buggy wreck

At 8:20 a.m. I heard noises right in front of the house. A front-loader driven by an Amish neighbor, interestingly, spooked a horse bringing a few children to school. I grabbed the camera and will let the pictures tell the story, from passengers escaping, to unhitching the horse.

non-fatal in Mascot

I posted September 2007, eleven months ago, a deadly wreck at Mascot, the intersection of Stumptown and Newport roads. Notice the memorial cross on right edge of pic, beside first cop to arrive. Last week I rather soberly trudged off again, camera in hand. Happily, it was a fender bender.

Second police car arriving at left; cars in accident center and right.

If you are going southwest on Newport at speeds excessive of normal, this is a blind intersection. Could the township put up a sign to make this safer? Yes. Would it cost society more than it will cost to fix this fender bender? No. Is this sane?

How does it happen than one person dies and another walks away?

Deadly Mascot wreck

It is so much fun to ride the bumper cars at a fair. But in real life, a pick up broadsiding a two-door at over 50 mph, killing the driver beside an idyllic tourist spot, seriously catapulting the passenger out the back window, such banging of one metal shell against another upends and sometimes ends a whole life.

Such was the case in Mascot, a little twin town of Monterey. Hundreds of tourists stop at Mascot every year to see the water-powered grist mill. Mascot is at the intersection of Stumptown and Newport Roads, about 1 mile southwest of Monterey.

The Mill Stream runs through the town of about 8 houses. See the falls in the background of photo. On the other side of the stream runs a narrow sanctuary enjoyed by egrets and kingfishers. When I was a boy tramps camped in the woods there.

The intersection is dangerous. A tourist was killed here only about 4 years ago. This evening I saw the cross with flowers in memory of a Lisa. How many persons died natural deaths in Mascot? Did an original American, centuries ago, take an arrow in the sternum here?

Monterey this summer is bracketed by fatal accidents, the last day of July and about the last day of August, both on Newport Road.