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But Enough about Me – Burt Reynolds

A few months …, before midnight on Christmas Eve, I was barrelling down the Beeline Highway in my dad's Buick when I saw red lights flashing in my mirror. The cop who pulled me over was John Kirk, and he knew my dad.

"Did you know you were going almost a hundred miles an hour?" he said.

"No, sir, I didn't," I lied.

He was kind and gave me a ticket for doing only sixty. I headed home, making sure I stayed under the speed limit. I was already in big trouble and didn’t want to rack up two tickets in one night. I was worrying about how to explain it to my dad when I slammed into the truck.

A bunch of geniuses were stealing concrete blocks from Rinker Cement and loading them onto a big flatbed truck parked across the road. I didn't see it until it was too late. I went right underneath the bed of the truck. I was canny enough to roll up into a ball and dive under the dash just before the entire bed full of concrete came down on me. If I'd been going much faster - if John Kirk hadn't given me that ticket - I'd have been crushed to death.

I don't know how long I was trapped in what was left of the car, but at one point I felt somebody reach in and take the ring I got for playing on the All Southern High School football team. Pulled it right off my finger. I never found out who it was or what happened to the ring.

The first cop on the scene was Clark Bibler, a lieutenant on the force with my dad.

He was yelling, 'Anybody in there, anybody in there?"

"Clark, it's me, Buddy."

"Jesus Christ, Buddy, what are you doin' in there?"

All I could say was "Don't tell my dad!"

"I've got a feeling he's gonna know," Clark said.

My dad’s big ol' Buick was now the size of a Mini Cooper. It looked like there was no way in the world someone could come out of it alive.

They didn't have the Jaws of Life in those days, so they used pry bars to get me out. They gently set me down on the pavement, put a blanket over me, and said there was an ambulance on the way. I felt okay lying there and thought, This is ridiculous, I don't need an ambulance. But when I got to my feet I coughed up blood and blacked out.

I woke up in the ambulance and recognized the attendant as Tommy Price, a classmate of mine at Palm Beach High. I remembered that Tommy was religious and asked him to pray for me. As I went in and out of consciousness, he held my hand and prayed, all the way to the hospital.

By coincidence, my high school doctor, Lynn Fort, was on duty that night and admitted me to our local hospital.  When he checked my blood pressure he turned to the nurse and said, "Prep him, this boy is dying."

Dr. Fort performed emergency surgery to remove my spleen. During the operation I heard the nurse say, "We're losing him!" and in fact I did flatline.

I clearly remember going down a tunnel toward a white light and heard myself saying, "Fuck this! I'm going back!"

Doc Fort climbed on top of me and began giving me CPR.  It wasn’t common practise in those days, but it saved my life.