You can't make it up...

My aunt drives a hearse.

She is a funeral director in Wichita and had a memorial service planned in Washington, Kan. (For those of you who are geographically challenged, that's up north next to my home county.) The service was at 4 p.m. so she thought it would be a great opportunity to head over to Republic to see my grandparents. This was bad idea, number one.

My aunts husband tagged along with her and was behind the wheel of the hearse. This was bad idea, number two. The reason this is a sketchy idea is that the husband has had some, shall we say, meetings with various members of state law enforcement and he has what most would categorize as lead feet.

As they make their way over a county they detour to a road affectionately known as deer alley for us natives. We don't drive the road unless necessary and when you do the car does not venture over 45 miles per hour. I guess the husband didn't get that memo. The hearse slammed into a large deer, and rendered it near totaled. Now, most people would not drive a totaled vehicle or even think to drive it. Not the husband. He thought he could limp it back to Republic which was less than ten miles away. Luckily he was talked out of it by the county sheriff.

This is where things start to get weird.

My parents, who were waiting on said aunt and husband to arrive for dinner, get a call that they have smashed the deer and head over to help out. My dad has a slightly newer truck and he's pretty particular about it, like most people are when they get new vehicles. He gets to the scene and pulls up behind the hearse and hops out to access the damage with everyone else. They wait along the side of the road for the tow truck to show up.

When the tow truck, or flatbed wrecker, shows up he backs up to the hearse and takes a look. With the verbal assistance from the husband the hearse is hooked up and ready to roll. As the wench pulls the hearse onto the flatbed they realize there is a problem when the ass end of the hearse starts scraping the road. The hearse was too long. The wrecker driver, whom I went to high school with, looks and does some thinking and then realizes he cannot successfully finish the job. The husband does more verbal coaching and at this time my mom and dad turn when they heard a popping sound.

The wench snapped and sent the hearse rolling backward off the truck and into my dads pickup. Now they have an accident, at an accident. My mom says dad stayed calm, but I really have a hard time believing that. He may not have been visually upset, but I bet in his head he was going berserk. The husband runs over to the car and jumps in to move it (with the sheriff standing right there) and my aunt goes berserk yelling at the husband. Then everything stops. My dad looks at the sheriff and says, well hell I don't even have my drivers license.

The wrecker driver feels terrible and he calls for backup. They wait around and work the second accident while they await the arrival of an actual tow truck and in no time at all he shows up and pulls in front of the flat bed and kills the engine. When a plan of action is in place he gets back into his truck and the tow truck won't start.

So now on the side of the road, and a narrow one at that, you have a dead tow truck, a flatbed wrecker, a smashed up hearse, a bent up Chevy truck and a sheriff with blinking blue lights. Now, say that again only put a familiar Christmas tune to it...

Needless to say, they finally got the hearse on the tow truck (a belt had come off so an easy fix) and it was towed to Belleville. Dad's truck was driven from the scene and should be getting fixed for free, my aunt and the husband headed back south and they never did find that damn deer.

I can't wait to read the Belleville Telescope in the coming weeks.

-MO-