Ice and Rabbits Don't Mix

In 1969, I was a member of the SIU-Edwardsville cross country team. We were returning from a meet in Chicago, Illinois. South of Springfield on I-55, we ran into freezing rain. We thought that we would make it home before it got to bad. We were wrong.

As we approached a long curve to the right, a small rabbit ran out in front of our vehicle. Our driver swerved to miss it. As he did, we went into a 360 degree spin. I was sitting in the middle of the back seat. As we straightened out, we continued our slide but, was now going to our right and down about a 60 foot embankment. I ducked my head, as I felt we were going to begin rolling over at any second.

You know how individuals say that they see their life pass over their eyes? That is what happened to me, as the car kept going farther down the embankment. I quickly reviewed many events, that had happened in my first 19 years on the earth.

We Didn't Roll
To my amazement, our vehicle never rolled over. We came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the embankment. We hit an underground water culvert.

We all got out of the vehicle and started checking on each other. We wanted to make sure that we were all okay. We walked around the vehicle, to examine the damage. To our surprise, the car looked fine. Why we never rolled, we could not understand.

No Cellphones
In those days cellphones didn't exist. We had no way to contact the other vehicle and our coach. They were ahead of us. We decided to send one team mate for help. The rest of us thought that maybe we could drive and push the vehicle up the embankment. So that is what we tried. To our amazement, it worked. Instead of driving straight up, we attacked the hill along the side at an angle. Once we reached the highway, we quickly picked up our team mate and continued our journey.

The Next Rabbit
About ten miles down the highway, we came across another rabbit in the middle of the road. This time we didn't stop and sent the little fellow on his way to rabbit heaven. We all held our breath, as we heard the soft thud. About a minute later, we all began to laugh and chuckle.

Conversation
The rest of the journey was spent discussing how we each thought that our time was up. To this day, whenever we get together, that event is discussed in great detail. Why we are alive today, the good lord only knows. I guess it just wasn't our time.