BETHEL – David Luxton threatened to paint a big orange bull’s-eye on new plywood sheeting he and two friends screwed onto his battered porch Saturday morning.
For the second time in less than two days, a driver had crashed into the porch of his Route 2 home.
Shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday, a 1992 Buick LeSabre, driven by Pauline Gavin, 41, of Spring Street in Lewiston, slid around 360 degrees while rounding a tight curve on the road, according to Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr. The car slid across the Luxtons’ driveway backwards, ramped up a mound of dirty snow, and bounced off a corner post of the house, splintering it. The Buick then continued rear-end first through plastic sheeting wrapped around the hole left from Thursday night’s crash.
Gavin was uninjured in Saturday’s crash, but the driver in Thursday night’s crash, Kevin O’Connor of South Paris, remained in critical condition at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, according to a nursing supervisor.
That crash knocked the porch off its foundation, sprayed glass from seven windows the length of the porch, dented the porch door, and sprayed the porch floor with dirty snow and road salt.
Carr drove to David and Debby Luxton’s house at 891 West Bethel Road in West Bethel later Saturday morning to examine the damage.
The car shoved a sofa down the porch, split the wood window-sill railing end to end, pushed out the front porch wall, dented a porch window frame, and punctured more plastic sheeting covering one of the seven windows shattered by the previous wreck.
“I’m more concerned about that guy than what I’ve got to do to. I hope that guy’s all right. You can hammer nails and wood up, but broken bones and smashed bodies don’t mend as well,” Luxton said while sweeping debris off the porch and picking up glass shards, some of which were driven into wood.
Unlike Thursday’s wreck when both he and his wife were asleep, Luxton said he had gone into Bethel for some coffee on Saturday morning.
“I was coming back when I saw flashing blue lights in my rearview mirror. I slowed and he passed me, then I saw him slow down right before he got to my house, and I said, This might not be good,'” Luxton said.
It wasn’t.
Gavin’s Buick was sitting half inside and half outside of his porch. Gavin was standing outside, uninjured.
“The most important thing to me is nobody got hurt this time,” Luxton said.
He doesn’t intend to move off the land no matter how many cars crash into his place. But he expects wrecks to decrease later this year once the Maine Department of Transportation reconstructs the bad curve and roadway.
The state intends to move the road about 60 feet south of his house, he said.
But Luxton will keep the porch, even if he has to rebuild it all over again.
“It’s my safer barrier. You’re going to fix something, whether it’s the house or the porch, but I’d rather it be the porch,” Luxton added.
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