There’s a tree here in town just where the road starts a gentle curve to the left. It still has a scar from a drunk driver crashing into it 50 years ago. The car was packed with high school kids headed from one graduation party to the next. Some were killed, the rest injured. I didn’t know about the accident until I drove past years later with someone who had been in that class. She pointed out the tree and told me the driver’s name. He survived, and it turns out I know him. When I see him in town now, I try to avoid him.
There is no memorial at the spot, maybe there never was. The accident happened in the 1960s, and I don’t recall ever seeing any roadside memorials anywhere back then.
I like the idea of roadside memorials. Families and survivors usually place them near, or attach them to, any fixed object involved. They cause passers-by to think about how the memorial came to be, and in my opinion they probably save lives. It’s not always drunk driving that leads to roadside memorials, sometimes it’s just inattention or stupidity. Someone wrote a letter to the editor calling for all trees to be removed from the median of the Garden State Parkway, because people kept running into them and getting killed.
Some people don’t like the memorials because they can be tacky and garish. There’s a telephone pole across town that commemorates a more recent fatal accident. It’s covered with ribbons, photos and cheap plastic flowers. It’s directly across the street from someone’s house, and I know I wouldn’t want to see that out my front window every day.
The memorial I remember best wasn’t meant to be a memorial at all, it was simply a wrecked car put on display as a caution to young soldiers on my army post. The accident left the car mangled and lying on its roof, and it took a while to wrench it open and free the survivors.
Someone at headquarters had the idea of leaving the car on its roof and flatbedding it onto the post as an exhibit. There was a small rise just past the entrance, and the car was installed there, still on its roof, almost like an art exhibit, and allowed to ripen in the summer heat.
Over the next weeks, every soldier on the post was marched over to view the wreckage. Our NCOs made sure we got close enough to get a good look. In the silence as we reacted, we could hear flies, hundreds of them, buzzing around inside the car, attracted to the blood and vomit still pooled on the headliner. I don’t think anyone who saw and smelled that car will ever forget it.
Wear your seatbelts, kids. And don’t drive drunk.
These photos are from Bruce Wicks’ flickr album Roadside Memorials . There are over three hundred so far.