Those Pesky Mormon Elders

When I was 13, I had a major event happen that made a lasting impact on my life. Many people come in contact with Mormon missionaries at one time or another in their life. Most of these contacts are brief, yet many times lives are changed from these contacts. My life was also changed in a big way by meeting the Mormon elders this particular day and way.

June 1, 1968, the elders and I came in contact, although in a slightly different manner than one usually might meet the missionaries. School had just gotten out the day before. My brother and sisters and I had been entertaining ourselves for the last day or two by racing our bicycles around the driveway that surrounded our home, yard and garden. Part of this course led out to the county road for a couple hundred feet and then back on the driveway to the start/finish line. I would guess the entire length was 700-800 feet. We had an old clock in the shed to time ourselves.

On this particular Saturday evening, I was getting ready to make a run. Mom called us in for dinner and I yelled back, “OK, I just want to go around one more time.” I took off for a life-changing rendezvous with the missionaries that wasn’t in their  appointment books and come to think of it, it wasn’t in mine either.

Out where our driveway met the graveled county road, there were two tall poplar trees planted on each side of the drive. A line of trees also ran parallel with the road, in line with the poplar tree on the west side, effectively obscuring the line of sight of the road by anyone on the driveway.

I guess we had never considered the possibility that someone would dare drive on part of our racecourse, even if it were the county road. Therefore, as we tried to beat the fastest time up to that point, we didn’t come to a complete stop and look both ways before venturing out of the driveway. In fact, we had the pedal to the metal through the entire length of our little course. Big mistake. A cop looking for stop sign violators would have had a grand time scribbling out tickets on that particular Friday and Saturday.

Anyway, in a hurry to obey the dinner bell and set a world speed record for the Juniper Road race circuit, I came barreling around the turn at around 15-20 miles an hour. The Mormon elders were living a half mile down the road at Cook’s old barracks. They were probably going 35 mph when we met, head on.

I don’t remember a thing. My sister Jill heard the collision and ran into the house screaming. My dad ran out to where I was laying, looked at me, and went back to the house. At impact, my momentum threw my head forward and my forehead most likely kissed the hood of the car. I would guess my left thigh hit the handlebar that had just been thrown into reverse with a momentum shift of around 45 or 50 mph. The impact from the car threw me back 35-40 feet in the direction I had just come from. This was not good for my race time. This was not good for me nor any of my limbs including the one on top of my neck.

Dad told mom I was dead. She fainted. The family revived her and then went out to have a look-see. My forehead had a major bump on it protruding 3 or 4 inches out and foamy blood was coming out of my mouth. I was lying on my back and my left femur had a compound fracture. The leg was twisted around so my toes were in the dirt (I wasn’t wearing shoes.) I had some other broken bones and injuries but my head and leg were the serious ones.

Mom walked out to the road with my dad and when she saw me not breathing, she knelt down and started coaxing me to breathe. Eventually, I started gasping for air. Dad and grandpa found a sheet of plywood and loaded me on it. They called the ambulance but had no idea when it would arrive so they loaded me and the plywood in the station wagon. My folks and our neighbor and bishop, Vern Cook, headed for town.

After they had driven 6 or 8 miles, the ambulance caught up with them. The ambulance service at this time was all-volunteer. It consisted of farmers and fertilizer salesmen who were willing to haul casualties into town, kind of a scoop and run operation.

The ambulance driver was a big, excitable guy who took one look at me and went crazy. He was looking at the bone that was sticking out of my leg and torn pants. “We’ve gotta cut it off right now!” he yelled. He neglected to mention that he was talking about my pants leg.

 My 5 foot 2 inch mother thought he was going to cut my leg off so she jumped in front of the 6 foot plus 250 pounder and prepared to fight a bare-knuckled round or two.

         You are not going to cut it off!” she exclaimed. Vern told me later that even though the situation was very serious, he couldn’t help but laugh at the big misunderstanding.

They got me to the hospital. I was in a coma although I guess a few days later I started thrashing around and they had to tie my arms and good leg to the bed. A nurse had gotten too close at one point and I hit her, giving her a black eye.

A few years ago I found this in the local Tri-City Herald newspaper archives

 Our stake president, Keith Barber came in to visit me and asked me if I knew who he was. I looked at his familiar face and said "Yes, you're Dwight David Eisenhower."

Five or six days later I woke up. The first thing I remember was on June 6. I saw a newspaper laying on the bed stand in front of me with the pronouncement that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot and killed. Around this time, I also remember my mom talking to me and being very relieved that I was talking back.

I spent the month of June in traction, flat on my back. It was miserable. I remember gazing outside the window at people walking and driving by the hospital and feeling so sad that I was immobile.  One day I looked out the window at a motorcycle that was orange and had a green gas tank. I thought that was the coolest color combination. To this day, when I see a color combination of orange and green, I think of that day.

I yearned for freedom and the opportunity to be outside in the sunshine. I wanted to go home and change sprinklers which was an emotion I had never experienced before.

During my stay, they brought in a roommate who had gotten a piece of metal in his eye. He had both eyes bandaged shut and couldn't see a thing. His large wife would come in and visit him every day. An hour or so later his much slimmer girlfriend named Rose would come in and visit him. She would pull the curtain shut between the two beds. The curtain effectively cut the line of sight but did nothing to cut down the hugging and kissing noise level. I didn't really understand what was going on over there but I figured something wasn't quite right. All I knew is he seemed to value his privacy a lot more when his girlfriend was there than when his wife was visiting. Never once did his wife pull the curtains shut.

We had a nurse who was very nice and helpful but her cheeks looked like they were sucked in a little. Since she was so nice, my blind roomie asked me after she left our room one day what she looked like. The best description I could come up with was she looked like she had just swallowed a lemon because of her inset cheek situation.

Soon after, she came back in the room. This turkey of a roommate immediately said "Hey, do you know what Ben said you looked like?"

If I hadn't have been strapped to the traction frame and bed, I would have immediately jumped over and given him a knuckle sandwich that he wouldn't have seen coming. I was mortified that this turkey would tell this kind nurse that I said she looked like she had just swallowed a lemon. I knew my room service was about to head for rock bottom.

Luckily, in a flash, I was inspired to interject and say "I said you looked like you were much too young to be a nurse." Now admittedly, I lied. She didn't look all that young. But I never regretted it.  And she enjoyed the compliment.

I should have paid him back by asking his wife the next time she was in about the young, slim chick named Rose that popped in every day a bit after she left. I wonder if he would have thought up a response for his wife as fast as I did with our nurse.

At the end of the month, they wheeled me to a room where they proceeded to put a body cast on me. It went around my chest and trunk and enclosed my entire left leg to my toes. It was the old plaster of Paris casts which weighed a lot more than the fiberglass casts of today.

On the much anticipated morning of the day I was to get the body cast, they wheeled me down to an operating room and pulled the covers off. I had been without clothing for the past month and was now lying stark naked on my back for the doctor and nurses to do their thing.

I didn't even care. I wanted that cast on and was not going to halt the progress by complaining about a lack of decorum. I think I might have moved one hand down to try to cover the goods.

There was a metal pin that Dr. Pettee had driven through my left knee right after the wreck. Through the month, there had been weights hanging on a pulley pulling on both sides of that pin. I spent a lot of time each day of that month wondering how they were going to get that pin out after I was done with the traction phase. I was sure they would knock me out or at least give me a local anesthetic.

No such luck. The doctor pulled out a pair of pliers, positioned himself so he could push against my leg while he pulled and yanked on the pin. I was aghast! It hurt! He didn't get it on the first try. He had to reposition himself several times as he tugged and pulled, trying to get my lower femur to release the pin.  Finally, he pulled it hard enough that it slid out.

After 45 minutes or so of slapping gauze, material and wet plaster on me, they got the wet cast wrapped around me and I finally got a sheet pulled back over me. I was relieved the exhibition was over. A couple of guys then rolled me back up to my room.

The next day they had me stand up on crutches next to my bed. Since I had been flat on my back for the last month, the blood rushed out of my head and I about went down in a heap of plaster. But I stayed up because I so badly wanted out of Kennewick General, ASAP.

A day later, I was able to leave the hospital. I had become good friends with the nurses there and after arriving home that night, I cried because I missed them. I was a 13 year-old man and was bawling like a baby.

On the first Sunday morning when I went back to church, we pulled in as all the Boy Scouts in the ward were pulling out to go to Scout camp. That was another bummer of that summer.

The next couple of months, July and August, were hell. Every day I stewed in that bloody smelly cast. It was hot. The weather stayed in the 100 degree plus range most of the time.

I was on crutches, lugging around a 100 lb. concrete enclosure, at least it seemed like that. I threatened several times to anyone who would listen that I was going to cut the cast off. At one point, I decided I was allergic to plaster of Paris and went out and got a hacksaw and started sawing. My folks put a quick stop to that. The hot summer nights found me laying in bed with major itches up and down my body. I soon stretched out a hanger, stuck it inside my cast and push it down past my chest and stomach. I could then scratch my leg, sometimes going clear down to my ankle and foot with the hanger.

Summer of '68

One day during this miserable period, I was standing outside leaning on my crutches, I was lighting firecrackers to pass the time. All of a sudden, I lost my balance and began falling backwards. Since I couldn’t bend my leg or torso, I realized I better just hang on for the ride. I tossed the firecracker on the way down, wrapped my arms around the cast on my chest and tilted my head forward so I wouldn’t smack it on impact. I was well aware that I had had my quota of head injuries for that year and didn't want a cast on my noggin as well.

When I finally came to rest, I found my cast had cracked clear around my midsection. We took a trip back to the doctor for repairs and more plaster.

There was a great day in August of that year. I don’t know what day it was, I just remember how wonderful it was when they finally took the full body cast off. I felt like I could fly, even though I was still on crutches. That night, after almost 3 months, I was able to take a bath. Getting clean after three months of hot summer sweat soaked into a body cast was the best. I still remember sitting in that tub, enjoying the warm water, and peeling large sections of dead skin off my bad leg just like a snake sheds its skin.

The leg looked shriveled and malnourished. It took me a year to get over the limp but eventually I was able to participate in athletics and any other activity that materialized. The wide scar that wrapped around my thigh stayed numb for years. Since then, I often get a major charley horse or cramp in the muscles that were torn when the broken femur bone cut through them.

After the accident, I would often get a sharp agonizing pain in the front of my head for 20 or 30 seconds. This continued for decades but doesn’t happen much anymore. Frontal lobe injuries can affect judgment skills, short-term memory and cause goofy personality characteristics. I am of the opinion that many of my crazy judgments and actions after the accident may have been influenced in one degree or another by the smack my forehead took on the hood of the elders car.

Many times I have been in the doghouse with parents, teachers, principals, parents, friends, bankers, parents, bill collectors, government officials, parents, church leaders, lawyers, parents, cops, judges, and even once or twice in the last 32 years with my dear marital partner Michele. Did I mention parents? I am always asked why in the world did I do this or that? I never had an answer. Now, after much soul searching, contemplation, meditation and looking for any excuse that will fly, I can answer their question as to "Why?"

Frontal Lobe Head Injury. Convenient excuse. Non-arguable, sympathy-evoking and maybe even true.

The Pond, The Problem, The Solution

    
                 Life for me as a kid almost ended in death. More than once. When I was 5 or 6, my dad had an irrigation pond on one of our farms. This was in about 1960 when farms were just getting developed and there weren’t many people out in the “blocks.” (The blocks were large areas of land containing future farms mapped out for identification purposes.)
 

The farmers who were there didn’t have much. A few had ponds, a reservoir for the irrigation pump to draw from. Farmers with ponds were the envy of the sparse neighborhood. Even though we were poor, we had a pond!

This is the exact pond I'm talking about. Except it is a quarter mile north of the spot of where the original pond was. Since I took this picture in the winter when the pond is dry, I had to photo-shop the water into it. And in the summertime, there aren't the tumbleweeds around it like in this pic. Other than those minor details, it's the same pond.

The kids in the area considered this dirty, algae-filled pollywog-infested pond a great luxury in the summertime. Most of them were older than I so it generated great excitement one hot afternoon when my dad dropped my sister and I off at the pond while he went back to work on the farm. I remember neighbors like the Cooks and the Goodsels were there with a few others; most were several years older than I.

 

My buddy Brian was my same age. He could swim like a fish. I couldn’t swim or even dog paddle. Most of the Cooks, including Brian, appeared to me to be Olympic-caliber swimmers. They even had webbed toes grown together for better water traction. Built-in flippers. That’s the truth! The flippers were natural, they came straight from the maternity ward like that. Brian was such a good swimmer that I sometimes suspected he had gills behind his ears.
 

Everyone was in the water or lounging around on the dirt sides of the bank. Brian took off swimming and I felt I just had to be out there with him, in case he got in trouble. Actually, I just didn't like feeling left out.

I found a wooden fence post lying nearby. I pulled it into the water, lay on my stomach on the top of it and paddled out in the middle of the pond. I enjoyed the newfound sensation of floating out there with the big boys. There was no realization of the danger involved. I don't remember being aware that the possibility of drowning even existed.
  

All of a sudden, the laws of physics kicked in. The heavy weight (me) on the top of the log met up with factors of gravity, weight and balance and the post rolled over. Instead of the continued enjoyment of basking on the top layer of the warm water and the bottom layer of the warmer sunshine, I encountered my first brush with the Grim Reaper. My enabler and makeshift flotation device, the post, was holding me under water. I was like a wrestler on his back with no clue how to keep from getting pinned.
  

This was a whole new experience for me. A half a century later, I can still hear the quiet yet deafening sound of the drowning water and see the light green hue of the underwater tomb. I didn’t know what to do. I let go of the log and hung suspended underwater in the middle of the pond. All of a sudden, I knew I was dead or at least in big trouble.
  

I had no idea how to swim and therefore had no options from which to choose. I was stuck. The only thing I could think of to do was pray and so I did. Thank goodness my parents were churchgoers and took me along for the ride! Immediately, inspiration came and not a moment too soon. The idea came to me I should push the water up with my hands, which would propel me to the bottom. I did this and soon was standing in mud about 8 feet underwater. My lungs were starting to hurt. I kept pumping with my arms to keep my feet on the bottom while slowly and carefully walking out of the pond.

It was a miracle that I knew which way to walk in order to reach the slope of the bank. I remember that I had to turn 180 degrees around to begin walking up the closest bank. I consider the  whole incident watched over by divine providence.
  

By the time the glorious air was reached above the water, I was about to burst. I was close to blacking out. A few seconds more and it would have all been over. If I hadn’t have been able to hold my breath as long as I did or if I hadn’t been inspired by the good Spirit to do exactly as I did and in that tight time frame, I would have drowned with no one on top the wiser. I lay on the bank for a long time after that just gasping for air and feeling very lucky.
  

I lay on the bank soaking in the sunlight and being so grateful for air and inspiration.
  

Many times in my life a Higher Power has watched over me. For me, this experience was a powerful witness that God does answer prayers. Sometimes immediately, sometimes in due time, always largely dependent on our faith .

If left on my own, there would have been a waterlogged corpse for dad to haul back home to mom on this particular summer day. I had been in big trouble. If not for divine intervention keeping me safe, he would have been in big trouble with mom. I believe that not only was my terror-inspired prayer was answered but at the same time the constant daily prayers offered by my good parents.
   

No one at the pond had missed me but I know that I was not alone under the water.

A year or two after my pond experience

I'm In The Mooney Now!

Newspaper ad from friends about an earlier plane wreck

Once in a while, I should just take some advice. I get a little too independent and look what happens! But first to preface...


Back in the 80's, my brother Brent (who was still in high school) and I bought an older Beechcraft Musketeer airplane. It was a four-seater low wing and was adequate for getting us up into the wild blue yonder. I started racking up some hours and experience in it in order to prepare to get my license. To make a long story short. I wrecked it. That incident will post on another day.

After my wreck in the Beechcraft, I took a short hiatus and then bought an old Mooney. My 1963 M20-B Mooney was a relatively fast 4-seater plane that provided lots of opportunity for trouble. It had a variable pitch prop and retractable landing gear so it was faster than most other small airplanes. The landing gear was activated by grasping a big handle in the middle of the console and manually pulling it back or pushing it up to lower or raise the landing gear. It was dependable and fun to operate.

Eventually, I obtained my pilot's license.

This is not my airplane but very similar including the paint job

I flew at every opportunity that materialized when I needed to go somewhere, provided there was someplace to land upon arrival, and that didn’t even stop me sometimes.

One evening my wife was out of town and I had work to do so there was no one at our house to babysit. She previously had made arrangements for me to take our 3 young kids down to my folks for my brother to babysit. She neglected to specify to me as to what mode of transportation I should use so we flew. It probably took me longer to warm the plane up that it would have to drive the kids to my folks and back again in the car.

What the heck, a reason to fly! I threw them into the plane and flew the 6 miles to my folk’s house, delivering the cargo to my brother after a fairly risky landing in a hayfield. But I digress.

Meg, myself, Derek and Hauni right about the age when I drove them 6 miles to a babysitter in my airplane

Now, for the example of a time when I should have just gone along with good advice…

In the 80's, I got involved in developing a product that looked promising but ended up being a bust. The company name was Benzco. I had 2 partners who lived in La Grande, Oregon so that's where we set up shop.

One day after a meeting in La Grande, one of my partners took me back to the airport. He was a former pilot and had owned the Ford dealership in La Grande for many years. The wind was howling in 40-50 mph gusts. As I got out of his Blazer, he said: “Now make sure that you take off against the wind.”

Since there was no control tower, Claude must have thought I needed someone to tell me which direction my nose should be pointed and which runway to take off on. It struck me as unnecessary advice and borderline condescension. Since it bugged me a little, I said “Claude, don’t tell me what to do. I know which way to take off so you don’t need to tell me.” For heaven’s sake, I had several hundred hours of flying under my belt.

Well, Claude repeated his instructions. I felt like I was getting a lecture I didn’t need. I then told him that he should have known me well enough by then that if someone tells me to do something in a particular way; I would do the opposite just to show them.

If he wanted to verify this, he could call my dad. This had always been a unique and usually unhealthy trait I picked up as a toddler. If my dad told me to jump, I would say no. If he told me not to jump, I would say “How high?”

Claude kept harping and didn’t stop the impromptu flight school discourse so finally I said “All right, Claude, I’m going to take off with the wind just to show you.”

He started swearing at me and my stupidity so I told him thanks for the ride and to be sure and stick around for the brief airshow coming up. I climbed out of Claude’s rig, walked across the tarmac, warmed the plane up and headed for the evil runway that had all of a sudden become a challenge I would pursue.

Approaching the La Grande runway where I started my take-off run.

I have always been a dare devil but I didn’t have any idea how near a fatal accident I was about to brush up against.

The runway was nice and long, about a mile in length. A natural optimist, I didn’t consider there would be any problems because I had so much runway in front of me. I taxied to the very end of the wrong runway, stomped on the brakes, wound the engine up, released the brakes and let ‘er rip.

I kept the flaps off because I didn’t want anything impeding my acceleration until I reached flying speed. The wind was pushing me hard from the back end. This would have been a good thing if we were talking about sailboats but it’s not when you’re trying to take off in an airplane.

A short primer for those who don’t know a lot about flying:

An airplane must have headwind in order to fly. This “headwind” air speed provides the lift necessary to keep the plane in the air and also provides the pilot the luxury to control the craft. To be safe, an airplane must always take off and land into a headwind. If it is done in a tailwind, the pilot is flirting with major disaster.

You want airspeed. It is essential. You don't want ground speed. The runway magically shortens up with every mile an hour of tailwind. Conversely, the stronger the headwind, the quicker liftoff occurs. If you were taking off into a 70 or 80 mile an hour headwind, your airplane could take off and fly without any kind of a takeoff run.

Stalls, spins, collisions with the ground and other immoveable objects usually occurs with loss of or not maintaining enough airspeed. I believe most airplane crashes occur from the root cause of inadequate headwind (or airspeed) and resulting loss of control. Pilot inattention and error, weather conditions and engine problems can all lead to inadequate airspeed and loss of control.

Back to the problem at hand…

I started picking up ground speed quickly, the pavement was soon zipping by. But my, oh, my! I soon realized I wasn’t picking up appreciable and necessary airspeed. The airspeed indicator was still stuck on 0 and a quarter of the runway had already passed under my tail. Beads of sweat appeared on my brow and every body orifice I owned began contracting. Pride kept me forging onward.

If I had taken off on the other end of the runway into the wind, I would have been flying in 10 or 15 seconds, lifting off after a few feet. But this was not to be because I was going to show Claude.

Passing the half way point on the runway, I finally saw the wind speedometer start to move. It showed 10 mph while I was actually tripping along at 60 or 70 mph. The runway was getting shorter in a quick hurry. My airspeed was about half of what the ground speed was. Soon, my Mooney and I were screaming over the pavement at a hundred miles an hour. If I had wet my finger and stuck it out the side window, I would have felt a slight whiff of air floating past. I could have kicked the door open and flown a kite in the gentle breeze. However, I had no time for fun and games such as these.

I was in Trouble with a capital T for sTupid.

My airplane had never gone this fast and not been flying. In fact, I'm sure very few airplanes this size and vintage have achieved such ground speed while still earthbound on the asphalt. It started shaking like the wheels were going to come off. I realized my plane and I were in uncharted territory. I could see the end of the runway looming larger and larger; every instant seemed to be hammering another nail in the coffin of Ben. The current Ben was soon going to be a has been.

I pulled back on the stick and got no response. I wanted to stop this nightmare but it was much too late. If I tried to abort the takeoff, I would have hit the end of the runway at 120 mph with the gusting tailwind undoing any effects of the brakes and screeching tires. The point of no return was now a long way behind me.

There was a ditch, fence, pasture, cows and trees just off the end of the runway that I was racing toward. With just a few feet left before the end of the asphalt and the beginning of the cow pies, I jerked full flaps on, pulled the wheel up and rammed the landing gear into the wheel wells. These actions gave me the only chance of getting off the ground and cleaning up the airplane aerodynamics in order to give me a gnat's eyelash of a chance of getting and keeping the plane in the air at this late date.

The plane sluggishly rose from ground effect, bouncing up and down from the gusts of wind around us. We finally started to crawl upwards into the air, inch by most welcome inch. The gusty environment bounced us around. I didn’t mind the bounces up but I didn’t care for the times we dropped.

The rough ride didn’t bother me. I was just ecstatic I wasn’t planted nose first in the far bank of the ditch or in an inverted position trying to pull tree branches out of my pitot tube. I’m sure at the high speed I was traveling, it would have been a fatal wreck.

There but by the grace of God go I.

The next day I got a call from my partners in La Grande. Claude was livid. He started cussing me out for my stupidity. I agreed with him. I knew I had made a really bad decision. I admitted he was right and promised I would never do it again. Do you think that satisfied him? Not a chance. He continued to rant and rave and call me every name in the book. After about 10 minutes of this abuse, I finally told him to lay off and let’s get back to the business at hand.

I think I was a little upset that Claude didn’t at least compliment me on my excellent flying skills. Besides that, I was the president of the company. What right did he have to talk to me like that?

Whenever I think of this experience, I marvel at the ground speed my Mooney and I achieved before we finally scratched and clawed our way into the air, inches above the cows and ditches just below.

Drop Dead Road Signs

When I was ten, dad asked me to take our 730 John Deere tractor and head over to one of our farms about 6 miles away from the home place. He said he would be along shortly in the pickup.

The old 730 was a two-cylinder gas machine with long vertical hand controls for the throttle and clutch rising up from the floor to the right of the steering wheel. It was your typical Johnny Popper as the old John Deere tractors are affectionately called. I loved that tractor. Dad bought it new around 1960 and I felt fortunate enough to find it later in life and buy it back from a guy who had restored it.

I headed for the farm at top speed which was around 15 miles an hour. After traveling for 3 miles, I began to feel the effects of what I later learned to be ADHD. Reaching the top of a large hill, Johnny and I approached an intersection where we had to make a right turn. Being a mature 10 year-old and loving a challenge, as I got closer to the turn, I decided to see if I could take the 90-degree corner at top speed.

As I went into the turn, I realized I had neglected to foresee a change in road conditions. If it had continued on to the side road, the pavement would have allowed me to turn at high speed and still stick to the desired route without much trouble. However, the gravel road I was turning on became like an ice skating rink, even though it was a hot summer day.

The tractor started sliding sideways as soon as I hit the gravel. It slid toward the outside of the turn with the force of an astronaut’s centrifuge, skidding off the road and into the deep barrow pit. I frantically turned the steering wheel righter and righter, trying to get back up on the road.

I had my hands full. I couldn’t slow down or stop because I was 100% occupied with the steering wheel. Since I didn't have 3 hands, I couldn’t grab the clutch or gas handles. There were no clutch or gas foot controls on this baby! No seat belt left me hanging on for dear life by clutching the steering wheel and trying to steer at the same time while bouncing through the off-road terrain.

A 3” square solid metal tool bar was hooked on the back of the tractor, ten feet across and poking out a foot or so on each side of the speeding green machine. Krrack!! As Johnny Popper and I slid into the barrow pit at full speed, I heard the outstretched tool bar strike and snap off the stop sign post located at my nine o’clock position. The wood beam broke at ground level.

It's amazing what a guy has to do to create the visual effect of a stop sign knocked down. It's lucky I'm not in jail for recreating the John Deere accident scene of 1966.

Even though the stop sign was for traffic coming the other way, for the first time in my young life, I really wanted to obey it. Johnny didn’t. So, we did it his way and continued bouncing along the side of the road at full speed. I had the front wheels cranked to the right as far as they would go and yet the tractor insisted on barreling along in the side ditch.

The wheels were sliding, unable to turn the tractor as the momentum, the slope we were on and relatively slick dirt and gravel kept the tractor in the gutter. Finally, the front tires found some traction and we shot back up on the road.

However, my speed was still topped out and before I could react, we shot across the road and ended up in the exact same configuration and motions as we had previously experienced. The only difference was we were now on the other side of the road in the opposite gutter and trying to turn left instead of right.

Krrack!! Up until that moment there had been a “SLOW, CURVES AHEAD” sign standing erect on the opposing side of the road from the stop sign location. This was no longer the case. In less than 10 seconds, I had taken out two signs and installed some new and deep tire ruts in the off-road gutters. Finally, after I had motored another 100 feet or so, I was able to reach up and pull the clutch back, hit the 2 foot-pedal brakes and stop my ride.

I needed a break. I deserved a rest. I singled-handedly had stopped a renegade John Deere. The adrenalin was pumping. I felt I had just avoided a major problem, namely my death. But there was still a minor problem. Two county warning signs were toast and my dad was going to show up at any moment. I jumped off the tractor and ran a 75-yard dash back to the fallen stop sign. The 4’ by 4’wooden post had sheared off right at ground level. It lay comatose.

I was able to raise the stop sign back up to a vertical stance by hoisting it up, wrapping both my arms around it, holding it against my body and grunting repeatedly as I righted the sign. After finally getting the red part pointing heavenward, I was able to lift the entire assembly up a few inches and set it back down on the splintered base. It was critical that I matched the top splinters that were on the bottom of the post I was clutching with the bottom splinters that were on the top of the post in the ground.

At this point, I began moving the post around until I had it perfectly balanced. I stepped back, amazed at the good luck I was finally experiencing. That baby was balanced and holding--locked up, splinter to splinter. The red octagon stood in its full majestic splendor; ready once again to stop anybody coming down the pike. The splintered tongue and groove repair job and balancing act had turned a potentially disastrous “father sees broken sign spectacle and kills kid” into a miraculous healing act that would show up Oral Roberts at a staged leprosy revival.

The only sign of the break were the splinters at the base. I hurriedly scooped dirt and gravel around the post and soon had a nice little mound covering the injury. It didn’t lend any additional support but made the scene look authentic and untouched.

“I just might make it,” I said to myself.

So far, there was no sign of dad. I raced back to the “Curves Ahead” sign and began replicating the previous repair. This one was harder to balance. As I worked, I kept looking over my shoulder, wishing with all my might for dad to NOT come around the bend. I barely finished teaching the sucker to stand on its own when I saw dad approaching the fiasco in his pickup.

“Am I going to pull this off?” I wondered as I stepped back and admired my work while still keeping a hand on it for stability’s sake.

As he approached and began making the turn to head my way, Lady Luck picked a most inopportune moment to run out on me. The stop sign decided it was time to return to its prone position. My dad is the only person in the world who has had a stop sign drop dead, without any visible forces, right in front of him. I’m sure he was bewildered. I know I was.

His confusion was compounded as I relinquished my stability-lending stance and let go of the second sign. A lumberjack would have yelled “Timber!” I whispered “Oh crap.” My dad pulled up and jumped out of his pickup. “What in the heck is going on?”

I explained the situation, putting my driving skills in the best light possible. Dad didn’t buy it. We declared the signs deceased and went back to farming. I listened to tractor-driving safety tips the rest of the day.

Close Calls (Near Death Experiences)

This blog is a newborn babe. Close brushes with death will be shared as the posts tally up. The following true experiences will be shared as the entries climb...

• 25 broken bones sprinkled through time
• 1 head injury/coma, a compound fracture and several other broken bones from riding a bicycle- all precipitated by having a head-on collision with some missionaries in a car coming the other way. This was my first really direct contact with the Mormon Elders
• 3 knee operations
•  shattered elbow 
•  near drowning as a 5 year-old
•  airplane wreck plus 6 or 8 other very close calls while flying
•  incident with a rear tractor tire running over my feet, legs, body and head on a ditch road
•  car wreck involving an exciting police chase with the car eventually flying off the top of an overpass
• "Look ma, no hands!" bicycle wreck tearing down a graveled hill--hamburgered knees and hands plus  large blood clot
• Ordered a new Corvette from the factory and bought 2 airplanes without telling my wife. The incidents in this particular category were probably the closest NDE's I've had.

Because of the head injury, I'm having trouble remembering other incidents but I'm sure there are some.  Stay tuned for the excitement! Hook up as a Follower so you don't miss the fun posts!