Thursday, February 09, 2006

A truck hit the "NFO Barn"

The barn with "NFO" painted on its side is a landmark along I-270 in Illinois. The barn is on a rise just north of the Interstate. "NFO" stands for National Farmers Organization. For years, their slogan was "Full Parity for Farmers." It was slogan only farmers understood.

A westbound driver left the Interstate this morning and hit the NFO Barn with his tractor and trailer. He probably had a fatal heart attack while he was still on the roadway. In the picture above, you can see the cab is partially under the roof of the barn, with the trailer at a 90-degree angle towards the bottom of the photo.

If you put anything near an Interstate, someone will eventually hit it!
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Footnote: To the truck driver's credit, he took his truck off the right-side of the highway. When someone has a heart attack while driving, he or she usually veers to the left into on-coming traffic. This phenomenon has something to do with how a person's muscles contract when experiencing a heart attack. My father had a massive heart attack while driving but managed to pull off onto the right shoulder of the highway. It was such a massive heart attack that no one has ever been able to figure out how he managed that -- but he always was the best driver that I ever knew.

The truck driver's name was Richard C. Wolf, of El Paso, Illinois.

2 comments:

Jay Noel said...

"Full parity?" I think automobiles will equally hit anyone's building if they put it right next to 270.

Out of control vehicles don't discriminate. We're all targets.
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actually, the barn was there and they put the highway next to it!

I was going to leave a comment on your site in response to that little saying:
"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." Steven Wright

Jay Noel said...

You know what would help traffic flow on 270 towards the Chain of Rocks Bridge?

Flying cars.
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It would be easy to widen to three lanes in each direction if it were not for the two-lane canal bridges. Since they are overhead cantilevered through truss bridges, they cannot be widened.


I have never heard an explanation of why they built two bridges on the same sets of piers (see photo, taken from the old Route 66 Canal Bridge). [The Chain of Rocks Canal was built to take river traffic around the "chain of rocks" -- a stretch of rapids in the original river just below where the Missouri and Mississippi come together.]