Hello, friends and fans!
It’s been a few weeks since my memoir, ‘The Color of Melancholy’ was released and I’m so very touched with the response. Somehow, it’s maintained a Bestseller Banner on the good ship Amazon for almost the entirety of its release – both in the US and Canada – and I’d like to think that’s more to the response than the niche categories that it has been placed in, but either way, I’ll take it! It has also been great receiving messages from people who’ve had similar experiences and upbringings and those who’ve snagged some of Andrew Pyper’s work through reading this as well.
As I mentioned in the afterword of the novel, developing and releasing this memoir was a cathartic experience for myself, but it was also a way for me to bypass journaling, something I detest with a passion. It was easier for me to write these moments in my life as I would a story, so instead of me writing say, ‘August 6th, 2005. Dear Diary, today I was sad,’ instead I would write about the moment with adjectives and flourish and the way my brain processes things. Now, there’s nothing wrong with journaling or having a diary, do what works for you, but as for me, I approached it my way.
In the afterword, I also mentioned that somethings were omitted. In the editing phase, I realized some moments just didn’t fit or were either inconsequential to the narrative I was creating or slowed sections. In preparation for writing this, I read blog posts and watched a few podcasts on writing an effective memoir, and one thing that was unanimous across the board was to treat your life like a fiction novel, if you want to create a good reading experience for the readers.
Which I hope I’ve achieved.
As a thanks to everyone, I’ve decided it might be fun over the next little while to share a few of the omitted chapters. The sections that I feel were solid but just didn’t fit in the book itself.
So, without further ado, please enjoy this chapter that didn’t make the final cut about my first car crash!
(One note – the memoir features a photo section in the back of the book. With this being posted on my website, I have included photos within this omitted chapter. This is not indicative of how the book is, as getting the permissions to use the photos within the chapters, such as I have below, would’ve been a nightmare!)
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In the Spring of 2003, I believe it was, I was in my first car accident. Or the first that I know of. I don’t believe my parents had a car accident when I was a child. If so, they never discussed it.
I was involved in an odd event, in 1997 or 1998. I was driving back to Burton from Nakusp, in my parent’s white minivan. Amanda and her friend at the time, Nicole, were with me. It was later in the day, dark out, and we’d just left Nakusp, going through the 50kph to 70kph section just as you leave the village. A vehicle with bright lights was driving into Nakusp at a high rate of speed, and as it went by, we heard a massive KAPOW! We weren’t sure what had happened, until we all kind of noticed it. Something had been thrown from the vehicle – either by a person or launched out from the back of their vehicle – and had smashed the front windshield. There was a significant ‘contact’ point with dense breakage and spiderwebbed cracks running over the rest of it. My parent’s WERE NOT happy when we arrived in Burton, but we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do. The vehicle was long gone by the time we understood what had happened and this was pre-cell phone days, so there was no point in pulling over and waiting for someone to drive by.
So, I drove us home and that was that.
As for my first ‘real’ car accident, that was a few years later.
It’s odd how the years begin to blur together, and it becomes difficult to remember exactly when it was. What I do know for sure, was that it was during the Spring and I’m 99% sure it was after my facial reconstruction. I know it was in the Spring because I was driving back to Castlegar so that I could get ready to write a Final Exam at Selkirk College.
I’d gone through a few vehicles in my young driving life. My first vehicle was after I’d graduated high school. A 1981 Chevy truck. I believe it had a v10 engine? Sure, let’s go with that.
(My truck was even this color!)
All I remember was I could drive super fast in it and that it went through gas even faster. This one didn’t last long, the cost of gas to drive between Nakusp and Castlegar quickly becoming prohibitive, so I traded it in at a dealership in Castlegar for a 1988 Chrysler LeBaron.
(The LeBaron I had even had a sick turbo injected engine! Vrrroooom-Vrrroooom!)
It had a sweet digital dash and a stereo system that popped. We had our ups and downs over the time I had this car. At one point, the fuel pump went, which meant it would randomly turn off while driving – no care for where I was driving at that moment – and it would come to a sudden halt. This happened once, as Amanda and I and a Nakusp friend, were driving back from Castlegar to Nakusp. We had just arrived at Crescent Valley when we had to stop for construction. They were repaving the highway, and as I came around the corner near where the gas station was, I gulped deeply as the flagger turned their sign to stop.
The car immediately died.
I hopped out, reached under with the handy wrench I now always had with me in the car, and tapped three times on the fuel pump while Amanda turned the key in the ignition and the car started. All I hoped for was for us to make it through the construction as having a line of cars behind you wouldn’t be ideal to suddenly stop and have to restart it. Sure enough, that’s what happened. The flagger turned her flag, we started, I begged and pleaded for the car to make it and at the half-way point of construction, it died and stopped. Horns honked, I hopped out and clanked the bottom and the construction workers laughed and yelled obscenities at me and my situation.
The fuel pump was repaired that weekend and the car, and I resumed a loving relationship for another year or so after that.
When that one died, along came a 1994 Pontiac Sunbird. I really loved that car, even if it was only in my life for a brief time.
(This was legitimately THE nicest picture I could find of a Sunbird online that was the same color as the one I had!)
It drove smoother than the LeBaron and the speakers were significantly better as well. Though, I will say, Eiffel 65’s Europop album sounded better in the LeBaron than the Sunbird.
On the day of the accident, I had left early, wanting to get back to our basement suite in Castlegar midday so that I could get a solid afternoon of studying in, in preparation for the final the next morning.
I hated the pomp of the morning final at Selkirk College. They were held in the gymnasium of the school. So, every student who’d be writing an exam would have to wait in line down the narrow hallway that led past the weight room and outside.
At exactly 8:55am, the doors would be opened and as you entered, your instructor would direct you to your specific, assigned seat. At exactly 9:00am, a bagpipe player would arrive and play the national anthem or some other song – they all sounded the same on the bloody bagpipes at nine in the morning – and once done, a school administrator would go over the rules and then you could begin. I was always a fast exam writer, never spending much time rethinking my answers (which is why I was probably always a solid B student in College and University), but this also led to the awkwardness of usually being the first person to be finished. We’d have three hours to write the exam. I’d be done in forty-five minutes. I’d then sit for another fifteen minutes working up the courage to get up and leave, knowing the ccccrrrrkkkkk of my chair legs on the gym floor, followed by the screeqqq, screeqq, screeqq, of my shoes on the floor would have every other student in the gym looking at me.
The only time I remember not being the first one done was in my first year at Selkirk. The process of getting the exam had just begun, the bagpipe guy long gone, the administrator saying, ‘And you may all flip your exams over and begin,’ and we all flipped our exams.
And I kid you not, thirty seconds later, a guy who was in our Intro to Anatomy Course shouted out, ‘Oh, fuck this,’ got up, brought his exam to our instructor, and stormed out. Never did see the guy again.
Anyways, so, I was cruising down Highway 6, on my way back to Castlegar. As always, I was dismayed to not have seen a Bigfoot near Lemon Creek, and as I neared the straight stretch along an area known as Perrys, I swapped out the CD I was listening to, and slid Rammstein’s Mutter album into the player. This was back in the time of having a CD player in the car where you’d remove the face plate and take it with you whenever you left the car.
Simpler days, really.
I’ll readily admit that as I crested the hill and the two or three kilometer straight stretch lay before me, I pressed the gas a bit harder, buoyed by the industrial stomp of ‘Mein Herz brennt,’ and, as ‘Links 2 3 4’ began, I pretended to sing along as I drove.
And then the car appeared.
Off to my right, Harasemov Rd connected to Highway 6 and as I got almost directly to where its gravel turned into the highways cement, the car – couldn’t tell you what kind – drove directly onto the highway. I remember thinking, ‘Huh, that lady isn’t even looking left,’ before it was directly on the highway in front of me.
(Taken from Google maps, this is the exact spot I would’ve been in when the car pulled out directly in front of me, just off to the right.)
At this point, I was travelling around 75 mph/ 120kph, and she was going roughly 18mph/ 30kph. I nailed the horn, cranked the wheel left to miss her, and immediately saw a vehicle hurtling towards me. The speed limit there (back then at least) was 62 mph/ 100kph, which meant they were coming at me fast. I slammed the wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic, but realized I was now sliding sideways across the road, heading towards the ditch. I don’t know if I froze at the understanding that I was about to crash, or what, but suddenly I was weightless and the car went into a roll – sideways – which it continued doing, until it ended up upside down against some trees.
I coughed a few times, dangling from the seat, my seatbelt having stretched but still holding me in place. There was dust and dirt and glass and branches and all kids of debris everywhere and all the while ‘Links 2 3 4’ continued playing, until the engine sputtered and shut off.
I couldn’t reach the button to unclip the seatbelt. Mentally I started running through scenarios on how I’d be able to get out of the car, when I heard someone screaming and footsteps rapidly approaching.
“Oh my God, he’s dead! He’s dead!”
Whoever was yelling this, continued to yell it over and over, until an older man popped his head into the car, and we looked at each other.
“You, ok?” he asked.
“I’m not dead,” I replied.
“He’s not dead,” he yelled back to the woman still screaming that I was dead.
“Can you feel your legs?”
“Yeah, I just can’t get my seatbelt undone,” I said.
“Hold tight,” he replied. He tentatively crawled in, trying the button, but nothing happened.
“Let me grab a knife,” he said, after clicking the button a half-dozen more times. He left, returning momentarily with a Swiss Army knife, and sliced through the belt, which allowed me to drop with a hard clunk to the roof below. I crawled out through the shattered passenger door window and stood, things already stiff and sore.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” the lady who’d pulled out in front of me was saying while she was blubbering and bawling her eyes out.
“You should’ve fucking looked,” I said, being completely un-Canadian in that moment and not apologizing back.
“I know, I’m so sorry,” she kept going on and on.
I walked away from her, not wanting to deal with her continued blabbering, because I was the one who no longer had a fucking car.
Of course, there was one other thing that really dates this incident and the location. We were in the middle of nowhere and cellphones were not a thing. Even now, I don’t believe they have cell service in that area.
So, while I’d been spinning through the air, someone had driven like a mad person to Winlaw, the closest town, and called the ambulance service. The ambulance was dispatched and, having no car to drive anywhere, I sat on the tailgate of the truck owned by the man who’d rushed to see if I was dead.
Thirty minutes later, the ambulance arrived, lights and sirens on. They came over to ask how I was doing and let me know that because they were called, they’d need to take me to the hospital. I asked if I could go to Castlegar, as Nelson wouldn’t work for me, as I figured once I was discharged, I’d need to walk home, what with my car crumpled in the ditch. Then, because of the ‘seriousness’ of the accident, I was strapped to a back board and had a neck collar put on me. Unfortunately, we didn’t think things through, so they had to cut my jacket off to put a blood pressure cuff on my arm. I was sad about that, as it’d been my all-time favorite jacket up to that point.
It was a Selkirk College Kinesiology Program jacket that I’d help organize and order. There was a ridiculous mess up with the jackets, a story for another day, but I loved how the jacket fit, felt, and looked and now it was gone.
Before the ambulance started to drive, I asked if they could call my mom and let her know. I didn’t remember the number to the coffee shop Amanda was working at, so I knew my mom would let her know. They said sure, arranged for that to happen by radioing back to the station and then the ambulance drove me to the Castlegar hospital.
Once there, I was examined thoroughly, nothing of note discovered, but wasn’t allowed to leave until someone could pick me up. Not long after, my mom and Amanda arrived, both looking devastated. Turns out, my mom had been called, and the person had simply said that I had been in a serious car accident and was being rushed to the Castlegar hospital via ambulance and for her to get there ASAP. So, for the entirety of their almost two-hour drive to Castlegar, Amanda and my mom assumed I was on death’s doorstep.
I found it hilarious.
They did not.
Overall, I recovered well. We drove back to Nakusp, and I spent the night at Amanda’s, waking up the next day in ridiculous agony as every muscle in my body was locked tight.
A few days after went back to Nelson, to meet with a police officer to give an official statement. They estimated that the car rolled five to seven times, based on where I left the road and where I ended up. From there, we went to the junk yard where the car had been towed. I made sure to grab my CD binder out (we all had one back then), the random crap I had in the car – backpack with school binders and books, etc., and then quickly removed the CD player – face and deck – from the dash as that bad boy was coming with me.
I had been given a police file and ICBC (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia – the one and only place in BC that you register your car through and get insurance from) and contacted the school, getting a re-write date for the exam due to the circumstances.
Two last things before wrapping this up and moving on.
The first was that, from this accident, ICBC gave me a check for $5000 for the value of the Sunbird to go towards a new(er) vehicle. My dad and I went to Kelowna on a weekend to look for cars. After going to four or five places, I saw the one I wanted. A 1991 Volkswagen Jetta. White, with some sleek body trim that most of them didn’t have. On top of that, it had a subwoofer installed in the trunk, so that when you dropped the middle panel of the back seat, you could see the cage covering it and the system PUMPED. That was a big selling point for me, loud music. Only problem – it was a standard and I didn’t know how to drive a standard.
(The version I purchased didn’t have as nice of rims as this, but it did have a mini black spoiler-thing on the trunk, which this one is lacking.)
“No, problem,” my dad casually said, “you’ll learn quick.”
My dad took it for a test drive, did a cursory examination of the engine and the underbody and a deal was struck. Then, my dad hopped in our minivan and took off back to Burton, a three-hour drive away.
With all the confidence I could muster, I gave a wave to the car salesman, got in, started the car, slowly let the clutch out while giving it some gas and whhhhaaa-thunk. Stalled. Started the car, slowly let the clutch out, gave it some gas and WHAAAAAAATTTTT got it going. I pulled onto Harvey Ave, aka the busiest road in all of Kelowna, managed to keep it running until I was near Orchard Park Mall, when the light ahead turned red and whhhhaaaa-thunk, stalled. I was panicking by this point. If you’ve never been to Kelowna, the main strip there is notorious for the start-stop traffic. If you hit one red light, you’ll hit them all and people will often complain of it taking them forty-five minutes to drive from one end of the road to the other, which is only about five kilometers wide.
I stalled the car two more times, before I threw on my hazard lights and the guy behind me exited his car and came to the driver’s side door. Thankfully, it wasn’t to shout and rage, but to ask if I needed help. I did, I said. He helped me guide the car into the parking lot of Orchard Park Mall, where I thanked him profusely, and then proceeded to go find a pay phone, call my mom, and let her know that I was parked at the mall and had no way of driving the car home.
I’m honestly not sure why my dad didn’t drive the car home, while I drove the minivan? It would’ve made WAY more sense, but sometimes that’s the way things go, yeah?
My mom called the Fauquier ferry – love how small the place is that she called the ferry – and when my dad arrived, roughly two-and-a-half-hours-later, they let him know that he needed to turn around and drive back to Kelowna to save his dumbass son who couldn’t drive his new car.
Meanwhile, I went into the mall, grabbed a bite to eat at the food court, bought a new CD from HMV and a couple music magazines and proceeded to lounge in my new – but undrivable – car, until he arrived.
Once back in Burton, it would take me the entirety of the following day to really get comfortable with driving a standard and for many years after, I made sure all my cars that I had were stick shifts as I loved driving them so much.
And, as you’ll come to find out, this car, the white Jetta, would later be dubbed Steamin’ Sally by a friend.
Lastly, ICBC contacted me about the accident and said that because I’d been taken by ambulance to the hospital, and the accident had been deemed 100% at fault to the lady who pulled out in front of me, ICBC would be paying for the ambulance, and they wanted to settle my case with them. I had no idea what that meant, so the kind lady (who clearly understood she was dealing with a novice and totally gullible young person) said that she had a check for $2000 for me, if I’d sign the forms closing my case and confirming that ICBC wouldn’t be liable to pay for any future medical treatments that I may need because of the accident.
$2000! Sign me up!
Amanda and I drove straight to the ICBC centre in Nelson, signed the forms, deposited the cheque and once it cleared, I probably spent at least a quarter of that money on CD’s alone!
Ah, the innocence of youth. And having zero idea on financial issues.
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Hope you enjoyed this omitted chapter!
If you read this and liked it but haven’t grabbed a copy of my memoir yet;
Universal link: mybook.to/thecolorofmelancholy
Amazon US link:
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Amazon UK link:
Steve Stred - The Official Website 