It Happened in Vegas

Over the thirty years that I drove proffessioonally I only had one accident and that one was not chargeable to me. It hapened in 1964. I was driving for a company that transported fresh and frozen foods for a wholesale company in Salt Lake City. On this particular trip, my driving partner and I had come from Los Angeles with a load of Clorox headed for Salt Lke. I had started driving in Colton, CA and arrived at Las Vegas about 1:30 AM The freeway ended before arriving at Vegas and all traffic was channeled onto old US Highway 91. The highway went into Vegas via the "Strip." At this time of the morning traffic was light. Most of the shows had let out at One o'clock. I woke my partner as we started up the strip and he was sitting up smoking a cigarette. As I approached the Sands Hotel, a car pulled out in front of me. I was only going about 30 mph, hit my brakes and turned hard to the right but still hit the rear drivers side of the car. My rig went under the entry canopy of the casino, through a small retaining wall that seperated the main entrance from the cars coming to and leaving the casino. I stopped just short of the revolving doors to the casino. I ran back to the car that I had hit and found that the man driving had a bad cut on his head. Shortly, the police and an ambulance arrived. They took the guy and his wife to the hospital. There were plenty of witnesses in my favor and I was not cited. The star at the Sands that time was Paul Anka who had heard the noise from his dressing room and came out to see what had happened. (Later, my 9 year old son asked if I had gotten his autograph.) When we went to back the truck out of the Sands entrance, we had to pry the bumper away from the left front tire and that was all the damage that the truck suffered. As it turned out, the guy that I hit was from Arizona who was supposed to be in LA to a convention. The woman with him was not his wife, and disappeared when they got to the hospital. The car was registered in his wife's name who was still in Arizona. I called my wife and told her what had happened and about 7:00 AM we continued our trup to Salt Lake City.