Accidental Dale

            Besides lying and swearing, Uncle Dale Miner had a penchant for gossip. When he didn’t know what was going on, he went out of his way to find out exactly what was happening. He had an obsessive need to know what was going on everywhere in the mountains. He would relentlessly pursue a rumor until he was sure that he had the whole story.

My brother Ken and I used to run with the Saltlick Volunteer Fire department and Ambulance Company. One night we responded to an accident call in Melcroft, Pennsylvania. It was a two car accident at an intersection.  I was directing traffic at the one arm of the cross road standing among the burning flares.

My brother was just lighting flares and directing traffic along another of the main branches of the highway. Dale approached my road, stopped until I motioned to drive him ahead. He pulled off to the side of the roadway to park, then walked back to me. He didn’t day “Hi” or anything other than “Who was in the accident?” I was too far away from the accident to know any of the details, isolated in my job of directing traffic. I watched him walk away from me toward the accident scene, when he couldn’t get the information he wanted from me. I could see him silhouetted in the lights at the accident site.

When he neared the collision, he recognized my brother and turned away from the accident site where he would have been told to leave and walked toward my brother Ken. Ken saw Dale coming. He’d already lit two flares to control traffic, but as Dale drew near, my brother started walking farther and farther away from Dale, lighting flares as he went. Dale kept following. Dale finally caught up with Ken when he ran out of flares to light.

Dale asked the same question, “Who was involved in the accident?”

Ken gave Dale the same answer, “I don’t know, Dale.”

Disgusted, Dale walked back to the accident scene where the firemen were clearing the collision site. He hovered around the edge of firemen until he got the information he was after.

Later Ken told me, “I ran out of flares or I’d still be walking to avoid talking to that man.”