My Parents Home and the Cement Truck in 1982 (Gravity is Ruthless!) -- (Not So) Wordless Wednesday #905

 This is a priceless (to me) image in my computer file folders:

Guess what happened here!  Guess whose house this is!  No, not mine...but it is the house that my grandparents (LYle and Emily Carringer) built at 825 Harbor View Place in San Diego in 1951, and that my parents lived in from 1978 until my mother died in 2002.  This event happened in about 1982, but I can't narrow the date at this time.  I cannot find a newspaper article about this event on GenealogyBank (which has the San Diego newspapers). 

The house above is at the foot of a very steep hill (Lucinda Street).  About 100 yards up the hill, a homeowner was having cement poured, and, when completed, the truck started down the hill, and the brakes failed.  The driver managed to turn the truck about 30 degrees to the left before he hit the curb and the brick wall and smashed into the garage (full of stuff, and my father's pink Cadillac).  That stopped the cement truck but ruined the Caddy.  The driver was badly injured. Gravity is ruthless!

My father watched this happen in front of his eyes...he was in the den looking out the window (it's under the V in the roofline) and if the driver had not turned the truck a bit, it would have hit my father and killed him.  My mother was in the kitchen and she would probably have been injured or killed too.  The incident happened in about five seconds from start to finish.  Someone (probably a neighbor) had the instinct to take a picture.  My parents sent it to Aunt Marion, who put it in her album, and Marion's daughter gave me the album!  

The truck was removed, the house was repaired, and my father bought a new car. 

I enhanced and colorized a colored photograph with the Google Gemini 3 and MyHeritage photo tools. 

This photograph is a part of my family history.  

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