I saw a baby . . . her tender white skin bruised and bloody, golden curls matted with dirt and blood . . . one tiny jaw crushed to a pulp. A wee little hand hanging limp . . . just a ball of flesh with broken bones protruding against a pair of pink rompers soiled with great blotches of muddy blood.
Paramedics worked silently picking up the little mangled form and gently placed it on a stretcher. It quivered and a faint moan of anguish came from the baby lips, once perfectly shaped but now bruised and disfigured.
Another form was lifted from the ground . . .. a sort of huddled shapeless bundle. It was the baby’s mother, broken, mangled and crumpled. No sign of life here.
A simple note on the bosom read, “City Morgue!”
A few yards away lay the father, still alive and screaming with pain. His face was all but cut away by the windshield glass; no airbag was available. One of his eyes was completely out of its socket and hanging by a string. His legs were an unrecognizable mass and blood was gushing from his nose and mouth.
“Annie,” he screamed. Annie, where are you?” he called. “Do you have Jill and Johnny? My God, I can’t see”, and with this he fell back into merciful shock and lifelessness.
In the crowd of people, little Johnny, held by kindly hands, little Johnny sobbed and cried, “Mommy, Daddy, where are you?” Jill was being attended to with little hope of survival.
Two state patrolmen held between them a wobbly drunken wretch, reeking with liquor. “What happened?” he blubbered, unable to stand on his own. “Where am I and what’s the mattered, he stammered. “I only had a couple of little drinks! I need a lawyer!”
The blinding blue lights, the scream of sirens, the crowd that had gathered, the JAWS OF LIFE, the wrecking crew, the paramedics, the police . . . and one little hysterical boy. All gathered around a whiskey bottle that strangely survived.
Oh yes, three pools of blood. “Oh, but you say, this is just the exception. “”No sir,” comes the strong and emphatic answer. To the contrary, NO OTHER ELEMENT KILLS MORE PEOPLE ON THE ROAD THAN THE CURSE OF LIQUOR.
The march of MADD (Mother’s Against Drunk Drivers) could tell the story. The endless line of survivors who have lost husbands, wives, children – they could all testify and tell the story. But for them it is too late. The tragedy has already occurred. It is too late to recall the myriad of drunks who fumbled for the keys to crank the motor and rumble away to destroy another life, another family.
Let’s not argue the good or bad about beer. Let’s not debate the evils of liquor, or the blessings of temperance. I’ll tell you what let’s do.
Let’s make it a capital offense to get drunk and get behind the wheel and drive. Let’s begin to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR ACTIONS. To ‘drink or not to drink’ is not the question. To drink and drive is. It is not wrong sometimes – it is wrong every time!
Driving drunk denies all the simple laws of mankind. Such principles as “love your neighbor as you love yourself” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” come to mind (Matthew 22:39;7:12). To kill in the name of booze is hardly different than killing with a gun or a knife. The damage is just as severe and lasting, and the victims are just as dead.
More laws are not needed but we do need more righteous judges that have a deep abhorrence of the unending excuses and pitiful explanations of the drunk driver.
In the days of the Roman rulers, the apostle Paul wrote, “For rulers are no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. . . . for he is God’s servant to do you good. If you do wrong then be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:3-4).
You that read my column know that I have no political bent or axe to grind. As a columnist I have a moral obligation to speak out on issues of life and death. Nearly half of all deaths on our roads and freeways come through the blurry eyes of the drunk or impaired driver. We live in a free country and to drink or not to drink is a personal right and choice. American law (Constitution) guarantees it.
Be it known to one and all, NO CITIZEN OF OUR COUNTRY HAS THE RIGHT TO DRIVE DRUNK OR IMPAIRED. So let it be written – So let it be done.