Among his collisions: hitting an officer's truck
Seventy-six-year-old Clarence Dwinnell is a feisty farmer from Upton with a driving record that includes one particularly notable crash.
He hit a police officer.
On a frigid January morning in 2005, Lisa Vass, an Upton officer, was on her way to work in her
Vass recalled in an interview that she was driving about 25 miles per hour or less when she saw the tractor. She hit the brakes but could not stop in time. The bucket of the tractor scraped along the side of her truck, causing about $5,000 in damage, she said.
"The blade slit the side of the truck like can opener would open a can," Vass said.
Vass said she suffered back problems and had to see a chiropractor.
In addition to his tractor crash, Dwinnell was also involved in four other accidents between 2002 and this year - one in Milford, and three in Hopkinton - according to local police reports.
Maureen Dwinnell said her husband used to leave their farm at 5:30 every morning and travel in a pickup truck to a bakery in Framingham to buy bread for their cows. He had four accidents in his truck, though she believes the accidents were not his fault. He stopped his morning drives to Framingham recently because gas is too expensive.
Of the tractor accident, Maureen Dwinnell said Vass was speeding - an allegation not supported by the police accident report. The report says that Clarence Dwinnell had lowered the bucket to avoid hitting power lines and "did not know what happened" afterward.
Maureen Dwinnell said, despite his age, her husband still splits wood and tends to the livestock. She said the years have not affected his driving.
"You have to know him," she said. "A man his age doing the stuff he is doing - he's just as spry as ever."
CONNIE PAIGE 