My Broken Arm at a Family Gathering
Mom on the Far Left and Grandpa on the Far Right
Dad was an accidental car buyer. Whenever he accidentally happened on a good deal, he bought a car. Like when he bought that black 1939 Buick Special four-door sedan. I don't know whether it was new or used. Perhaps with money he received after leaving the CCC camp service. It was probably the car that he wooed my mother in and taught her how to drive.
When Roger and I accidentally showed up, Mom and Dad moved into the shack. BCopiesut they were looking for a real home. For some reason, Dad sold the Buick to Mom's parents. Perhaps to get the money to buy the old farmhouse on Highway 29.
My first recollection of an accidental buy was a beautiful dark iridescent blue green 37 Pontiac Coupe. It was a beautiful car when I saw it in the yard, but a few days later, it was gone. I asked Dad what happened to the Pontiac. He said, "Every morning, before I could drive off to work, I had to run it for 20 minutes so that the rings would heat up enough to engage the cylinder walls and it had enough power to drive away." I've learned much later that those Pontiacs had straight 8 engines and were very fast. Dad bought a lemon.
When we were five, our cousin, Terry, was born about 40 miles away in a hospital in Stanley. I don't remember why Roger and I went with our grandmother in that 39 Buick to see him and why we left Mom behind. Maybe she was working. In those days, kids like us could visit in hospitals. I do know Dad was working. It was a winter day, and Highway 29 was icy in spots, so there wasn't much traffic. We had gone about 10 miles west, when suddenly, Grandma started moving the steering wheel back and forth frantically while yelling she had lost control. We hit the ditch and the car turned over on its top in the snow.
I recall rolling around in the car. I wasn't hurt. Grandma was shaken up, but not hurt. But Roger got a cut from a door handle on his chin that required stitching. Luckily, Dad was driving his truck on his morning route a couple of miles behind us and stopped to see what happened. We got a ride back to Owen to a doctor to get Roger's stitch or two and Dad continued on his route the other way.
The next car I remember was a 38 Plymouth four-door sedan. "Our family car." It was mud-colored and very unattractive with the shape of a turtle. A far cry from the beautiful Pontiac or even grandma's black Buick, repaired.
On Memorial Day, when our sister was about nine months old, our family set off in that "new" car for a picnic with another couple who were good friends and had a baby girl about the same age as my sister.
As we traveled northward to our destination, Mondeaux Flowage, the car started to overheat. Dad stopped by the gravel road and, using a hubcap as a container, got some rain water from the ditch and poured it into the radiator, solving the overheating problem. While we waited, Roger and I found some wonderful yellow wildflowers we called buttercups growing in the ditch and picked them to take home for a bouquet for our mother.
We had a nice picnic at the flowage until the first accident occurred. My sister, Judy, was left on a blanket on a bank about a foot above the lake water line in the shade. At some point, a splash was heard as my sister rolled off the blanket and into the lake! Everyone rushed to the water's edge and she was retrieved, floating without any harm, just a little wet. After we finished our picnic, Dad decided to take a scenic route home through the area where he worked near Perkinstown in his CCC Camp days.
The crowned gravel road at that point drove through some up and down small hills created by the glaciers we called, "hedgehogs." Dad was goosing it a bit as we went up and down those slopes, giving us a ride like a roller coaster. I was standing on the floorboard right behind Dad enjoying the ride. My mother was holding my sister in the front seat in the middle and her friend with her baby was next to the passenger side door. Roger was riding behind her like we always did in the same position as me in the backseat and the friend was riding in the middle.
As we came to the top of one rise achieving almost weightlessness, scaring the women, in the middle of the road, another car, also in the middle of the road, going just as fast, both approaching each other at a speed that may have exceeded 100 mph if both cars were going 50 mph, we were headed for a head-on collision. I watched in horror as Dad turned our car sharply to the right and the other car still came straight ahead and hit my Dad in his left shoulder directly in front of me behind that door pillar!
The Plymouth dove into the ditch and completely rolled over. Dust flew everywhere as all of us rolled around in the car like in a saltshaker. When the dust settled and we all crawled out of the broken car windows, only the wife of my parents' friends broke her arm. Roger and I and the babies didn't even have a scratch.
I mourned our flowers that were strewn all over and had wilted in the hot sun. The other car didn't roll, but skidded down the road and then into the ditch, smashing the front end into some trees. After spending some time in a bar in a small town, our grandparents came and gave us a ride back home.
Going to our cousins' farm was always fun because they were two boys, Keith, two years older, and the other, Wes, just younger, and there was always a lot to do and see that they showed us. One time when we were there, our uncle and Dad took us down to the creek on the farm and we went fishing with angle worms that we dug. It was apparently a good time to fish because we caught a lot of chubs and shiners from about 4 inches to 7 inches long. We never ate those "minnows," but they did make good bait for larger fish in the lakes and rivers.
Anyway, to show them off and get pictures we kept our stringers of about 30 fish and headed on back to the farmhouse up through the cow pasture between. Our path was fenced on both sides so I knew where to go. I was very excited about showing what we caught to Mom and our aunt, and felt the need to run. I could run very fast and Roger and others my age could never catch me. Without saying anything, I just took off and ran as fast as I could, uphill to the farmhouse, so that I could get there first and tell them what we caught.
I heard them yelling at me from behind, but I thought they were encouraging me to run faster… So I did. The next thing I knew, I was being cut and shocked at the neck, feeling nearly decapitated. When we walked down, my uncle had removed a single-strand barbed wire, electrocuted fence gate across that path so that we could continue on down to the creek. I had forgotten that it was there and in my frenzy to run as hard as I could, that single barbed wire wasn't seen and caught me right in the neck at full speed running!
Not only was my neck cut badly, I got several shocks from that wire that really took it out of me. They wrapped a handkerchief around my neck and I limped on home with everyone else, no longer excited about our catch. I got a lot of sympathy, mercurochrome, and bandages. But I didn't have to go get any stitches and the wounds healed with time. But I remembered the shocking for a long time after and watched my step in cow pastures after that.
When we first got to Wausau, we went to a two week day camp on a creek. I don't remember much about what we did, except that I got milk one day that was sour and the camp counselor told me it wasn't until I made him taste it himself. On the last day, our parents came out. I remember running back to the car to get something to bring into the hall for them. As I closed the door on the car with my right hand, I watched the door close on the thumb of my left hand!
I felt nothing except mental shock at seeing myself doing this. I pulled and the thumb was stuck, so I pushed the button again with my right thumb and opened the door, freeing my left thumb. Luckily, cars in those days did not have tight tolerances and had large gaps between the door and the frame. My thumb throbbed for a while and was skinned, but otherwise okay. I may have lost that thumbnail later like I often did when I would hit a fingernail with a hammer while nailing something together.
Central Grade School was only a block away from our house, but we had to cross 6th Street, doubling as a highway running north one way as the only street between our house and school. Most kids from our neighborhood walked to school and crossed that street, but I don't recall crossing with others except Roger, and in those days, there were no crossing guards. We always dutifully waited until there was a break in the traffic and then we would cross.
In second or third grade, Roger must've been in a hurry to get home one day and started across the street ahead of me. I saw a pickup truck coming from the right while I stayed on the curb. Roger saw it coming, too, and ran down the street to the left while it followed him for more than a few feet and then hit him, knocking him down to the pavement before stopping!
Roger was knocked out cold. The old guy driving the pickup got out of his truck and ran around in front, grabbing Roger and lifting him up, carrying him onto the lawn of the first house on the corner. By the time I got across the street, a crowd was already forming. All kinds of questions were being raised and I was yelling, "He's my brother!" But nobody seemed to notice, so I ran down the sidewalk to our house where my dad was and woke him up, sleeping because he drove truck at night.
Dad rushed to where Roger was before the ambulance got there and rode with him to the hospital. Roger woke up in the ambulance and suffered only a concussion. There was a trial that I wasn't allowed to go to and testify. The adults all blamed my brother for darting out between parked cars in the middle of the block, getting the old guy off for failing to stop his truck in time. I was disgusted but could do nothing as a kid.
We joined Cub Scouts at a local church when we were old enough. We had some recreation time in the church gym and I recall playing some silly game like Japanese sumo wrestling, where we squatted down and we tried to push our opponent over. During one of these games, I lost my balance and stuck my left arm out to catch my fall as I rolled back and felt a sharp pain in my arm.
Swelling indicated that I had a break about 3 inches above the elbow. We went to the doctor the next day. It was only a fracture, so they gave me a metal splint to wear in a bent position held with a simple sling. It was supposed to stay on for only 20 days, but I had a habit of straightening out the splint and then, bending it back. So they forced me to wear it another 20 days, to make sure that my arm would fully heal. I always felt my left arm was weaker because of that break.
In junior high school there was a craze for making model rockets. There were no kits in those days and the preferred solid rocket fuel was match heads. Removing them from the matches alone was highly dangerous, but we did it anyway. I heard that empty ballpoint pen cartridges made nice little rockets that flew a few feet with match head propulsion. So I decided to make one.
That evening I was upstairs in my bedroom packing match heads into a ballpoint cartridge with a straightened wire when it blew up in my left hand! The center of the cartridge split open and cut my hand badly, while the flare gave me a pretty bad burn. Mom rushed me off to the emergency room and I got a couple of stitches to cover the hole in my hand and some burn ointment with a bandage.
The next day, we were called to assembly at school. The vice principal got up and scolded us for bringing rocket making materials to school and announced that they would be confiscated if found. He also pointed out that a student had gone to the emergency room the night before being stupid and making a ball pen rocket that blew up in his hand. I cowered in my seat, thankful that he didn't mention my name. But my friend, Doug, who founded the Central Wisconsin Rocket Society and used the school's shops to help make his rockets, banned me from joining. Thankfully, he doesn't remember today. Another embarrassing moment of many in my life.
Copyright 2019 © Ronald W. Hull
6/25/19
