Our normally sleepy little neighborhood on the southside of Racine has seen way more than its fair share of excitement this week. First was the burglary-in-broad-daylight several days ago of a house on our block… disconcerting to say the least. And then came this morning’s stunning surprise, when a house five blocks from ours ended up with a car in its dining room. And although this may seem too amazing to be true, this was actually the second time this unhappy fate had befallen this same house.
On our way to work a little before 7, Kathy and I both saw the fire trucks and police cars blocking what would have been her normal route to Schulte Elementary School, but neither of us had any idea what had happened until she stopped at a corner where a bunch of Schulte students were waiting for their school bus- and they told her what they had heard: that a car had driven right into a house. Kathy didn’t have time to check it out herself, but she called me on my cell phone and suggested that I backtrack to the site of the commotion and cover it for the radio station. And in fact, I was the very first member of the media on the scene, and I just happened to have one of the station’s portable digital recorders with me. So I set about finding out whatever I could from the people who were there.
I spoke to the owner of the house in question, who told me that he had awakened briefly around 5 a.m. but then gone back to bed when the crash occurred sometime before 5:30. Fortunately, everyone in the house was still asleep and the bedrooms are at the back of the house- but if the crash had occurred even fifteen minutes later, people would have been up and about and might have been seriously injured of even killed. Unfortunately, the car had not only crashed right into the house, but also damaged the gas line- which meant that the gas needed to be turned off to avoid something even worse occurring. That meant that the neighbors had police officers knocking on their doors shortly after 5:30, asking them to evacuate the premises until the gas could be turned off. When I came upon the scene right around 7 a.m., the gas company had just begun their operation of digging into the front yard to get the gas issue taken care of.
And how did this happen – and how could it happen twice? This house sits right at the center axis of the “T” intersection of Regency Hills and Ellwood…. and when a car is traveling south on Ellwood and gets to Regency Hills, if it goes straight instead of turning left or right, it ends up slamming right into this defenseless house. The first crash happened 14 years ago, and the car in question plowed right through the front door. This time the car crashed off to the side a bit, into what I presume was either the dining room or living room, but it still did huge damage. (One of the neighbors said that the car smashed right into their big china cabinet, destroying everything in it…. but who knows if that cabinet might have slowed down the car and kept it from doing still more damage.)
I walked away from the scene trying to imagine how shocking and frightening it would be to have a car crash right into your house. But I also walked away profoundly impressed by the owner of the house in question- who turns out to be the dad of a couple of Kathy’s former students at Schulte. I stood next to him for a few minutes as he watched his front yard being dug up by the gas company- and I was absolutely amazed at how calm, collected, and positive he was as he recounted to me what had happened. And even when he talked about the young man who had been driving – someone who lives on the same block – he spoke of him not so much out of anger as out of concern. He was such a gentleman. . . which in turn made me sadder still that something so rotten should happen to such a good person. And it also made me hope that if and when any calamity as bad as this should befall me, that I would handle it with as much grace and class as this guy did.
Because we show the stuff we’re made of in life’s moments of glory. We show who we are on the days when a car crashes into our house.
pictured above: The house at the “T” intersection. By the time I was back from the radio station, around 12 noon, the car was gone and the hole had been patched up with plywood.