I remember hearing the connection of the car with the other car, and hearing the connection of the other car with the one in front of it, and then a dog, yelping.

We went out on the balcony to see if we could help; I hadn't realized it was a crash until I stepped outside and saw a dog limping in the street.

And I could hear the train passing by on the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill, and I looked up and saw the truck that came over the top of the hill, and the driver who didn't hear the train and didn't slow down to see what was over the top of the hill. The driver of the truck was arguing with the man he hit, and a woman in the street asked us to call a phone number. I had just called 911 and told the operator the address. The operator had hung up, and I called the other number.

And then we went outside and found out that no one was hurt, and my mind shifted from emergency action to some sort of cautious observation. Over the next few minutes we learned more of what had happened.

The train that runs along Dreamland had stopped the traffic on our side of the street, and a black pickup came over the hill at fifty miles an hour, not expecting the line of cars to be there. He hit a white truck in front of him, and the white truck hit a BMW, and then the BMW hit the car in front of it. There were five kids in the white truck, some of whom were wearing seat belts, some not. None of them were hurt, and neither were any of the adults in any of the cars.

A dog had been sitting in the back of the white truck, and it flew twenty yards in front of the BMW. There was little else to say about the whole matter.

The paramedics had come and gone by the time we went in, but the cops were still there, trying to get the greater story of the case. The driver of the black truck was drunk, and he would go through a long process before he drove again, or so I would like to believe.

And an hour after the accident, the cars were flying down Dreamland once more. And that was Yom Kippur Eve, 9/22/96.

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