It was the Friday afternoon of opening weekend of deer season, in 1968. The calamities started when Kenny, in a Ford Falcon, pulled out from the Gulf Station in Marble Falls. He and his squeeze at the time, Karen, were going to head northbound. I think Kenny was paying more attention to the redhead sitting next to him than he was to the heavy traffic, as he got t-boned by a Houston attorney that was up to go hunting. The attorneys car was a brand new Oldmobile 98 with 250 miles on it. No one was hurt seriously, but both cars were totaled.

At almost the same time one of our dump trucks ran a stop sign and hit a woman over by the Pure Stone Plant. The driver was on probation so as soon as he got things squared away with that wreck he jumped in one of the pickups that was sitting there and tore out to see Carlyle Wall, the judge (or JP) to be sure he wasn’t going to jail. But when he came up Broadway and got to Avenue E he ran another stop sign and collided with car, doing severe damage to both vehicles.

Someone called Smithwick to tell Cecil what all was going one in town. He jumped in a “66” Chevrolet Pickup that he mostly drove. When he got up to Camp Peniel, in that long curve, he was driving way too fast and tangled up with the guardrail and wiped out the whole right side of that pickup, from the front bumper to the rear bumper.

But it was still drivable, so he went on to town to get with his insurance agent.