Last week, I warmly reminisced about my historically-best punch lines, but it hasn’t been all fun and games for me, ya know. It’s been decades since my last serious car crash, but between the reckless ages of 16 and 23, I was far from “wreckless.” You heard my greatest jokes; now, my greatest wrecks.

It’s hard to believe I once took vague pride in the baker’s dozen auto and motorcycle wrecks I’d survived. And although it’s an odd segue from favorite jokes to memorable wrecks, a few of them were preceeded by noteworthy one-liners.

For instance, my first was at 16 in Pennsylvania, driving down heavily-traveled Tire Hill on my way to pick up my friend Lester for our first day at our new job at “Winky’s,” a fast-food joint. With my brother Paul stationed in Germany, Dad used Paul’s beloved ’63 Plymouth Valiant for work at Bethlehem Steel, so I’m not sure whose car it technically was that I borrowed that dismal autumn day.

Cruising down rain-slickened Tire Hill, I was doing circles like a spin-the-bottle game. Narrowly missing oncoming traffic for 100 yards, the Valiant ricocheted off the first parked semi and came to rest under a second, where I barely avoided a most-unpleasant decapitation. As I told my laughing friends later, “Them tractor-trailers don’t have much give to ‘em.”

I declined an ambulance, but Lester’s stepmother bandaged me up before driving me home. The first thing Dad barked as I entered the house was, “Where’s the car?!” Sensing a lack of sympathy, I barked back, “I’m not sure which junkyard they towed it to.” It was a timely comeback that seemed to be lost on my moody father.

Let’s skip ahead a few wrecks to a ’67 GTO I bought in Cody during my first roofing summer in ’77 and drove back to Pennsylvania for a winter visit. My second day home, Dad, who had finally gotten over that Valiant attitude from six years earlier, had me drive him the 10 miles to where his old coal-hauling truck had been left for repairs. We told Mom to hold lunch until we returned in separate vehicles.

But I was quite a drinker in those days, ya see, and driving home on the “Somerset Pike,” I had to pass several familiar bars. “I’ll just stop at Jim and Jimmies for one beer for old time sake,” I thought, but there I ran into our family Church of God preacher’s son, Barry Charlton. Long story short, he’s a whiskey drinker and I refused to insult him by declining his offer to buy shots as we played pool.

I must have lingered longer than I realized, since when I left, it was dark and there was a blizzard. I assumed Mom’s lunch was now out of the question, so even though my wipers were rendered useless after I turned them on while frozen to the windshield, I crept along pretty much on instinct the few miles to “Ye Old Tollgate Inn” on the way home. It was my favorite bar, and I craved one of their famous steak hoagies.

Even back then it was unwise to eat while driving in heavy snow with no windshield wipers, so as I crested Tire Hill, ironically, I never even saw the telephone pole swerve into my lane. Suddenly I was at a dead stop with a pole across my shattered windshield, a mouthful of hoagie and no bottom teeth to chew it with.

The second in the series of amusing ironies was when I staggered across the street and pounded on someone’s door for help, to no avail. I later learned it was my Uncle Chalmer Naugle’s house and all he and Aunt Mary thought they saw was a Manson family-member with blood dripping from his beard.

The follies continued when the police officer who arrived and said he could — but wouldn’t, since I was injured, arrest me for DWI — called my parents to the scene. When they arrived, the officer rolled down his window and said, “Your son’s mouth is in pretty bad shape. Can you take him to the hospital or should I?”

Ol’ cheapskate Dad — with the rising gas prices and probably reminded of his deceased Valiant’s last moments — thought for a moment before saying, “Well, as long as you’re going that way…” I could see my loving, ever-enduring mother angrily whisper something to Dad before he said, “No, no; we’ll take him.”

Days later, with my teeth wired into place, Dad, my brother-in-law Skip, his 3-year-old son Derrick and I stopped at the junkyard to assess my once-beautiful, now-demolished GTO. After a brief discussion about the bent frame, things got quiet until little Derrick kicked me on the foot, looked up and said, “Ya big dummy!”

Well, I see we’ve come to the end of the road before I was anywhere near ready to park. So many wrecks, such little time. I’ll idle until next week when I’ll relate several more accidents — including a third Tire Hill crash in a second Valiant. It’s a virtual caravan of ironies, I tell ya!