The Way I See It
Accident reports from Wagon Days
Chris Millspaugh
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By CHRIS MILLSPAUGH
The following reports were gathered from several insurance companies in the Wood River Valley and were submitted by the insured motorists who braved the Wagon Days Festival Weekend the beginning of this month:
?I was driving west on 6th Street, passing the rear of Atkinsons? Market on the left when suddenly a tan Buick Sedan with no apparent driver at the wheel, ran the stop sign and crashed into my right fender, blowing out my right front tire. The old Buick then quickly went into reverse clearly by itself as no one could be seen behind the steering wheel and lumbered down the hill towards the traffic light on Main Street and ran directly into a large landscaping truck. The door on the old Buick slowly opened and an elderly diminutive lady about 4 foot 6 inches in her 80s rolled out and gave me the finger.?
Damage -- $625 and a request for road rage counseling and a bumper chair.
?My car was parked on the side of Highway 75 by the Ketchum Cemetery on Saturday, September 2, right where the Wagon Days Parade passes. A witness later told me that all fourteen mules that were pulling the Big Hitch Wagons all simultaneously unloaded on the trunk of my 1981 Cadillac Seville before the Sun Valley Hockey Team could implement their scoopers. Apparently, a good amount of the mule waste made its way into the tail pipe, sealing it shut. Later, when I started the car, a farmer from Gooding standing behind was splattered and knocked twenty feet into a ?Lady of the Evening? gal from ?the Shootout? who is now suing me for:?
Damage--$32.50 for dry cleaning and $6,000 for pain and humiliation.
?Willard and I decided to play a little craps at ?The Casino? on Main Street Saturday afternoon and were told when we tried to buy some chips that there was no gambling allowed and that the bar?s name just carried over from the old days. What a crock! When we looked around all we saw were jazz musicians playing songs in an unknown tongue. The place was so crowded, we could scarcely see. Willard wandered away from me and got caught in the phone booth behind the drummer in the jazz band. He panicked and smashed his face through the glass opening in the booth and hit the drummer in the back of the head which caused him to fall into his drum set and toss his sticks into the air, one of which lodged in the nose of the Casino doorman.?
Damage--$750 for phone booth and drum set and $4,500 for a nose job.
?There?re six horses that roam and play around the pasture on Sun Valley Road and cause a great deal of disturbance with the tourists who come to relax here in Ketchum during Wagon Days. My wife and three children were conned by these animals all during the weekend. Every time we?d pass by, they would run over to the fence and beg and wheedle food out of us. On Sunday, the gray one took my wallet out of my pants and chewed up all my credit cards up right in front of me and then they all laughed at us. I vaulted the fence to get even and they chased me all over the pasture. One old mare was laughing and whinnying so hard that she keeled over and the Animal Hospice was called out to revive her and I was given the vet bill to pay and I didn?t have any way to pay it because they had rolled me.?
Damage--$850 Horse doctor. Learning experience--priceless
Always carry a heavy amount of insurance when you visit our valley.
See you for the ?Trailing of the Jeeps? in October and nice talking to you.
