This is a true story about the life and times of my great uncle during the 1950s.

My great uncle and his wife lived in Gulf Shores Alabama during the 1950s. For those of you that don�t know, Gulf Shores is a booming tourist town along the coast line of Alabama, on the east side of Mobile Bay. Condos stretch for miles in either direction along the beach. Souvenir stores and restaurants line the streets. At least, that is what it looks like now, back in the 50s, there was no one there. Well, obviously there was not �no one� there, I mean, I just said that my great uncle and his wife lived there, but there was hardly anyone there. There was one gas station, a couple of bars, a few stores and about a hundred people. That, on an island that is about 6 miles long. It�s safe to say that the land was unencumbered by human development. The beaches were deserted, and rolling sand dunes covered the island.

My great uncle owned a World War II surplus jeep. Basically it was an engine mounted in a steel frame with seats on it. No seat belts, no air conditioning, no shocks, no brakes. You read that right, there were no brakes. (note: the jeep was a manual transmission, as in a stick shift, for those of you that have never driven anything but an automatic, when you downshift it slows the vehicle down, which is sort of a brake� kind of). When my great uncle would pull in the gas station, he would do a few laps of the parking lot to lose enough speed to stop at one of the pumps. Despite its lackings the jeep was perfect for the country. As there was only one main road, the jeep was perfect for driving over the sand dunes, especially at high speeds. At night he would frequently take the jeep for a drive along the beach and run over sand crabs. It was a land of freedom; you could do what you want.

My great uncle also liked to drink� a lot. In case you need it spelled out, having a jeep with no brakes and a drinking problem is not the greatest of combinations. Anyways, my great aunt (the wife of my great uncle you dolts), left the house early one morning to visit some relatives in another town. She was planning on returning later that night and she expected her husband to have dinner ready for her at home upon her arrival. Well, this meant that my great uncle would be alone all day, which usually meant he would go to the bar and drink (note: he may have been an alcoholic, but he was a very kind man, not all alcoholics are assholes).

Later that night, when my great aunt returned, she noticed that her husband�s jeep was not in the driveway, and no lights were on in the house. She found this odd, but upon entering the house things only got odder. She found her husband asleep in their room. She was obviously perturbed that he would have failed in his duties to get dinner ready so she woke him up. Upon waking my great uncle said, very matter of factly, �Can�t you let me be? I�ve got glass in my back.� This was a large shock to my great aunt, but eventually the story was forced out.

My great uncle had indeed gone to the bar for most of the day. He headed home, to cook dinner for them (he was very insistent on that point), somewhat drunk. Actually, not somewhat, completely drunk, and in his jeep with no brakes. On the way home, he came to a curve in the road. In his drunken state he failed to notice the curve. The jeep went flying of the road at about 55 miles per hour, and impacted against a large pine tree. You�ve probably heard the phrase �wrapping a car around a tree�; well that�s not what happened here. The jeep hit that tree so hard it split completely in half and kept going (my great uncle ended up underneath the dashboard on the passenger side, yes, it�s a mystery to me as to how he got there). When my great uncle came to, he was laying, completely naked, on a cold steel table. He sits up to find a few people sitting around a table playing cards, other than that the room is empty. He looks at the people (who have failed to notice him at this point) and simply asks, �Can I go home now?� The people jump up and turn white (which is amazing because they were black). They exchange looks, and proceed to run out of the room as fast as they can, as if the devil himself was behind them. The reason they did this was because they believed that the devil himself was after them, or at least a body possessed by the devil. You see, my great uncle had been pronounced dead at the scene of the crash and taken to the morgue. They stripped him down and placed him on the table to be examined when the coroner came in the morning. The people in the room witnessed a dead man rising from the grave. My great uncle witnessed some people running from a naked man that had just been in a car wreck. He found his clothes, put them on, called a cab, went home, and went to sleep.

My great uncle should have died. The only part of the car that was not mangled beyond recognition was the space under the dashboard on the passenger side. To this day, no one knows how he got there, but it was a miracle that he did. What could have easily been a family tragedy, turned into a great anecdote about people coming back from the dead. For those of you out there that read this, don�t drink and drive. However, feel free to laugh at the comedic antics of a drunken man in a jeep with no brakes.

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