RUNAWAY CAR HEADING FOR THE CLIFF

I had just flown from Tokyo to California and arrived at Camp Stoneman where I was being discharged. On the weekend I went to visit the Basingers in nearby Berkeley. Walt Basinger and family had lived at Grandpa Lundquist's house when he was Principal of Weston High School several years prior. They were great friends of our family.

Sister Basinger was a real estate sales person. On the Sunday afternoon after church, she had to go for a quick visit to a house that she was selling in a hilly neighborhood. Her daughter, age about ten, was seated beside her in the front seat and I was in the back seat.

As we pulled up in front of the house, Sister Basinger jumped out to run into the house. She apparently thought she had put the car in park, after turning off the ignition. After a few seconds, the car started to slowly roll forward down the street. When her daughter and I realized the gathering speed, she got in the driver's seat to do I don't what. By the time I got her to move over so I could climb over the seat, the car was heading rapidly down the street toward a drop off.

When I finally got behind the wheel, I found that the brakes wouldn't work with the ignition off. So I steered the car from one side of the street to the other running over curbs and then into small trees until we finally hit a large tree that stopped the mad dash for the drop off. My memory is that Sister Basinger was chasing us at a dead run down the street. We stopped not far from the dead end drop off. That was more dangerous than my tour in Korea.