license plate trim that had a spider web design on it for our Saturn. Somehow it had survived the crash, so I put it on my new-to-me Grand Prix to create a small connection to her, even if nearly four years after her death.

I then called the Prosecutor's Office to see what was happening with Martin's case. They told me that since he hadn't been found for two days he couldn't be charged with another DUI. But there was still plenty against him. They then asked me to provide a detailed account of how the accident happened, the value of the Saturn at the time of the accident, and an estimate of the damages. Even though Martin had confessed to Officer Williams, at his initial court appearance he had pled not guilty.

I printed out some of the pictures I had taken and took them to the repair shop my insurance agent suggested. They printed out an estimate for about $4000 damage, nearly twice its pre-wrecked value. I put that, the printout of the Kelley Blue Book value, the pictures, and my own written account of the accident in a big manila envelope and hand-delivered it to the Prosecutor's Office.

Then I waited to hear something. It was now about the middle of July.

While I waited, I decided to call the Road Commission again about another issue I had never complained about. When the road builders connected Rock Edwards to Watson Road right in front of our house they also built a turning lane, running the length of the front of our property, which moved our mailbox across the street that much further off the actual road.

The problem is that in the winter the snow plows mostly ignore that turning lane, and so not only d\o they not plow it, they fill it up even deeper from the other lanes they do plow. Often it takes me longer to snow blow in front of my mailbox than it does my own driveway. If I move it away from that turning lane, it will have to go to the far edge of my property rather than in front of my house.

That turning lane is an unnecessary safety feature. I had more oncoming traffic when my road wasn't a dead end, and the only traffic coming from the west now is just from that one house that old disabled lady lives in. There is no need for that turning lane, and I'm the only one with one, all because Rock Edwards T-bones Watson Road in front of my house. But would I be able to get it removed?

On the last day of July a Road Commission truck came by and replaced that single STOP sign with two brighter, more reflective ones, one on each side of Rock Edwards, as well as a bigger, more reflective, yellow double arrow sign for my yard. They also replaced the STOP AHEAD sign further down Rock Edwards with two more reflective ones. Now if someone flies down on the wrong side of that road they will still pass right by big bright signs. Those plus my fence changes make the whole area look like Las Vegas at night. It should be impossible to not see all that now. I hope.

That very night Officer Williams came over with four subpoenas for Martin's trial, scheduled for the following week. He told me to call the Courthouse hotline the night before each possible trial date to see if I needed to appear as the victim/witness. Coincidentally, the third of those four dates fell on the fourth anniversary of Carol's death. But life goes on, and so does its demands, whether we like it or not.

Officer Williams was impressed with my newly painted white fence and the red reflector arrow.

I called all four nights but apparently no trial had been scheduled after all.

The following week I called the Prosecutor's Office. They said a plea deal had been offered to Martin that would include $2061 restitution to me but no jail time for him. That was fine by me if he had a family. Nor did I want him to lose his job while in jail. There would be no trial if he accepted.

By the middle of September, after having heard and received nothing, I called the Prosecutor's Office again. They said the plea deal had been accepted, and that I should call the Victim's Assistance Office next. I did, but they said all they could do was send Martin an official letter urging him to pay.

My next option, if needed, would be Small Claims Court. But even then there would be no guarantee of restitution. Carol and I were told something similar back in 1976 when we successfully sued our landlady at the time. She readily complied, thinking she had to. Would Martin do the same?

In the first week of November I called the Victim's Assistance Office again and left a message. The next day they called back and said that Martin had agreed to pay $60 per month minimum until the full restitution of $2061 was made. He had in fact made his first payment to the Financial Office just three days before, and that I should receive my first check from them in a day or so.

Later that very day I got my first $60 check in the mail. At this rate it will be almost three years before I get full restitution, assuming he continues to pay, but it's more than I thought I'd get, anyway.

I called the Road Commission a couple of more times that month about that turning lane and left messages, but by late November they stopped returning my calls.

In early December a two inch snowfall brought out the plows for the first time that winter season. One of the drivers seemed to spend a little extra time plowing in front of my house. After he left I walked outside and saw that that turning lane in front of my mailbox had been plowed. Mostly.

I still wanted that turning lane removed, but if the Road Commission would plow it I figured that would work. I wondered, though, how long it would be before a snow plow just passed right by it? I knew that on that day I would have to call them again.

The snow plows did plow that turning lane the next two or three times out, but then they didn't, so I called the Road Commission again. They said they were trying to get some agreement from the Post Office to move my mailbox and would call me back. Before they did, they apparently radioed a snow plow driver, because within minutes one showed up and plowed that turning lane. I thought, if they really don't want to plow that lane why not just get rid of it? I would prefer that, anyway.

Two days later the Road Commission finally called back, ironically while I was out snow blowing in front of my mailbox again. They left a message saying it was actually not their responsibility to plow “to the curb,” as they put it, but that the Post Office would have no problem if I moved my mailbox ten to twelve feet to the west to avoid the widest part of that turning lane. I resigned myself to that solution, but I figured I'd have to move it at least twenty feet in order for it to make any difference.

This could have been settled before winter. Since it wasn't, I expected to have to wait until spring for the weather to break. But at the end of January we experienced an unusually warm 60 degree day, so Josh and I took advantage of that and moved my mailbox about twenty feet to the west.

I still have to snow blow in front of it, but not nearly as much as before. So far, I've heard no complaints from the Post Office about my moving it too far, and now the snow plows can mostly ignore that turning lane that didn't need to be built in the first place.

Of course, Rock Edwards didn't need to be built right in front of my house, either, putting my property at risk any time someone flies down it. And he doesn't have to be drunk, either. I've had friends and relatives, in full control of their faculties and in broad daylight, more than once mistakenly start to get on the Bypass entrance ramp when they intended to take Rock Edwards to my house. So the reverse can certainly happen again, especially at night, by another drunk driver.

In any event, that old adage has been all too clearly affirmed; you really can't fight city hall.

P.S. Martin stopped making payments in February, and ignored two letters from the Financial Office. He then paid $120 at his April 18 show-cause court date, but only $25 bi-weekly since June.

So far, my replacement car has been just fine. On weekends and holidays I park it more behind that tree Martin barely missed. Every now and then the birds perched overhead express their objection.

And the beat goes on.