"Drunken driving was second nature to my father and he had many narrow escapes, much I suspect to my mother's regret, since she always paid his Life Insurance policy, no matter how much she had to scrape and save to afford the premiums. One evening he came back very bruised all over and said that he had crashed the van. 'Crashed' was an understatement. When we saw the van later at the garage where it had been towed, it was impossible to believe that anyone had escaped from it alive. The roof was hanging loose, as if a giant tin-opener had worked on it with a vengeance, the engine was pushed back into the passenger compartment and the bonnet didn't exist. A tree had apparently uprooted itself and run across the road to stand in his path. He swore that he knew that road like the back of his hand and that there had never been a tree there before."
