We spent an extra day at San Jon Village Park, recovering from our marathon drive the day before, then headed out to Texas on Friday. As we approached the town of Adrian, I remembered stopping at the Midpoint Cafe during the Route 66 trip since that is the midpoint of Route 66. Melissa hadn’t been to a genuine Route 66 style diner, and she was interested, so we had a yummy lunch there, then got back on I-40.
Not too long afterward, I saw the biggest fireball I’ve ever seen this side of a Michael Bay movie ahead of me on the highway. Traffic came to a safe, controlled stop while thick black smoke rose into the sky. Later on, we’d read about the details of what happened.
The Texas Department of Public Safety reports that preliminary reports show that two people have died as a result of a multiple vehicle wreck west of Vega.
According to DPS, preliminary reports show that a tractor-trailer going west went into the center median taking a passenger vehicle with it before hitting two other tractor-trailers in the eastbound lane of I-40.
DPS officials said two people were confirmed dead and an unknown number of people were taken to the hospital.
MyHighPlains.com
If we’d been only a few seconds farther ahead in traffic, we could’ve easily been wrapped up in that ourselves. Trucks that had passed us only a minute or two before got hit head-on, and some of those drivers didn’t make it.
However, at that moment, all we knew was the highway was impassible. We managed to maneuver our way onto a frontage road to get around it. We would’ve been stuck for hours otherwise.
This certainly put a damper on the rest of the day, even before we knew just how serious it was. The image of that fireball is etched in my brain. We were far enough away to have never been in danger ourselves, but any number of small factors could’ve changed that. For example, if our waitress at the diner hadn’t taken a few extra seconds to tell us how much she loved seeing how happy Melissa and I are together, we would’ve been a few seconds ahead of where we were and that much closer to the crash — possibly in it ourselves. A little kindness goes a long way.
Fortunately, we only had another hour’s drive ahead of us. The previous day, Melissa had suggested we divert to Palo Duro Canyon for a night, somewhere she stayed previously and really enjoyed. It’s a beautiful place. I’ll write about our stay in another post because I don’t want that wonderful experience tainted with the tragedy of this one.
Smokey Da Van 