Drive - A Memoir 15th Installment
Besides
our clothes, we got our school supplies from the mailman and didn’t
get to go shopping. Other than the small general store in Hamer where
we sometimes got to pick out some penny candy, I never got to shop
for anything in town. We did pour over the catalogs picking out
things in the toy section, but we purchased things only in our
imaginations and in no way shopped for real. Of course, we always
received toys on Christmas and our birthdays – and best of all, we
got our brick of bullets – life was good.
I
never went to town, not once in my young life. Well, that's not true.
I broke my arm when I was six, and we went to a clinic in Rigby to
get it set and in a plaster cast. I had great fun with that hard cast
on my arm. It was a perfect ‘V’ shape to hook around someone's
neck and hold them down and made a pretty good club too. The only
other time was when I was four years old, a trip that had a profound
and terrifying effect on our family. The Old Man's flat bed farm
truck had been the only vehicle we owned that was legal to take on
the county road until Vernon got his first automobile – a fairly
new 1947 or 48 Plymouth with suicide doors. The front doors opened
forward like any safe normal car, but the backseat doors opened
backwards. The ‘suicide’ supposedly would be accomplished by
popping the back door open while the car was speeding down the road.
The wind would catch the door, jerk it open, and fling the
unfortunate soul out the door. Well, we were zipping down the road
one night in the jaunty gray Plymouth at about 50 miles per hour. The
folks were safely in front and Linda, Russell, and I were in the
back. I remember being in the car and fiddling around with the door
handle, and then, whoosh – I was flung out just like the suicide
guy I mentioned before. The next thing I remember I was struggling to
crawl. Edith told me that as they were slamming the car to a stop she
looked back in horror. There was an on–coming car passing our car,
and in the headlights, she could see me crawling off to the side of
the road. The other car stopped and it turned out to be Mae and Bob,
our relatives. They thought I was a wounded dog struggling off the
road. Edith was already out of the car running back to me. She
gathered me up like a bundle of rags and turning to meet Mae and Bob,
Edith just climbed in the back of their car because they were
pointing back toward town and the Sacred Heart Hospital. I must have
gained consciousness for a short time because I remember Edith saying
“He’s bleeding all over, this is bad.”
500 more words tomorrow
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