How to age ten years in a single night

I will try to tell this story as accurately and detailed as I can. This happened in 1988. I aged about 10 years overnight as a result of this incident and is one of the big reasons why the excitement of patrol duty faded. Here goes:

On the weekends, I worked a shift that split the evening shift and the night shift. 7pm-3:30am. It ensured that, in what was our busiest time, there was always two officers on duty during peak hours. I loved working that shift and generally would stay over and ride in the car of the night shift officer, Carl Butler. Now Carl was a huge man, about 6'6" and close to 300 lbs. He also had a head as large as a watermelon, but it was in proportion to his size. His hands were the size of dinner plates. They needed to be as he carried a Smith and Wesson 25-5 .45 Long Colt with a 6" barrel. He used to make fun of the fact that I preferred semi-automatics, as he told me, "A revolver never jams". As big as he was made him an imposing figure to criminals but a comforting figure to those he worked with. Just his sheer size would often be enough to defuse a bad situation. He worked nights for well over 20 years and absolutely loved it. He did have some annoying traits and habits. He smoke AC Grenadier cigars and they absolutely reeked as did his car. And, he would fart in the police car and lock the windows so that they could not be rolled down, laughing like hell the whole time as you were gagging. These, as well as drowning himself in Old Spice cologne really had to be experienced if you rode with him. But, he was one helluva good officer and turned out to be a great friend.

It was late in the summer of 1988. I was working in the little town in western Jefferson County called Graysville. It was a really small, country community of about 1500 people. It was also one of the most segregated cities in Alabama. The white people and the black people lived in totally different communities and they never, and I mean never, ventured out of them except to go the grocey store, post office, or leave the city. The city is cut in half by US Hwy 78. It, at the time, was the quickest way to get to Memphis from Birmingham and was always busy. Now, on the weekends, all we had to do was cruise Hwy 78 and we would be bound to either run into a DUI, an accident, or some kind of criminal activity that was taking place at the little convenience stores that were on it. Bad thing was, that almost every weekend, we had a fatal car accident along this highway.

The county west of Jefferson along Hwy 78 was Walker County. And it was a dry county meaning that no alcohol could be sold within the county limits. It was a haven for some of the most gap toothed red necks you have ever seen. Every sterotypical red neck that has been portrayed on TV was probably based on a Walker county red neck. At one time, 20/20 did a story about Walker County. The story was about where was the cheapest place that you could have a person murdered. The answer was Walker County, Alabama. The people that lived there were actually proud of that story. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, there was a man cutting grass on a riding lawn mower in Walker County. ([url]http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jul/29/news/mn-60726[/url]) Someone had placed a bomb on the friggin lawn mower, which exploded, killing him and his dog. They also tried to get his wife by placing an explosive in the front wheel well of her Ford Expedition. When she went to get it serviced for a front end noise, the service tech discovered it. It had failed to explode. No one was ever arrested for that. And they had a lot of murders that went unsolved. This is just one of many.[url]http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/l/lawson_carrie.html[/url]

If you google Walker County Alabama or Jasper Alabama, you will know the area that I am talking about. So, all the Walker County red necks that wanted to party with alcohol would drive to Birmingham to go to the night clubs and bars there. After they were shit-faced drunk, they would then drive back home to Walker County. And that is the reason we had so many fatalities on that 10 mile stretch of road between Graysville and Walker County. So, I was working this shift one Saturday night. For some reason, it had been fairly quiet all night. At around 2:30am I went to the station to start my nightly reports. We had to report nightly on stuff like, "how many miles driven per shift", "what type calls we answered", "weather conditions", and any prisoners that we had placed into custody. So, I was sitting at my desk filling out my reports, thinking my shift was just about done. Carl was sitting in the dispatchers office smoking one of those damn cigars, stinking the whole damn office up. At around 3:00am we got a call to assist the State Troopers. They had received a call that a drunk driver had gotten on Hwy 78 going the wrong way in the west bound lane. They were about 25 miles away and since we were only about 10 miles away, they asked us if we could head up the highway and try to stop the drunk driver.

Now, I was a junior officer at this time with only 2 years so I had the worst car. It was a 1973 Ford LTD. It looked just like one of those old LTD's on those movies that you had to watch in school with titles like "Blood on the Highway", even down to the red and blue "bubble" lights that were on top. But, it had the biggest engine. We had a mechanic that had put a 460 cu inch motor in it when it turned 300k on the original motor. He also set it up with Holley carbeurators. It was a turd of a car, but it was fast as hell. (In a straight line) Carl was driving a 1986 Crown Victoria that the department had only had for a short time. So. off we went, Carl in his nice police car and me in the turd mobile.

The area that the wreck happened at was known as Lynns Crossing at the crest of a fairly long hill. It really is just a bump in the road on the way to Memphis. You cannot see what is on the other side until you are right on top. Because of that, neither driver had a chance to avoid the other car. This was in the same area the guy in the truck that I told y'all about in "The Most Heinous Vomit ever" wrecked at. We got to the scene about thirty seconds after the incident happened. What happened was the drunk driver, driving a 1976 Malibu had hit a car head-on, a 1977-78 Buick Station wagon. Inside the station wagon was a family, 6 kids and two adults. The carnage was absolutely mind-blowing. It literally took your breath away. I have never scene such devastation inflicted on humans. Anyway, the drunk driver was dead. He had hit them so hard his entire body was forced under his steering wheel and he had bones jutting from his legs, and his back from the force of the collision. There was no helping him. We tried to see if he was alive but his body was kinda like a bag filled with lumpy jelly. He must have broken most of the bones in his upper torso when he hit the steering wheel. When we tried to move him, it was like trying to pick up a big water balloon. I think only his skin was holding him together. He had empty beer cans scattered all over his car and we estimated that he hit the Buick at about 70 mph. The Buick, we estimated, was travelling at about 60mph.

We then turned our attention to the other vehicle. The glare of the spotlights and the smoke from the destroyed vehicles made the scene nightmarish, almost like an explosive had been in one of the cars. Some of the children's bodies were literally torn into pieces. Most of it was just unrecognizable. It was hard to tell what they were and that they were human. None of them were wearing seatbelts as most people back in that time did not. The effect of the two cars colliding at those speeds was horrific and for me, unforgettable. I remember, the driver was absolutely destroyed. She had hit the steering wheel with such force that internal organs had been forced out from within her body. There were bits and pieces of her hanging all over the inside of the car. We could tell it was a person, but only later were we able to call the body "her". I can tell you, I was shaking and had tears running down my face. Anyway , there were two or three still moving and moaning, that were sitting in other seats in the car. I recall, there were three front seat passengers, all dead at the scene. There were three second row passenger with two dead and one alive, but we didn't know that yet. There were two people in the back row, one of them was dead and the other was still, somehow alive. Now, when the Buick was hit the front seat raised up, shearing the bolts that hold it to the floor.

During that small amount of time, one of the mid row passengers, that had been holding a 6 month old child in their lap, lost the child from his grasp and the child went under the front row seat. As the front row seat slammed back down, it pinned the 6 month old underneath it and it's passengers, literally crushing the child. When we found the child it was still alive, not crying at all, but struggling mightily to breathe. It struggled for a few minutes as the EMT's tried to keep him alive, but he lost the battle and died before being able to be loaded for transport. You could tell, even through all the blood, that he would have been a handsome young man one day. He, even then, was a beautiful baby boy. That was the first and only time I had ever seen Carl Butler cry. But he stood there watching as the paramedics and EMT's were scurrying around and he cried. He cried hard and long. I know he tried not to cry, but couldn't stop. I think he was embarrassed, as police officers aren't supposed to cry. The thinking at the time was that we were supposed to maintain a straight face and demeanor regardless of circumstances. Me being new, and not having been exposed to death this close and personal, well, I couldn't help but cry. I was surrounded by death and I cried. But, I was not embarrassed. Carl later asked me not to tell anyone that he cried. I told him that he appeared "human" and no one could fault him for that.

After that, I never saw him show emotion while on scene again. I, on the other hand, had nightmares for years after this one. I have goosebumps on my arms right now. Ambulances had taken a couple of the children to the local hospital but they were all dead or died on the way. A six year old boy, that we thought was going to live was taken to the local hospital, which was not far away. As Doctors were working on him in the parking lot of the hospital, internal matter started hemorrhaging from his mouth and brain matter was leaking from his ears. I felt totally helpless as I am sure the Doctors did as well. They pushed him aside and placed a sheet over him and started working on the only survivor, a 32 year old lady that had been sitting in the third row with the driver's son. She survived, probably because she was asleep and the force of the collision was buffered from the second row seat. Anyway, she was all messed up with broken arms and legs, and she had blood all over her. But it was from the little boy that had been sitting with her in the back, not her own. She did survive.

The cars were destroyed, but unlike in the movies wherein the slightest wreck makes them either explode or catch on fire, they did neither. It was hard to make out what type cars they were though. The force of the impact made identification really hard. We found out from the survivor, the 32 year old, that they were coming back from Birmingham, after going to see wrestling matches, then they went to an all night roller rink and the kids roller-skated until about 2:30am. The 32 year old was a cousin that had went along to help watch the other kids. That was what they were doing on the road at that hour. The drunk driver had left a county line strip club called, "Wesleys Booby Trap" to head back to his home. His blood alcohol level was determined later to have been about .28%. Out of nine people in the two vehicles, 8 of them died that night and I aged about 10 years overnight. I still remember the names. Their last name was Morgan. The 6 month old boy under the front seat, his name was Cody. They were the family of a man that we knew as police officers. He was the Deputy DA of Walker County. I won't state his first name just in case someone reads this and decides to get pissy about it. Anyway, he had just separated from his wife, (the driver of the Buick), to run off with some little drug addled, crack whore, dancer (from the club I mentioned earlier, "Wesleys Booby Trap").

He later committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, because he was convinced that God had punished him for leaving his family and cheating on his wife. He left a note saying words to that effect. After this, my zeal for patrol work diminished. I stayed in for a couple of years longer, but really, I got tired of seeing carnage every weekend on that damn highway. I eventually ended up transferring to another city where I ended up volunteering for narcotics duty. But those early days of working wrecks just showed me what drunk driving can do. The havoc it can create and the death it leaves in it's wake. Even today, I rarely drink alcohol of any type.