I was taking a little trip over to my nephew’s house last night after supper. Getting dark around here about 6 in the evening now and it was about 8 before I left. I live kind of out in the country, if you can call it that any more, so there aren’t any streetlights on the two lane blacktop roads. We’re not so far out that there isn’t any traffic, just the opposite. All the pilgrims have been moving in and at 8 o’clock in the evening there’s a steady stream making their way home from jobs in the city.
So I get a bout 5miles from home rounding a bend at the top of a hill and running along at about 45mph in a 55mph zone where everyone pushes it to 80. When all of a sudden, all the lights on the truck go completely dead on me, I hadn’t touched anything, not the light switch nor dimmer. So there I was rolling along with, no headlight, no streetlights, the moon isn’t up yet, and it was as black as the proverbial well diggers you know what!
Luckily out of the corner of me eye; I’d caught a gravel drive off to the right just when I went blind, the only drive for a quarter mile. I hoped that I had judged the distance covered by my panic stop and made a hard right. I could see headlights a few hundred yards behind me back around the bend and at the bottom of the hill and I dint want someone ripping up on me at 80 with the truck stopped dark in the road. Thank the lord I felt the wheels sliding on the stones so I figured at least I’d caught some of the drive. There is deep ditch off to both sides of the road and drive so I got lucky.
Once I got my self calmed down I pushed the light switch in and pulled it out and every thing came back on. The guy’s house was a couple hundred feet off the road and he must have thought I was nuts flashing the headlights on and off over and over for the next 5minuets. I couldn’t get them to go dead again no matter how much I sat there pushing and twisting.
Need less to say the rest of the trip and the ride back were a little tense. And for the next six months I’ll probably avoid night driving like the plague.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny G
Sandwich, IL