Earlier this evening, I went out to pick up a few groceries.  As I was driving up the somewhat rural road that leads to our local commercial strip, I saw some cars with their blinkers on just up ahead.  Some of them were clustered just off the side of the road in a field.  As I slowed down, I realized there were people walking around in the field – waving at me and telling me to stop.

I did come to a stop, and as I did so, realized that there were power lines hanging just a couple of feet above the car.  I started to back the car up, but saw that another car had come up behind me and was stopped.  Someone then was yelling for me to get off the road, so I pulled over into the grassy field and got out of the car.  Once out of the car, I could see that, across the road, a car had slammed into an electric pole, and the pole keeled over across the road.  The pole had not fallen all the way down – it appeared that it was being held up by the wires – but the top end of the pole couldn’t have been much more than 6 feet off the ground, and the wires were just about that close to the road.

I asked if the police had been called, which they had.  After another minute, a patrol car showed up, and then 3 more arrived in another minute or two.  At that point, the cops were able to take over redirecting traffic, so I and some other people drove past the downed pole area and back onto the road.  I did my shopping, and went home a different way (which I’d been planning to do anyway so I could get gas).

As far as I could tell, nobody had been hurt.  The car that hit the pole seemed to be empty, so I think its drive had gotten out after the accident.  I don’t know how much danger I was actually in – it’s possible that I would have cleared the wires if I’d kept driving, but it was still pretty freaky seeing them looming so close in front of the car.  Definitely the most unusual shopping trip I’ve had in a long time.