Objects dodged in middle of road

"Watch out for the chair," my wife said.

I did, but by all rights there shouldn't have been a chair there at all.

Here we were, in the rain, in the westbound passing lane on the New York Thruway. Traffic was heavy, and the rain was pounding so hard that the wipers were on the maximum setting.

Yet there it was, a nice-looking dining room chair, pretty much on top of the lane dividing stripe.

For the next several miles we reminisced about things we've had to dodge in the middle of the highway.

There was the time we were headed toward Muncie when the twins were little and we drove over a sheet of plywood. Not ordinarily a problem. But the sheet was lying diagonally across our path. A front tire caught a corner, causing the plywood to bounce up. A back corner grabbed the cable for the parking brake.

Imagine driving 55 mph and stepping on the parking brake.

The car fought us all the way to Redkey where, fortunately, there was a kind and competent mechanic who quickly diagnosed and corrected the problem.

As I recall, he refused to charge us. He probably saw the twins and figured we had enough to worry about.

There was the time in southern New York state when, after a family camping trip, we lost one of our sleeping bags that had been bungeed to the roof rack. We finally found out when a car pulled up beside us with everyone inside it motioning wildly toward our roof.

We pulled over, and so did they. "How far back did we lose it?" I asked.

"At least 10 miles," the other driver said. "The thing rolled into a ditch. We wanted to signal you earlier, but we couldn't catch up."

I rechecked the bungee cords on the rack and drove more slowly the rest of the day.

And, memorably, there was the time in northern Michigan when we were a few cars behind a pickup truck with a homemade camper built in its bed.

We were just admiring its construction when the pickup entered a slightly banked curve, and we watched in both horror and fascination as the entire home-built project first listed, then leaned, then tumbled, cascading onto the pavement.

It was as if a garden shed had exploded in our path, with debris rolling everywhere.

This time around, we eventually came upon the likely source of the dining room chair.

A pickup was parked on the shoulder. The driver was staring at what was left of his load. And the rain had gotten worse.

You could tell what he was thinking: Should I go back for it? Will it still be there? Or is it a pile of splinters in the ditch? Should I just chalk it up to experience and tell the story of why we're one dining chair short now and then?

That last one would be my choice.[[In-content Ad]]