Damn Those Were Good Cookies....

Sometimes the taste of the simplest foods brings memories shooting into my mind. In this case, it was nothing more than a slightly stale chocolate chip cookie.

The screams cut through us like a well honed knife, over and over. Peter and I were waiting for the Rescue and could do nothing but listen. It was early Sunday morning, and where the call placed the accident, I figured a car had gone into the ditch. I almost didn’t go, as it sounded like it would be a minor routine deal, and I had a bunch of plans that morning.

The young lady had definitely gone into the ditch. The car had then rolled and with her not wearing her seat belt, she had been partially ejected. Unfortunately, she had gone through the windshield and was now pinned by the car which was on its roof.

We were able to barely get to her to try to calm her a bit until the rescue got on scene, but that was all. It didn’t stop the screams. When the rescue arrived, we had the crew pull every stitch of cribbing off. The air bags were set up and we started to lift. Greenfield arrived and began to add their cribbing to the pile. We had to build multiple Lincoln Log towers with the 4 x 4 lumber, then lift again and build higher. The pile was decreasing a lot faster than it was increasing. It was taking a lumber yard to get this car up.

Slowly we began to get access. The mud and the proximity of the ditch were complicating factors, greatly adding to the amount of wood we had to use to maintain the stability of the vehicle.

With only a few precious pieces remaining, the car was finally high enough that we could slide her out, and onto a backboard. Her injuries were not severe but it took a while before we could get close enough to verify that. She was a lucky kid.

A couple of weeks later, a thank you note and a tin of home baked cookies arrived at the fire house from her. She was a pretty young girl, going to school and working part time. That she’d taken the time to bake those cookies to say thank you meant a lot to me and others. By the time I got one, they’d been there for a few days and were starting to get stale. Didn’t matter; damn those were good cookies.