People You Meet Along the Way...
Southbound on Highway 67 just before you get to the Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mining Company entrance, you cross a bridge between two ridgelines. Not a very long bridge, but a very high one. I have crossed it a dozen times in the last week or two, but today as I looked over the railing it reminded of a similar bridge in Germany. Southwest of Wurzburg on the Frankfurt/Nurnberg autobahn, there is a bridge spanning a deep valley very near the town of Kist. The German bridge is longer, wider, taller and different in a lot of other ways but it is similar in construction. The bridge near Kist is about three hundred feet above the valley floor.
Because of a serious mismanagement of personnel in our battalion, one of the factors leading to the relief- for- cause of our commander, we were critically short of drivers...in a truck battalion...so US Army Europe took drastic action. The next few plane loads of replacements from the states were culled for drivers and for non-essential MOS (Military Occupation Specialty). They sent them to us. We in turn set up a drivers' academy to train incoming clerks, cooks, mechanics, supply guys, and loads of others to become tractor trailer drivers.
I was selected to help set up and run the academy. It was during this frantic period of trying to produce drivers from non drivers that I met Barnaby. He was 18. Raised by a devout Mormon family, he was experiencing the "other way" of life. There was nothing malicious about him. He was a sweet person. He was handsome, funny, well mannered, respectful and he freely admitted that he was rebelling from his family just to see what it was like on the "other" path. So he had to be reminded often to take off his puka shell choker...he parted his hair in the middle (in the sixties this was a sure sign of a dope smoking, draft card burning, flag desicrating, flea bitten, dirty footed hippie), said, "wow" alot...but I couldn't help myself, I liked Barnaby. I don't remember what his original MOS was but he was one of the few who thought that being a trucker was a better deal than the one he had before.
The academy only lasted three weeks and then they went to their own company to ride along with a senior driver for a while to learn the ropes. The plan was to have them functioning on their own in three months. Our task was to teach alot in a little time so when Barnaby's class finished with us, we started on a new group and I kind of lost touch with him for a while, I saw him a few times in the snack bar or around the motor pool.
Oh yeah...that bridge. It came off of one ridge in a slight down hill tilt, it curved a little to the north, then a sllight uphill to the other ridge. It was wide and the railing was concrete about four feet high. Barnaby and his senior driver picked up a load in Kaiserslautern Depot and were headed for the Nurnberg area...Erlangen, I think. The investigators estimated that they had to be going about 70 MPH in order to jump that rail. 70 in an Army 5ton with a 27 foot trailer? Maybe in neutral. In any case, jump the rail they did. It was a foggy evening...it was fall so it was dark early...the road was foggy damp...they were not quite to the center of the bridge when they left it...only about 150 -200 feet to the ground. Among the contributing factors...the fog...the dark...wet road...too much speed...inexperienced driver (they assumed that Barnaby was driving and the rig just got away from him)...was the fact that both had apparently been smoking marijuana...and there was some left in a match box in the wreck.
When I looked over the side of the bridge on Hwy 67 today, it reminded me of looking over the side of the bridge in Germany and seeing the wreckage below. I had a flash of that kid...his infectious smile...and I remembered the catch phrase of the day...back there in 1969..."It's my life...it's nobody's business what I do with it...I ain't hurting no one...a purely victimless crime". I can almost hear their young voices saying all that crap right now. It was a crime to lose such a good kid, it hurt me...I guess I was the victim...and his Mom and Dad...and his sisters...and any one else who never got to know him.
What's my point? Just remembering a kid I liked. And telling you that you can't tell me it is none of my business. No one lives in a vacuum.