When I turned 14 I had my first car accident. Pioneering the many to follow. None caused bodily harm except the most spectacular on a rainy night in Florence and even it left no one maimed or dead.
But they did harm my ego, which obviously needed some denting because it has always popped back tenaciously. This first one was in Great Bend, Kansas.
Three causes for it. I was taking Drivers Education at Harrison Junior high, with a martinet, former marine, for instructor. I disliked him intensely, also a bit frightened of him. Improbably, his name was Bligh. He told me I was the worst student in the class. That was true.
I claim reasonable excuses: the asshole made me nervous, then too there was something to do I think with my being left handed–a quite strong handedness– that means when someone gives me a direction, as in a direction to turn, I have to orient myself quickly by secretly scribbling something invisible with my left hand.
My vivid imagination contributed too. I often saw myself disintegrating at the wheel and driving Bligh and two of my fellow students in the back seat into a wild out of control frolic. A horror ride to hell ending upside down, wheels churning, just before it all bursts into a dramatic cinematic explosion.
I think father perceived that I was being bullied by Mr. Bligh. In our chats he would ask me “How goeth the captain?” “Have you walked the plank again, me laddie?” “Don’t mutiny my son, them be perilous waters.” And so forth. Father enjoyed his own wit immensely. Like me he had also read the Bounty Trilogy with joy.
I begged father to take me out for an illegal practice session. He firmly refuse, saying it not only broke the law but any damage would fall on us financially.
Then I turned to mother. She was ever my second self so of course she felt my distress over learning to drive.
At first despite my pleas she held firm. To do anything behind my father’s back filled me with fear, my mother with shame. But at last I prevailed. She alone in the family was not afraid of father.
One very cold morning just days after my 14thbirthday in January we sneaked out just as the sky lightened. To dress quickly without alerting father mother had kept her nightgown on and for modesty turned her winter coat backwards, asking me to button her up the back.
So it was “ahoy matey.” Off we mutineers went in father’s two year old 1961 Ford Galaxy. Mother rode placidly beside me, probably enjoying it all.
We made it a block and a half.
Deciding to try a right turn I ran amok and turned left.
Instead of the brake I hit the accelerator. Mother and I careened at decent speed off the street. The Galaxy barked up the curb, onto a lawn, glanced off a tree and crashed to a stop against someone’s house.
Placid as ever my mother simply turned to me and said, “Oh Jonie, I’m so sorry this happened to you.” My family name was Jonie, a created spelling I used it until I hated it. My parents had refused ‘Johnny’ and Jon was absolutely forbidden. From Jonie I passed directly on to Jonathan, Hebrew I was told for ‘God’s gift’—some would not agree.
The man yelling at us was in his pajamas, scrawny and mean, anger puffed in a fog from his stubbly chops. Probably a retired oil field worker as that was Great Bend’s raison d’etre. At its peak the town was surrounded by 3,000 oil wells. There was one even in the town’s park.
“God Damn kid, you’ve cracked my foundation! I should haul you out and beat the crap out of you.” And that sort of thing. One or two of the home’s windows were also broken. While the front of the Ford looked like it had taken a knock out punch from Rocky Marciano.
The Great Bend police were soon there. Photographers too, from the Great Bend Tribune. Yes. Mother and I were on the Tribune’s front page the next day, father’s ruined Galaxy too. He was also referenced in the article. Jonathan Bell is the son of Reverend Bell, pastor of First Methodist church, which was of course the largest, wealthiest church in town with a huge spaceship like dome thanks to the abundance of oil money.
What is perplexing is that, although I braced for the worst, father didn’t lose his temper, not once about this incident. He did make me go back to Drivers Ed class, to face the terrible Bligh who had me stand up before the class while he used me as a whipping boy for the pleasure of all. I do recall recounting this when asked at supper how the day gone, dissolving into tears. My father was strangely subdued. Somehow I later learned that he went for a talk with the man. Father had a razor tongue. Bligh never bothered me again.
For my crime I had to go to juvenile court. Down to courthouse square and the Barton County Court House. I was given eight weekends of community service—cleaning up the Courthouse grounds. Strange, I never asked what penance my mother received, nor how much in damages and fines my parents owed.
The entire story simply disappeared from the parsonage, and from my mind.
Years later in cleaning out the last house where my parents had lived it was a surprise when I found among my mother’s papers, kept carefully, the front page of the Great Bend Tribune, article plus photo—me, mother with her coat on backwards, the Ford, all caught like outlaws in the act.
Then the details returned to mind. And most especially that my difficult, temperamental father was the hero of this tale.
Captures so well how we were terrorized by adult bullies/sadists in our youth. What a hero for a dad..