The damage happened the weekend before Larz. I was on my way back from picking up a book and looking at a Glaserati under restoration when the car lost its ability to idle. The engine would run fine at speed, but wouldn't idle at all. This happened on 128 in really heavy stop and go traffic that went on for miles. I tried driving with both feet, one on the brake, the other trying to keep the revs up, but the car kept stalling on the freeway. The battery was getting low and it was getting hard to start, so I decided to get off the road and call a tow truck before I caused an accident.
The tow truck operator put the straps through the oval holes in the front axle mount and tore it up winching the car onto the flatbed. I didn't notice the damage until the next day when I was fixing the idle problem and saw some jagged metal that shouldn't be there.
For a few day prior to this I had been having stalling problems caused by connectors falling off of the fuel shut off solenoid in the front carb. Ultimately three connectors were replaced, but the problem on 128 was due to the solenoid failing. Maybe an intermittent connection caused the solenoid to break.
I'm a little annoyed, but I didn't cause an accident on 128 or have a heart attack, and the car didn't roll of the truck into traffic, so it could have been worse.