𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟕: 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲

 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟕: 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲

There were lots of good things on the paper route. One thing was I got to see the sun rise every morning in whatever way it presented itself. Another was seeing our Valley in all of its splendour, from the green grass and leaves on the trees emerging in the Spring to the white snow tucking it all in to bed for the winter and everything in between.

There were hard times as well. Some gut wrenchingly rough times that left their indelible mark. Most of this piece is going to be about the absolutely indisputable worst one, so there won't be any humour whatsoever to it, and for that I Apologize in advance, but you'll see why.

The night is populated by a different lot. There are, of course, the late night partiers; drunk and stupid. But, there are the GOOD people; hard working people, hidden from your lives that you probably weren't even aware of. The paper carriers, of course, and the paper truckers that brought their papers to their pickup locations, and the bread delivery folk, the milk deliverymen, the pop deliverymen, the snack deliverymen, courier truckers like FEDEX and Purolator, taxi drivers, utility workers, the police officers on patrol, the ambulance and paramedics doing the same, freight tractor trailer drivers, the snow plow and sander operators, tow truck operators, etc... We were the night portion of the 24 hour Wheels of Service and Industry.

Most store deliveries are done in the daytime now, but delivery folk for bread, milk, pop, snacks, and ice used to have keys to all their stores and did it in the dark, early hours of the morning so society would have all of its fresh fare first thing in the morning without even knowing how it got there. Us nighttime service people were a different breed. You relied on us and yet barely even knew we existed. Together with the police, ambulance, paramedics, couriers, taxi drivers, utility workers, couriers, tractor trailer drivers, snow plow and tow truck operators, etc., we were the Unsung Heroes of the Night. We did our jobs quietly, efficiently, and reliably, and went home just as the rest of the world was probably only waking up to a New Day.

One thing plagued us all: Lack of sleep from the natural sleepiness of the hour or maybe working two jobs. We are all geared to sleep at night. Like chickens heading to roost when it gets dark. It is only natural to want to sleep when it is dark and you have to fight it, especially when you're on your own with no one else to stimulate your senses.

The Ottawa Sun driver and I started at the same time. We were about the same age. We used to meet at Mr. Gas when I would be loading up and he would come in with Mr. Gas's bundle of Ottawa Sun's for the day. We would shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes comparing notes, and then wish each other a 'Good Run', and split up again and go our separate ways into the dark of the night. Sometimes, if one of us was having difficulties, the other one would take his Haley and Chenaux deliveries for him to save him time and miles. We each did that for the other. Nightime workers helped each other out. You just did. No questions asked, no record kept. And you know the other will do it for you when you need it. I don't know about now, but that's the way it was then.

We had different approaches when it came to our runs. I bought a 7 year old used car for mine. He bought a new one for his. At the end of the first year, he had well over 100,000 kilometers on his and three years payments to go, so he was in a bit of a pickle. He started out better off than me, but the financial tides quickly turned. Seeing him with a half worn out car on a one quarter paid off loan sure made me glad I bought a used car.

That soon became a very moot point.

A year and a half after we both started, he fell asleep behind the wheel on his route and went off the road and hit a tree and was killed instantly. I saw him one morning and never saw him again. Time has swallowed up his name on me and I am ashamed to have forgotten it. But I haven't forgotten the person. He was a really nice guy and I liked him, so his death hit me hard and square. I had often nodded off behind the wheel on my own route, and his passing doing the exact same thing was a shocking wake up call for me. I could easily be next if I'm not careful.

The next day I was back out delivering Ottawa Citizen papers that announced the passing of my Ottawa Sun counterpart. For him, the Run was over. For me, the Lesson was learned and driven very soundly home. I began taking power naps on the route rather than falling asleep behind the wheel. I could very well owe my life to him for that Lesson.

If us nighttime workers are not exceedingly careful, the nighttime can swallow us whole in its deep, dark, unforgiving jaws. The Sun driver was my first experience with the concept, but he unfortunately wasn't my last. In fact, because I never saw his accident scene, or even his wrecked car afterward, it didn't prepare me at all for what was soon to follow.

It was mid-Fall, and one of those completely pitch black dark nights with a steady rain and fog rising up from the ground. I could hardly see the line on the road because the blackness just concealed everything. I had completed the Haley loop of The Garden of Eden Road, Orin Road, and Calvin Road, and was coming back out Godfrey Road to head across Highway 17 and begin the Olmstead/Jeffery Lake Road, Acres Road, Fourth Line loop. As I looked up and down Highway 17 before crossing, something out of the ordinary caught my eye to the East. Us nighttime service folk are very aware of our surroundings for different reasons. I looked again, squinting through the rain and the pitch darkness. There was a flicker down the road. A faint, dull orange. I turned East onto 17 to check it out. I had never turned East on 17 at Haleys on the run before, but that warranted checking out.

As I approached the source of the orange glow, it became apparent what it was: A fire. Something was on fire. Something in the East ditch was on fire. My headlights soon picked out a tractor trailer in the ditch on fire as I approached it, and, as my attention was drawn to it, I almost collided with a wrecked car sitting on the roadway. I slammed on the brakes and stopped, and was stunned to see a taxi sitting there with the driver's side of it stripped completely off from the front to the back. There was no chrome or anything shiny left to reflect my headlights and I very nearly hit it in that almost impenetrable pitch blackness.

It became very obvious what had happened. The car had struck the highway tractor and tore its driver's side front wheel off, causing it to careen off of the road into a rock cut. The taxi was spun around from the impact and left pointed in the same direction as the semi.

Quickly, I backed away from the taxi and put on my brilliant hazard flashers. An average of one vehicle a minute came along Highway 17 even in the middle of the night, and that taxi sitting there so practically invisible was a total death trap laying in wait, especially with the flames of the truck in the ditch to draw one's attention away from the roadway.

I jumped out and ran around to the driver's side of the taxi. With nothing left; no fenders or doors from one end to the other, in my headlights I could clearly see the driver sitting there perfectly upright, still gripping the wheel. As I had come around from the back, I didn't see his face. I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him, "Are you alright, buddy?" I did that as I brought my face around in front of his. I was not prepared for the sight that met me. His eyes were wide open. I mean wide, WIDE open. He woke up and was killed in the same instant and froze in terror that way.

One moment that man was alive/the next moment he was dead. That was all there was to it. Thankfully nobody was in the back seat, so I ran to the highway tractor. It was almost fully engulfed, with flames shooting out the full of the driver's window from the ruptured fuel tank on that side. Silence. Dead, stony silence except for the snapping and licking of the flames. No chance he was alive in there any more either. Two of my fellow nighttime workers, dead without them ever meeting each other or me meeting them, but there they were, victims of our craft.

I never felt so alone in my life as I did right then.

It can be very strange what can imprint itself on one's mind in a distressing situation. Besides the frozen Death Stare look on the taxi driver's face was the sight of the car's battery. It was about fifty yards up the road from his car, sitting exactly, perfectly in place on the center line of the road, like someone had set it there by hand, on purpose. I can still see it sitting there to this day. I think what it represented was a seeming and starkly contrasting Orderliness, in a frozen scene of otherwise complete and total Chaos.

The whole scene was surreal. I know that word is overused in modern language, but it was not out of context there. The atmosphere was indeed surreal. The place seemed like a war zone after the battle. Incredible drama and calamity, and then unbelievable calm and quiet, but all the products and effects of the drama and calamity still there, just transformed in their finality into indescribable tragedy and loss. And my sense of helplessness, uselessness, and inconsequentiality in it all. I felt guilty being alive and well in all the death and destruction surrounding me. Like I was a trespasser. My heart beating in all this morbid silence was almost offensive and disrespectful.

I was alone in the dark with these two men. I didn't know what to do. The highway was an unbelievable debris field of parts and pieces from both vehicles for a couple of hundred feet. The tractor trailer was mostly safely off of the road, but the taxi was a virtually invisible menace to oncoming traffic. I got back in my car and zigzagged through the minefield of metal, driving over plastic to avoid metal. I shone the lights into both ditches side to side as I zigzagged, and turned around to do it again. I was doing two things: I was scanning the ditches for other victims, and I was doing everything I could to be as conspicuous as possible to oncoming traffic from either direction. I was afraid I'd be at the wrong end of the debris field when a vehicle approached from the opposite.

This night, it was noticeably and nerve-wrackingly longer than usual until another vehicle finally approached, but I eventually saw headlights coming from the West. I was on the East side as he was coming. I quickly zigzagged back through the debris field and began flashing my high beams on and off to alert him to trouble. It was a tractor trailer. He came to a safe stop in front of me and put his hazards on. It was another young guy like me. I ran up to his truck and told him there was a taxi sitting there in the road. This was in the days before common cell phones, but he got on his CB and called his dispatch and told them where we were. "Call the police. We've got dead guys here."

With his truck on four-way flashers at that end, I jumped back in my car and drove back to the East end of the wreckage and left it there with the four amber lights of my signals and auxiliaries flashing. They would be almost sure to stop oncoming Westbound traffic. I ran back to the middle of the crash where the trucker was now standing. He said to me, "That's a Postal Truck. They run in TEAMS; there's TWO guys in there. My heart sunk even lower. I didn't see how it ever could until then, but that revelation did it. THREE fellow night workers killed, not two. He asked me if I had seen anyone else. I replied I had only seen the taxi driver. "He's dead?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"Are you SURE he's dead?"

"Oh yeah. I'm sure. He's DEFINITELY dead."

"I'm not saying I doubt you, but I gotta see for myself."

"Buddy, you don't want to see what I saw." He was already shaking and I didn't want him to add to his trauma.

"I gotta check him out to see if he has a chance." He was a good guy, just like most of the rest of us night time workers, looking out for others. Us nighttime workers are usually the First Responders.

"No, man, don't do it. Trust me, okay?" I was trying to help save him what I could. He was in it with me now, but he didn't have to see what I did.

"I gotta." He bent round to look at the taxi driver's face and his whole body jerked into a freeze, then he rather stiffly turned back like a much older man. I saw a man Changed Forever. It was written all over him. His countenance now displayed a look something akin to that 'Thousand Yard Stare'. Shock and horror and trauma and self-preserving stupor.

Later someone - I can't remember who - told me that the taxi driver's femurs came out through his knees from the impact, but I didn't see anything like that. I only looked at his face and his ghastly Death Mask told me everything I needed to know. Maybe the trucker saw that, but I don't think so. He just took one look at his face and turned back away towards me. You don't mistake what we both witnessed. Death has a face. We both saw it that night.

He pulled himself together enough for us to use his flashlight to scan the ditches closer for other victims. There were none. There was just nothing else we could do but leave our respective vehicles at both ends of the debris field with their emergency flashers on, waiting for the EMT's.

It took 15 or 16 minutes real time, not perceived, for the first emergency personnel to show up. It was an ambulance. The police followed about 5 minutes later. There was nothing anyone could do. The police Officer on the scene was only maybe 35 or so, so not a whole lot older than us. He had us both sitting in the back seat as he wrote out our statements for us to sign. When we finished, he told us, "You both just had a very traumatizing experience. Here is my card. If you need counselling, just give me a call and I will connect you to people who can help you, okay?" We both nodded acknowledgement, and I asked if I could go because there were stores and customers waiting on me. It was now getting near dawn and I had been there about two hours. The Officer released me and I can't remember if I went straight to the Four Corners to the stores or if I worked my way there in a stupor. All I vaguely remember is telling Ray Ranger at JR's Country Store why I was late and him telling me not to worry about it, but being worried looking himself at what I must have appeared like.

I went ahead up the Queens Line, and stopped in at home to tell Dad. I didn't want him to hear there was a triple fatality on Highway 17 at Haleys and think it was me.

Dad wasn't up yet, so I went up the stairs to his bedroom to tell him before I headed back out on the route. I thought I was fine. It was only when I went into his bedroom to tell him that I found out I wasn't. I started to open my mouth, and all that came out was a gasping sob. I broke down and my knees gave out and I fell on them beside his bed and bawled like a baby as I tried to tell him what happened. My head was on my folded arms on his bedside as I tried to tell him all three guys were dead and there was nothing I could do to save any of them. In my broken sobbing, Dad thought I had CAUSED the accident or been involved in it somehow, and was trying to calm me down and saying we needed to go to the police and issue a report. At that, I managed to pull myself together enough to make him understand I had nothing to do with it and only got there after it was all over and there was nothing to worry about that way. I wasn't in any trouble. I hadn't caused it and left the scene or anything like that. I was just the first to come upon it and the sheer helplessness of all those hardworking men being dead all around me and there being absolutely NOTHING I could to change any of it completely overwhelmed me. Whatever it was that gushed up and welled out of me finally ran its course and I was able to shakily get to my feet and I said I had to go finish the route. Dad said he was coming with me; that I was in no shape to be driving on my own. He quickly got up and got dressed and went back out with me.

The taxi driver was from Smiths Falls. He had taken a late night fare to Deep River or Chalk River, and, having pushed himself too hard with two jobs, fell asleep on the way back. Just like the Sun driver.

As it was a triple fatality, which was big news, the newspapers called the police for their report. The Ottawa Citizen, upon finding out one of their Carriers was the first on the scene, called me and I gave them my story. My voice was still shaking on the phone and they pointed that out in their story. I took offense to that. They added to the sensationalization of it by how it traumatized me and thought nothing of how it might embarrass me as a young man at the time. I lost respect for them, and reporters in general, through that.

The worst was yet to come. I thought it was over, but the most harrowing part of all came from that story. The Widow of the taxi driver saw my name in the paper and called me, absolutely frantic with questions I couldn't answer.

"What were his last words?!"

"I'm sorry. He couldn't say anything. He was gone."

"Did he say he loved me?!"

"No, M'am, I'm sorry. He was dead when I got there."

"But he must have said SOMETHING! Like, 'Tell my Wife I love her'?!"

"No, M'am. I'm sorry. He was already dead when I saw him. He was killed instantly. He was dead before I got there."

She wouldn't take no for an answer in her frantic search for closure. She wanted to come and meet me and bring her two children and have me tell them he said he loved them all before he died. I told her I never wanted to meet that man's children and see little ones who would grow up without their Dad. She kept on calling, beseeching me to tell her he said he loved her. It was absolutely harrowing listening to her howling with grief on the phone, seeking affirmation of his love and commitment to her. I finally had to tell her to please not call back because I was being honest with her and I would not do any one of us the disservice of lying to her to assuage her emotions and sense of loss. I felt terrible about it. Just awful, but I couldn't help her if she wouldn't accept Truth and Reality. I had a powerful commitment to the Truth, and I wouldn't bend it to help someone with their feelings. And it would be a Dishonour to her Husband. Lying about the dead is no honour to them. The man died doing what he did best: Providing for his Family. What more statement and testimony of Love is there? Men are practical beings. Work is their Language of Love. As a fellow night worker, his late nights working a lonely second job for his family spoke volumes about his character to me. He didn't need to merely speak Love to his Wife and children; he was PRACTICING it and died doing it.

Her contacting me like that was the worst part. Worse than seeing a dead man in the gravest and most graphic of ways, only moments after he was killed just doing his job. I would have went to his Funeral, but her Death Grip on me just over the phone was too smothering and haunting. I didn't know what to do and sometimes maybe wish I had consented to meet with her, but I couldn't help her in her resolute denial that he absolutely, positively HAD to have parting words for her before he left this life. I don't know much about their relationship, but one thing I can say for sure is she most definitely loved her Husband and his place in their Family and was going to miss him in a fashion that could never be put into words.

To add insult to injury, a local fireman called me and gave me a rollicking load of crap on the phone. He told me I should have gotten back in my car and drove into Haley's and woke someone up and told them there was a fire on 17 and they needed to come, and because I didn't a trailer full of mail burnt. I had to stay at the scene and warn anyone else to keep them from getting involved! Don't put that BS on me! The trucker's dispatch sent First Responders and it's not my fault Fire didn't come! It's not my fault a trailer of mail burnt. I had enough bothering me without that. When three fellow night workers died on my Watch and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, the last thing on my mind was the friggin' mail in their trailer! If I had come across the Sun carrier when he was killed, do you think I would have given a crap about his NEWSPAPERS?! People can send new letters, new bills, new cheques, new toys... whatever, to replace the lost, but you can't EVER send new People in the place of those who have been lost. Not even close. That really got under my skin. I had just experienced the worst day of my entire life and I was completely unequipped for it. As if I didn't feel helpless enough in the whole thing in the first place then lay THAT BS on me. He wasn't there. 35 years later and my blood is boiling again at the sheer heartless audacity of trying to make me feel even MORE useless in the entire situation...

For years every time I crossed 17, when I looked East my mind's eye put that faint flickering orange glow there in the exact pinpoint spot it happened. I would look away and look back, making sure it wasn't there and happening all over again. It just wouldn't go away.

I came across other terrible situations on the route. Other collisions, house fires, people walking alone and frightened after domestic disputes, etc., but that dark and rainy night all alone with dead people around me I couldn't do anything for stands out as by far the worst. It is only in recent years that I can drive by that site and not see it all over again. The darkness, the silence - except for the flames, the Finality of it all.

My fervent hope is I never experience anything even remotely close to that event ever again. It was the stand out worst thing of all that happened. There were other things that were very bad as well, but thankfully none with the death toll of that tragic and unforgettable night.

From that experience I could never be an ambulance driver or a paramedic. My hat is off to them. They are a mentally tough breed for sure. What they must go through is unimaginable, especially on the Graveyard Shift. Again, my hat is off to them.

This one had to be like this. The next one will be much lighter hearted; I promise.

Rest in Peace to all mentioned here.