<n, did you just see a pick-up truck roll into the lake?”
Unfortunately for Danny Smith ‘12 on Jan. 3., he did not. Had he seen it, he probably would have made a heroic effort to save it from the lake’s frigid depths with his bare hands.
Instead, he was delivering a falafel to his friend in Boliou while his 1996 Toyota T100 slipped out of gear, rolled over a curb, dodged a tree and a steel post and plunged into lower Lyman Lake.
Leaving Boliou after a mere ten-minute visit with his friend on the afternoon of Jan. 1, Smith walked to the loading dock near the CMC and puzzled over the absence of his truck. Having avoided registering it with Carleton Security all of fall term, his first thought was, “Man, security is really fast.”
No such luck.
Rather than finding it with Security, Smith was quickly confronted by an Information Technology Services worker who had watched the whole disaster unfold, and who kindly pointed to a set of tire tracks leading directly into the lake.
“By the time I got outside, my truck was sinking further and further away from the shore,” Smith said with a slight smile.
Within five minutes, both the Northfield Police and the Northfield Patch were at the scene of the accident, assessing the viability of recovering the truck from its resting place, about 20 feet away from shore. Given the significant distance the truck had floated, the Northfield Fire and Rescue Dive Team arrived as backup, donned its scuba gear and hooked the vehicle to the line of a tow truck, hauling it out and onto dry land.
Standing at the water’s edge the whole time, Danny watched with sad amusement as the truck he had purchased just six months earlier emerged from the lake, soggy and completely destroyed. Security officers Klay Christianson and Sharon Becker politely waited with him, expressing their sympathy and sharing kind words of consolation.
“At least now you won’t have to register it.”