I am compelled to tell this harrowing tale of a near death experience in the middle of rural Indiana and a popular song by Eric Clapton.
It all began in college with my fraternity brothers from Beta Theta Pi. We had a really good intramural basketball team at the University of Minnesota. We won the fraternity league championship and went to the All-U Final Four and played at the legendary Williams Arena--home of the Minnesota Gopher men’s basketball team.
Later that winter, we decided to take our show on the road. We roadtripped out to Richmond, Kentucky to play in the “All Beta Theta Pi Basketball Tournament.” We drove all the way out there in the back of an empty work van with no seats and a plastic bucket to go pee in.
We made quite an impression out there in the heart of basketball country. Not only did we come further than any other team, they were impressed that these dudes from the frozen tundra could play some ball. We beat all of our opponents by 20 points or more. We ended up losing in the championship game primarily because, like all the other fraternity guys at the tournament, we partied until four in the morning. Our opponents, Michigan State, decided to go to bed at midnight and skipped the party altogether. They may have won the game, but we were champions of the weekend.
Flash forward a year later. We felt we had to go back and see if we could win the whole thing. This time we did it in style. We held a few parties to raise money so we could rent an RV. We partied pretty good that first night on the road. However, we were responsible enough to make sure the driver was sober. Eventually we all passed out.
I was the first person up the next morning except for the driver and his co-pilot. I took advantage of this and popped a music tape into the boom box. My buddy Kent was the next to wake up. He and I cracked a morning beer just as the sun was rising over the grassy plains of central Indiana. I took a gulp of my beer when “Lay Down Sally” by Eric Clapton, started playing on the boom box.
I was in a good place.
Scott, the co-pilot up front, got up and went to the fridge to get a soda. Suddenly, the RV lurched wildly. It tossed Scott across the RV and he bashed into the wall. The refrigerator and cabinet doors on the right side of the RV flew open and debris went flying across the room. Before we knew it, the RV flipped over onto it’s side. Bodies were flying and the keg we had in the bathroom blasted through the cardboard wall and nearly crushed my friend Brent's skull. It all happened in seconds. Dazed, I crawled out the shattered back window of the RV. Other drivers had already pulled over and were running towards the wrecked RV.
That incident totally redefined the term “buzzwrecker.”
It turned out that despite being stone sober, our driver was dumb enough to put a battery operated TV on the dashboard. While watching The Flintstones on Indianapolis TV, he took his eyes off the road and veered into the ditch. He overcompensated to get back onto the freeway and we wiped out. Everybody was OK. It was very fortunate.
One of the tow truck guys (with almost no teeth), said in a very thick rural accent, “Must have been a helluva ride, huh?”
Good fortune struck for us again. It so happened that we were about 30 minutes away from Purdue University. We managed to get in contact with the Beta Theta Pi chapter there and before we knew it, our fraternity brothers from Purdue came and rescued us. We spent the night at Purdue and the next morning caught a shuttle to Indianapolis to catch a flight home.
It so happened that this was the first time I had ever been on a plane. That was by far, the most exciting 48 hours of my life. That is why the song Lay Down Sally is special to me.
