In January of 1991, I was taking my daughter Jessica into Frederick Maryland to buy her a car for commuting to college. We were on state route 26 west, coming into Frederick where 26 made a sharp radius left hnd curve under the overpass for I 15 north. We were cruising at the speed limit in my pickup, and it was a very very cold morning about 9am. A little old faded blue nissan/datsun B210 thing blew by us like we were standing still. They hit the curve, and spun out on a patch of ice from some moisture that had dripped down from the overpass. It spun out and then flippe and rolled when it hit the dry pavement on the other side of the ice patch. We pulled over and I could hear screaming and crying, and a tiny baby was strapped in a car seat on the passenger side. No problem, I crawled in and pushed the seat belt release button and the car seat with kid dropped down and I pushed the baby in the seat to the side.
The large heavy set woman still hanging upside down in her seat belt was screaming and thrashing, and yelling that she didn't want to burn to death. The car was filling with a black greasy smoke from a fire where the battery had shorted against the oil coated engine block, and was creating a black smoky fog. I had t yell at her to shut up and hold still as she hit me in the nose wither thrashing. But pushing on the seat belt button had no effect. I can only presume her respectable weight was jamming something. Even with both thumbs, it wouldn't budge.
At this point I took out my old well used Buck 301 stockman. I'd carried that stockman through some years of army service and 20 years of civilian soccer dad duties. The sheep foot blade cut through the seat belt with two swipes, and dropped the idiot woman on her head and I crawled backwards out of the wreck leaving her to make her own way.
The fire and police got there and everything was fine, so my daughter and I went on our way. It took gargling with coca cola to get the oil taste out of my mouth, and for the rest of the morning every tine I blew my nose it came out back then decreasing shades of gray. But the Buck pocket knife did the most serious job I ever needed of it. Going to buy my daughter a car that morning, I never thought about crawling into a burning Japanese compact to cut someone loose from a jammed seat belt. But it was there when a life depended on it. To this day, my daughter always has a knife on her, as does my granddaughter and grandson.
When I was kid, my old man told me that you can never know what life will throw at you when you leave the front door in the morning.
