Narrator: Paul S. | Pennsylvania, USA
I used to deliver medical supplies to houses out in the country. One address had a steep gravel drive with a chain across it. A man in a checked shirt was standing beside the chain when I pulled up.
He shook his head, then pointed behind my van. I thought he wanted me to reverse so he could lower it.
I backed out to the road. He kept pointing. When I got out to ask what his problem was, there was nobody at the entrance. There wasn’t a chain either. Just two rotten posts about a yard apart.
The customer answered her phone and said I must be at the old entrance. She directed me round the side of the property. From her kitchen window I could see where a culvert had collapsed under the old drive. The gravel dropped into a hole deep enough to swallow the front of the van.
I described the man. She didn’t produce a photograph or tell me it was her dead husband. She said she had no idea who he was.
That disappoints people when I tell it. It suits me. Somebody got me off that drive, and I don’t need a better ending than that.
