Matthew was the age that he wanted to go with me everywhere I went. Him being the oldest son, with a new little brother at home.

We left the house early that Sunday morning and was making the 8 or 10 mile trip to our Construction Office/Yard, where I was going to unhook from the rather heavy built shop-made bumper pull trailer we had on behind. Back then, in the 1970s you could drive around Austin without running across all that many other cars on the road on an early Sunday morning trip.

Matthew, about 4 years old was standing up in the passenger seat as we made that rough train track crossing on Montopolis Drive. Our yard was insight, just across Ben White Blvd to the north. This was long before car seats and buckling kids up was fashionable. If you needed to make a sudden stop, your right arm just instinctively went up to hold a child to keep them from plowing into the dashboard.

I had a strange feeling something that wasn’t right. A lone trailer passed us on the right with no vehicle attached to it. It veered off the street and struck a power pole. It hit with enough force that the power pole appeared to explode. I slowed to a near stop as the splintered creosote wood rained down around us.

It was a pole with a large transformer or two atop it. The power lines flopped and made connection and the sparks flew. I threw that pickup in gear and headed on down the street with the transformer dangling and it was ablaze.

It’s still in question as to why the trailer came loose. Either I was pulling the trailer equipment with a 2 5/16” hitch, using a 2” ball or maybe I hadn’t latched it properly. Safety chains weren’t all that common back then.

Reasoning that since that happened directly in front of The Lower Colorado River Authority East Austin Service Center, I figured someone in an around there knew more about power lines and transformers than I did.

As we got on down the way, Matthew looked at me, in all of his 4 years of age and said “Daddy is you just gonna leave your twailer there”?

It was kind of cute the way he figured all that out.

Sometime the next morning I got a call from my office manager/ accountant on the radio and he informed me that a Austin City Policeman was there at the office. It seems that a trailer registered to the company was involved in an accident the day before. They surmised that it must have been stolen out of our yard. Something came up missing out of that yard regularly and the police would be called to file a report.

We sent someone over to pick up the trailer that the electric company repair crew had dragged out of the way to enable them to put a new pole in and restore service to area.

There was extensive damage to the tongue and front of the trailer. Since we had several good welders around they were able to make it serviceable again. I’m sure it stayed in the fleet until it was stolen again and never returned. Something that has always been a problem in the business.

Matthew turned 49 last month. So this happened 4 1/2 decades ago, so the statute of limitations has surely run out by now on leaving the scene of an accident. If not, I’ll claim I just made this whole story up and have no idea what anyone is talking about.