The Dodge and the Apple Tree

The events that lead to my daddy’s death came to me at four am just about a week ago. I was asked the previous week-end by a friend about the death of my daddy. He was only forty-eight when he died. Forty-eight; I have made it almost two years longer. Today I feel that I may not last too many more years. I can see my tomb rock now, “I told ya’ll I was not well.” That is really how I feel. I am really beginning to realize how short life is. Youth to me now is the perfect gift. I have struggled time and time again with the  depression that I blame on the adults that raised me. Not all of them had a huge negative part in my seemingly unhappy state of mind. I did from most of them learn that tomorrow is going to be another day and it would be better.

My grandmother amazed me how she could put a child in Corum Cemetery one day and start picking twenty acres of cotton the next. The words she used still come to my mind often. We’ve got to go on kids. With that she would rush us out the field, barn or whatever farm chore was to be done. Resting or grieving was something that was not much of an event on the hill we lived on. I still wonder if Mama would have been more upset had Grandmother let her, after all her husband had just died. My brother and I were teen-agers at the time my daddy died. The only thing we did do was take time about going out with our friends. During the time directly after Daddy died we were to one of us stay home with Mama and Grandmother. This was my idea. I think that I thought it was just the right thing to do; or maybe I was growing up and more concerned about Mama than I realized. With the fear of looking always the good guy, since this is my story, I am going to say I was taken advantage of in this situation. My first mistake was ever letting my little brother know anything I had done my grandmother would not approve of; all it had to be was a kiss from a boy and my little brother black mailed me to no end. That is what he did on Saturday night even if it was his turn to stay home. The words were like a magic wand, “I’ll tell grandmother about so and so.” He might as well just snap his fingers to get his way.

Daddy died December 5, 1978. This was a typical date for someone in our family to die. The holidays were when most of the tragic things happened on our little hill. It was that year that I was faced with a double whammy. Grandmother learned that if you belonged to the Local Laborers Union there was hospital insurance. Imagine that, Daddy had health insurance and did not even know it. I had always had sore throats that had really lessened as I got older. As a small child it was much more frequent. This was the chance to have my tonsils and adenoids removed and it get paid for. So one week after Daddy passed I was in the hospital because it was going to get paid for by the insurance that Grandmother had discovered. I have never had pain like that before. Wondering still was it really needed to be done; or if it was just a way to use something we never knew we had.

Daddy was sick all the week before with what he was saying was the flu. I now look back that I told my friends and family that he really was sick this time. It was not just a getting off of a drunk sick, “my daddy is really sick.” The morning he died I was still in bed when he came down the hallway. My bed was in the door directly at the end of the hall. I saw him hit one side of the hall and the opposite side as the seizure hit him. This made a cut on his lip and forehead as he was not just falling, but shaking from the effect the seizure was having on him. These seizures had started over a year before. He had actually been taken by ambulance to the hospital the first time he had one. He had been taken is the key here; if he had been coherent wild horses would not have put him in the ambulance. This was the case the day he and Mama hit the apple tree with the blue dodge car. Mama had not driven since I was a baby. She had stopped driving way before we left the north. She had not driven and the location of a gas paddle and break must have been the reason that she stomped her foot on the gas paddle instead of the brakes of the blue Dodge that Daddy was driving at this time. The accident happened within seeing distance of our house. The two of them were heading to Rogersville to the bootleggers. It was during the day so my brother and I were in school. It was early fall the year before Daddy’s death. He had already taken that trip to ECM. The seizures came without warning, but this was something that he really was not concerned about for he still drove; still drove to get the thing that was causing him to have them. Less than a minute was as long as this trip lasted. Down the hill over the cross roads, just passed Bethlehem Methodist Church, and up the hill was when the seizure started. Mama saw that he was shaking so hard that he was going to wreak the car. She was always terrified of everything. I can imagine the panic in her, because she really was scared of everything that could be a tad harmful to her body. I know from what she said that she tried to stop the car when it left the road. Stopping was not what happened at all. At the bank that they jumped the explanation of how they hit the tree so hard was evident. The car has spun up the bank. Instead of Mama’s foot hitting the brake she had landed her foot on the gas paddle. She had squeezed the gas as hard as she could just thinking; she was stomping on the brakes. That is why the impact to the apple tree was so hard. The car landed in the yard on Opel and next to Opel’s was the home of her sisters; Ofie and Cofie. This was a sure way to get all three ladies out of their houses in the middle of the day. Mama had a huge cut on her head that made it for sure to the ladies that they must call the Lexington Rescue Squad. The Rescue Squad came; by this time Daddy had came out of the seizure and was at himself enough to be himself and refuse going to the hospital. Since he was in the driver’s seat the steering wheel had dug into his chest. The bruises were so black and were from his neck to his stomach. He complained and took Anacin constantly for the pain. He even had me to wrap his ribs with old scrap material that Grandmother had collected. The medical attention that he received at home was not sufficient for a chest injury of this kind. The last year and couple of months that he lived were full of what he called a cold; chest congestion and pain. The seizures became more frequent on top of the pain he was constantly trying to relieve by taking Doanes pills for his pain. He had himself believe that these little back pills helped pain anywhere better. The fall that year brought on another cold. He had the flu that was accompanied by regular seizures. The last week of his life he laid on that couch day and night; not drunk lay on the couch. He had not taken care of himself and Sunday morning was going to be the end of him. He really did not realize that he had nothing more than the flu. The blow to his chest was I am sure what sped up the slowness of the way he was surely killing himself. That morning Grandmother and I both knew that the seizure was worse and that when he came to from that the pain was unbearable in his chest. This was one time that he did not sway Grandmother from calling the Lexington Rescue. It was 11:00 on Sunday morning less than ten minutes from Lexington, but by time they got their Uncle Luke had already came out to tell me my daddy was dead. Uncle Luke was always there, but he may have been there just because of my sick daddy.

Daddy’s death is something that I don’t think of very often. I think of my daddy often, but not the actual events that lead up to that Sunday morning in December. Being asked about it brought this story back to me. I have not thought of the car hitting the apple tree in years and years. The incident came to me at four in the morning surprisingly to me what ever made me think of that then.