Scratch & Dent

During church on the last Sunday in February, Josh took two other guys in the ward with him over to Discovery Center (the assisted living center in Salmon) to have church services there with some of the elderly that live there.

 

It had snowed that day, and when he was stopped at the stop sign right before crossing Main Street, a woman was traveling south-bound on Main Street, and she turned right onto the road where Josh was stopped. She was heading to church, and was being cautious, but because the roads hadn't been plowed, her car didn't make the corner, and she went straight into the driver's door on Josh's car. Because he was stopped and she was driving really slow, the hit wasn't a major impact, so it didn't affect Josh or his passengers or the other driver, and our car door was still able to open and the engine and transmission were just fine, too. But, there was a good-sized dent on the door and a yucky scratch that would've rusted, and the hood of the car was bent near the front wheel base, so we had the car fixed under her insurance (and good thing, too, because it cost a whopping $3700 to fix!!!). It took a few weeks for the auto detail company to get the parts ordered in, so it didn't get fixed until the second week of March.

 

I took these photos of the car before we took it in to get fixed--the car obviously wasn't clean this day, but I wanted to document the damage that was done before it was made new again!

 

Here's a photo of the side of the car that was injured:

I know it's hard to see with the dirt on the car, so here's a close-up of the scratches on the door.

From this angle, you can see the damage on the hood around the wheelbase in addition to the door scratches.

The funniest part about this whole incident was the fact that found out about it from someone else! During Sunday School at church on the day of the accident, I went out into the hallway, and I saw Josh and his friend Jason standing in the middle of the hall talking. When they came back to the church from the Care Center, they never made it to class because they were catching up with each other. When I saw them, they were talking about the recent experience that some youth in our ward had had the day before at the Scout Klondike Derby campout. I stopped to chat with them for a bit. After a few minutes, Jason mentioned to me that my husband had been T-boned a little earlier. I sort of freaked out! My heart panicked, and my eyes got big, and I would've yelled, but we were in the church! But then he explained it all to me, and that he was fine, and the car was not too bad, either. Of course, as luck would have it, we had JUST finished paying the car off the week before this accident happened! Crazy timing!

As far as accidents go, this was extremely mild and now it's nothing more than just a funny story to recall. I'm grateful that on all the snowy roads we had late this winter, that this is the only accident we endured, and that it wasn't worse than it was.