Fri. the 13th & My elderly neighbor comes over, apologizes FOR CRASHING HER CAR INTO MY YARD!

[HamdenRice]

Obviously she is just fine if a little shaken.

It happened while I was out. A little while after I came home she asked, didn't you hear the crash? Didn't you see the police swarming all over your backyard? Didn't you see all the smoke?

I was like, huh? I had no idea what she was talking about. So she leads me to my own backyard where I saw this:



ARRGGHH! There go half of my tomatoes and rasberries!

[DS1]

1. SHAGUAR!

Yeah, baby!




Yea-heh-heh-eh!

[HamdenRice]

6. She's the neighborhood hottie at like 75. I think that's her "boyfriends" jag

I think she drives a Caddy.

[matcom]

2. tomatoes and rasberries?

your GARAGE is gone!

:wow:

[HamdenRice]

5. No it's her garage!

She was parking in her garage and her foot got caught in the accelerator and she blasted through the back of her garage into my tomato patch.

Yeah, I know, backyards are tiny and we live cheek by jowl in Queens, NY.

[Sanity Claws]

25. You're in Queens?

I grew up in Queens, specifically Richmond Hill near Jamaica. Where are you?

[HamdenRice]

29. I'm in Hollis/St. Albans

Home of Run-DMC!

[Sanity Claws]

33. Nice yard

I remember we grew beefsteak tomatoes in our backyard every year. You can't beat home grown tomatoes.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about my childhood home because I'm moving back to New York and plan to be there by the end of the month.
Maybe I'll see you at DU meeting.:hi:

[HamdenRice]

37. Great! Consider Queens

When I was a teenager living here I hated it. I thought it was so boring and always wanted to be in the city.

Now I love it. Don't know how long you've been away but Richmond Hill is now the center of the Guyanese/Trinidadian community. Lots of Indo-Caribbean shops.

It's amazing how you can grow so much in a little space using horticultural techniques. I compost kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, leaves and hedge trimmings and the soil has become really, really rich.

Only weird thing is that there are absolutely no earth worms here this season. It's kinda creeping me out. You know, first the bees, then the song birds this year. Now no earth worms? WTF?!?!?

[BarenakedLady]

3. Oh dear

I'm glad you weren't out working in the garden at the time.

:scared:

[HamdenRice]

8. Notice the shovel at the front left bumper

That's where I was digging yesterday and left it. I woulda been toast.

[EstimatedProphet]

4. Thank God the Weber is OK!

[HamdenRice]

18. You are so right! It's my treasure

I left it out during a snow storm, it filled with water, froze and deformed something awful.

But I straightened it out and it still works!

[EstimatedProphet]

23. Can't beat a Weber grill

People who haven't used them just can't understand...

[johnnie]

35. LOL

Only you EP... :rofl:

[EstimatedProphet]

41. I'm here all week!

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Those little garages can be tricky...

Too bad about your garden plants but it's great that she wasn't hurt.

on edit: my first post asked the questions you answered but I hadn't seen the upthread reply where you explained this. It's nice that some of the raspberries survived.

[HamdenRice]

9. My backyard is the one with the Weber

You can make out the property line which runs along the fence and the now destroyed back of her garage. All her garage junk and the back of her garage are now sitting in my backyard.

Thank God half of the rasberry bushes were not destroyed.

[MissMillie]

10. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Wow... that looks like a bit of a mess.

[HamdenRice]

12. Yeah, she's really nice

wouldn't want anything to happen to her. I said, don't worry about it, you didn't damage anything except a couple of tomato plants.

Unfortuntely for her, though, she may have structurally damaged her garage and it might have to be torn down.

[ThomCat]

11. Wow.

:(

I hope insurance will cover the damage.

I'm sorry about the tomatoes and rasberries.

[HamdenRice]

13. Hi Thomcat!

Since I had to take pics and upload them, at least it motivated me to get the pics of the DU meetup onto photobucket.

[ThomCat]

14. Cool!

I'll go looking for them in a little while (giving you some time to post them.) :7

[malta blue]

15. Well then.....

I am so glad you are okay - and OMG - she really took out her garage now didn't she??

[HamdenRice]

17. A little update -- she really floored it!

She actually went through the front door of her garage, which was DOWN! through the garage and through the back wall. There are skid marks on the street -- that's how fast she accelerated.

She thinks that she was pressing on the brakes and they didn't work, but it's obvious from the "forensic evidence" that she must have floored the accelerator thinking it was the brake.

She went through two walls with no more than about 15-20 feet to get up speed!

[malta blue]

19. DAYUM!

Are you sure this was not a terrorist attack on your garden?
:rofl:

I'm sure she feels just awful about it - hopefully you can laugh about it too. I'm sure her insurance company won't be laughing for a while.:rofl:

[HamdenRice]

22. At first it was just funny,

but after talking to the building inspector, I realize she could have killed herself.

The neighbors who saw it all say they thought she was dead just from the amount of dust and debris!

[tigereye]

40. yikes, I figured she would really have had to be going pretty good

to go through all that and the back of the garage!

glad no one was hurt!

[skygazer]

16. Whoops!

I gotta get me one of them Jag-u-ars. Doesn't look too badly banged up. The garage, on the other hand...

Glad no one was hurt (except the berry plants).

[HamdenRice]

20. Horrible thought! She could have killed Teddie!

At the time the accident happened, Teddie is usually hanging out in the yard, often doing his business right where the crash occurred:






After talking with her I'm only now realizing this was more serious than I first thought.

At least I know that this is the bad thing that is going to happen for Friday the thirteenth and no one was hurt.

[malta blue]

27. Phew - good thing Teddie was not around...

I'm glad all you lost were some fruits and veggie - very replaceable!

[HamdenRice]

21. Wow, it gets scarier

Just talked to the city building inspector. He said that because she went through the front garage door which was attached to the masonry, she almost brought the entire cement and brick wall structure and roof down on herself. The walls are visibly leaning from her street, and the roof was almost knocked off the supporting pillars.

She came 'this' close to killing herself. And her brother-in-law died like two weeks ago, and her boyfriend had a heart attack about a month ago.

She was sitting on her stoop saying that she her blood pressure was really high and was dizzy.

[malta blue]

24. Wow - poor thing - so not funny anymore....

She must be scared out of her wits right now.

[HamdenRice]

26. I think the more we are all thinking about it

the scarier it gets. She really dodged a bullet.

She was kind of amazed/amused when I first saw her. Now she is sitting on her stoop and looks like she wants to cry.

That's the way it often is when an accident happens really fast, and you don't get to think about it till later.

Btw, a friend of mine died almost exactly that way about 20 years ago. She was pulling into her block in Brooklyn, slammed on the accelerator instead of the brake, flipped her car over and was killed. Her baby was strapped in the back and lived!

[malta blue]

31. Wow - she must be feeling really awful now.

Maybe you can get her an iced tea or something - let her know that you are still her friend (that is if you are) she sounds like she could use one right about now.

I'm so sorry about your friend, that is just tragic.

[HamdenRice]

32. It's such a nice neighborhood, most of the neighbors gathered around her

and her sister for a while. That's when I found out how bad it was -- like an hour and a half after I first found out anything had happened.

[malta blue]

36. That is good to know. Well, you'll have a good tale to tell

tonight at happy hour....

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. sorry hamden rice~

[HamdenRice]

30. Thanks

No damage here at all except a few plants. My neighbor though is going to have some serious expenses. They're telling her she has to retain a structural engineer pronto before any of these stupid firelines can be taken down.

Technically I am informed I cannot go into my yard and start cleaning out the junk because the garage might collapse.

Suddenly my yard make me feel very hillbilly.

[Blue-Jay]

34. Your garden looked too much like a farmer's market.

[HamdenRice]

45. Thanks!

It's amazing how much you can grow in such a small space. Funny thing is I had this really lazy vibe all spring and early summer and I couldn't bring myself to plant anything where the accident was except some late scrawny tomatoes, and that area is usually full of plants by now! So I guess things worked out for the garden.

[bleedingheart]

38. is that her Jag? so she went through the back of the garage

wow...

has she gone to the doctor?

she may need to have her pressure checked and she might need something to calm her nerves...

invite her over for dinner to relieve her nerves...

the last thing you want is a neighbor all worked up and suffering a stroke or worse especially when no one was hurt.

perhaps it is also time for her to give up her license???

[HamdenRice]

46. When the police and fire department were here

she declined to go my ambulance to the hospital. After seeing Sicko, I would too.

[ContraBass Black]

39. Powerful car.

[Flaxbee]

42. really, I'm very glad that no one was hurt!

But, just out of curiosity, did anything happen to the Jag? It doesn't look damaged much at all --

Poor woman. She might not have her license much longer, either ...

[Debi]

43. Wow!

Lucky nobody was hurt!

:hug:

Tell her to reinforce the next garage w/steel!

[HamdenRice]

44. Update: Found her wandering in my yard muttering, "I'm so embarassed"

She was trying to clean up my yard by herself! I told her don't worry I would get to it, but she wouldn't stop, so we started picking up stuff, breaking down the old doors and back of the garage material. She's a pretty tough lady. Her younger 50-60 ish sister was helping out too.

Just finished most of it.

Just to give you a sense of how fast she was going, that green and white board in the center of the pic near where the police tape intersects the sunflowers IS THE FRONT DOOR OF HER GARAGE!!! She hit her closed garage door so hard and fast that she propelled it through the back of her garage on her car and about 10 feet further into my yard than the car! This from a standing still position no more than about 20 feet in front of the garage door given the skid marks. As I was dismantling it and realize it's the garage front door, I'm thinking what the fuck???!!!

The jag seems to have hoisted itself up onto some old automotive junk so its springs and struts are showing and it doesn't look too good for the shaguar.

It was kind of sad also because we had to throw out a lot of her accumulated junk through my yard so we were going through it together. No one is supposed to go through her garage for fear of collapse. As I said, her brother in law died two weeks ago. I've never quite understood the relationship but I think her younger sister lives with her part time. I always saw the four of them together on weekends -- Ruby (the driver); her boyfriend, Danny; Doris, younger sister; and Doris's husband (forget his name). So as we're going through junk Ruby and Doris are kind of saying don't throw that out, <deceased brother in law> built that. Kind of sentimental given the recent passing.