Thursday September 24, 2026 Dumbfounded

   Back in early July, I was driving my old pickup west on Roseau County Highway 11 toward Roseau when I met an oncoming commercial vehicle in the eastbound lane and caught a rock with my windshield, creating a small one-inch diameter chip on the passenger side.

 

   It wasn't like the windshield was pristine. I figured it was the original one that had been in the 33-year old pickup forever. There already was a short crescent-shaped crack along its right side when I bought it. It didn't affect my line of sight. My wife saw it and insisted I order a new one before it cracked more.

   But, as with most things that don't seem as important to me as it does to her, I didn't act immediately; my way of thinking was that I don't drive the truck often enough to warrant the expense. We didn't have glass coverage on it anyway -- or any of our vehicles; sharing the idea more or less, that if we definitely needed a windshield, why of course we'd buy one -- and this wasn't one of those times.

   A week or so later, I was over at a neighbor's house putting a deck belt on her riding mower. I had parked my truck in her driveway off the edge of her large yard. When I got the belt on I had to take the mower for a test drive, so after inserting a pair of earplugs, I drove the mower out of her garage to do just that. After a couple rounds, I came in from a different direction and drove the mower back in, happy in my work --until I discovered I had struck the passenger-side rear window with a rock from the mower and shattered it, the scattered sparkly fragments below and inside the vehicle as evidence. Crap! I covered the window opening with a garbage bag and sealed it into place with duct tape as a temporary measure; I figured I would fix it later myself using Plexiglass (And did.).

  After I showed my wife what I had done to the side window she renewed pestering me about the windshield. The crack was such that although it extended from side to side it was still below my line of sight, and we disagreed about the necessity of buying a new one -- until I I caught a rock with the windshield of my 1998 Subaru Legacy Outback a couple weeks later. DOUBLE TRIPLE CRAP!

   So, as you would think, I got an estimate for not one, but two new  windshields; one for the Subaru wagon and one for the Chevy pickup. Ka-ching! I had the windshield for the Subaru installed; we had to wait for the truck's.

   THEN -- yes, yes wait, I'm not finished. At home, I had parked the Subaru with its new windshield under the two old cedar trees well away from any possible collision (I thought) by foreign objects propelled or inert,  thinking should we get hail the dense cedar branches could maybe shield the car., not taking into consideration I might --even remotely -- hit the car with a stone from over 100 feet away below the top of our farm lane ditch that I was cutting with a Stihl FS131 brush cutter. I thought I was taking precautions.

 

   The following morning, Jackie's daughter, out walking her dog, announced with no glee in her voice, that someone or something had broken the rear window out of the Subaru with its brand new  windshield, parked under the two old cedar trees. I've since deleted images of this catastrophe, but just imagine its rear window as if exploded by an object or objects unknown, leaving me speechless -- which, as I was about to find out, wouldn't be the last time in or around my Subaru.

   Upon demolition of all the rear window glass, the vacuuming, sweeping, and containment of several pounds of once molten sand, I realized that rear window glass -- for that 1998 Subaru Legacy Outback was, because we didn't have glass coverage --, going to cost a whole lot of money because it wrapped around the ends and wasn't as simple as were front windshields. So somewhere deep in my psyche my brain said, "It'd be a whole lot cheaper if you just replace the whole hatch --with the glass intact -- than buy the glass separately. So I set about calling area mechanics, like ABS in Roseau, that I knew installed glass, in addition to D&L Auto Glass's search for it.

 

  I did another garbage bag temporary repair number on the back of the car with duct tape and accepted the fact it was probably going to take some time to find an antique car part like that rear 'lift gate,' as they're called in the trades. But, D&L came through again! They located a Subaru lift gate at Jon's Salvage in Greenbush, 30-some miles away within a couple days. AMAZING! ABS Auto Sales (218) 463-1255 Roseau, found several locations around the state too.

 

  Wait, wait -- there's more ...(Hey, I'm about as tired of writing this as you are reading it.) Cutting to the chase, bizarre things weren't through with me, because as I was driving the Subaru to Roseau to get the rear lift gate put in, I caught another rock in the new windshield, five miles from town, breaking it! It was like a rifle shot, I can only imagine. It was so loud. 

 

   I had met another commercial-style pickup truck which had turned onto the highway from a gravel road a mile ahead of me; I saw it, and as luck (?) would have it, with no other vehicles around for miles, both of us traveling approximately the speed limit, it shocked the hell out of me; I was speechless again. It was like I couldn't even swear; I was so startled about what had just happened, I just drove on in silence, dumbfounded. 

 

   I became real gun shy meeting vehicles after all this, especially with road construction crew and equipment traffic strung out from Wannaska to Gatzke. Returning home from Roseau after getting the new windshield put in the pickup, I decided not to drive the gravel roads so soon after its installation, rough roads being what the are, when, as luck would have it, I became the front vehicle in line waiting for the flag truck to lead traffic back through the construction zone. Nothing happened.