Like most young couples getting started, Duane and I went through a succession of clunkers. Luckily he was handy at keeping them running so we could make them last a little longer so we could eventually upgrade a little higher. The day finally came when we could afford a "new" car. It was a beautiful turqouisy colored Plymouth voyager. And though it was last year’s model, no one had driven it but us. We drove it home enjoying that new car smell and walked all around it in the driveway admiring our reflection in its flawless exterior. That weekend Duane pulled out the back seat and outfitted the back end with the bed that we had transferred from our old van.

We had been raising puppies for several years for an organization called "canine companions for independence" and it was time to turn in my next puppy. Since CCI did not at that time have training center in the southeast, all puppies raised in the southeast were shipped to New York for the next level of their training. Shipping them off seemed the worst way to part, so a few of us had taken to driving our pups up north and this trip a few other puppy raisers had asked us to take theirs also. So the trip the next weekend was to consist of Becky and her puppy to be turned in, Me and my puppy to be turned in plus the one I was raising that was just going along for the ride, Kris and her service dog and 4 other golden hitchhikers. Needless to say that grand voyager was filled to the gills.

With 11 bodies and one wheelchair crammed inside, there was no room for luggage so we borrowed Greg and Becky's roomy rooftop carrier and I brought it home inside for Duane to install outside. Concerned to keep the pristineness of his new car as long as possible, he fretted over the legs and the straps which criss-crossed the roof and held on to the rain channels. He finally dug in some craft boxes and came up with some pieces of felt to put down between the legs and straps and the shiny turquoise paint job.

Now I know that you are probably already thinking ahead to the outcome of this story, but what you can't know is where the accident took place...

We were finally all loaded and headed out of Orlando about 10 pm that night. I was driving with Becky as co-pilot and Kris was in the back fighting dogs for a comfortable spot to sleep for the night. Kris finally settled on crawling under the platform bed and was snuggled down with her dog Griffin. Traffic was moving quickly down I-4 as we headed east out of town to pick up the interstate north. One second we were flowing smoothly along with the traffic, and the next I saw nothing but red tail lights ahead. Duane swears I must have hit the brakes, but not one dog was tossed off that platform in the back.

Not so the luggage carrier. Assisted by the silky smooth texture of 6 pieces of felt gliding over fresh wax on new paint, that 4 x 6 plastic box containing 4 days worth of clothes for 3 people and enough dog food for 8 dogs came crashing down onto my hood, taking out one of my wipers on its way, and crashing in front of me onto the middle lane of I 4, and busting open. Becky and I stared in shock as we screeched to halt before hitting it and watched as suitcases spilled their contents of shirts shorts bras and even underwear across all 3 lanes of east bound traffic.

We heard a thump in the back as Kris came awake with a start, hitting her head on the platform above her. Cramming the car into park and turning on the emergency beacons Becky and I jumped out of the car and dodging cars which were weaving around our mess we tried to round it all up. Grabbing armful after armful we would run to the car, open the back and throw things at Kris who would cram it into any cranny she could find to be ready to grab the next handful. Thank God for well trained dogs who knew the Stay command and obeyed it, even in all the chaos. With no way to lift the carrier, and no way to fasten it if we could, Becky and I dragged the carrier to the side of the road and threw it over the guard rail there. Hunting frantically for markers or road signs we gauged where we had left it to the best of our ability and called Greg to retrieve it in the morning.

Luckily I am not a very anal person when it comes to the looks of the cars I drive. Pristine is nice, but I just love character. It was and is a great memory and a great story to tell. We livened up every get together we attended that weekend with that story and I never failed to smile when looking at those long stripes down the hood of my car. As for Duane, well, He loves me. Need I say more...?

 

 

Reanne wanted to parachute. For her 18th Birthday we went to Deland airport and paid for her to tandem jump.
At the last moment we splurged and paid someone to jump with her and record a video and pictures. She and her friends and about 20 other people piled into the plane like sardines and up up and up they climbed. It took about 15 minutes for them to reach altitude. The rest of us, including her dad and sisters went to the observation deck on the roof and counted as each little speck left the plane. We knew that Reanne had been in the 16th position (can I still really remember what number she was?) As the 15th speck left the plane we all got excited for her. the next one was her... Was she excited? Was she ready to throw up? Was she regretting her decision? Then she was out. The speck was just a little larger than the others because it was two people hooked together this time. They free fell for a few seconds and then the chute opened. But... a speck kept falling... My knees buckled and I reached around wildly for a banister, a person, a chair, anything to keep me from hitting the deck. I looked wildly towards Duane and Michelle and Cassie who were all insanely oohing and cheering and slapping each other on the shoulders. How could they be so dense? Was I the only one able to see and understand that my daughter had broken free of her tandem partner and was now plummeting to her death? I waited for one of them to turn to me in recognition of our agony and they just kept looking up and beaming idiotically at the debacle in the sky. Reluctantly I turned my own eyes back to the sky just as the videographer (who had jumped with them) opened his chute a safe distance away and kept the film rolling as they all descended through the cloudless sky together. It must have all happened in the space of a quarter of a second, but I believe I lost at least a decade of my life.

 

Bob May and his family moved to Gamboa in the mid 70's when I was just starting High School. I got to know them; well, because Gamboa was a small town and everyone knew everyone. Being a small town there was not much to do and what there was to do got old pretty quick. So when Bob got the keys to his mothers VW Bus and came to take me driving it was the new best thing. It didn't take me long to convince him to let me drive and it was the most fun I'd had in awhile. Something about driving that bus, where you are sitting on top of the wheels and out over the road was better than driving anything else I'd driven so far, which hadn't been much truth be told. We would tool around Gamboa once or twice hitting all the hotspots: pool steps, McGrath field, Boat docks and stables. Then turn and start the whole circuit again.

One night I talked him into adventuring out across the bridge towards "town" along the highway. We were just tooling along with no place in particular to go when we came across the "old Gamboa road"; the dirt track that led into the back of summit and was only used now by hunters and horsemen. 4 wheeling in a bus? Why the hell not? Bob took some convincing but I got him there; so down the road we went.

Between Gamboa and Balboa the railroad tracks weave through along the same general path. They cross the Gamboa Bridge together, skirt both sides of the Penitentiary, kind of peek back and forth at each other through the jungle before meeting up again at summit where the tracks cross over the highway. So, all this to say, when we headed down the dirt track towards summit, neither one of us had thought about having to cross the railroad tracks. And, since the road was no longer used for vehicles, there was no crossing, just two sets of tracks jutting up out of the earth for as far as we could see both ways.

Now of course Bob was ready to pack it in and turn around. We were about a quarter mile back into the jungle in the pitch blackness of post twilight before all the stars come out and no light to be seen but our headlights trying to penetrate the dense growth all around us. But if there is one thing my daddy laid down in my soul with a firm foundation is that there is never any going back. You can go back to point A, but you must do it in a circular route so as to not admit defeat. So I coaxed and cajoled and wheedled and begged and Bob gave in. He insisted on the condition that he be the one to drive the bus over the tracks. I was willing to concede that point so we switched sides and he idled up to the tracks.

Touching the front wheels to the track he powered up the engine to no avail. That bus just did not have the power needed to hoist its front end over that barrier. Getting into the spirit of things now, Bob backed up and got a few inches of running room. A few inches would not do the trick so he backed up a foot. Still no luck. Determined now to salvage the night, Bob backed up two feet and got a good running start while gunning that sewing machine engine for all it was worth. I held my breath as we hit the tracks, rocked up, teetered on the edge, and slipped to the other side. Woo hoo we cheered and screamed and laughed our fool heads off. We had done it and now knew the secret of success. Bob sidled up to the second track to get a feel for where it was and then backed up the necessary two feet. He stopped, shifted to drive and glanced over to grin at me before revving the engine once more for all it was worth. Yeah! Success again as we tottered over the second track with our front wheels!

Now the story could have ended there in triumph except for one small detail. Do you know the length of the wheel base of a VW bus? We certainly didn't back then, but I can tell you today that it is about 4 inches wider than your standard rail road tracks... So there we sat with our front tires on one side of the track and our back wheels on the other; and not enough room to rock it forward or back. Not that we didn't try, using up at least a quarter of a tank of gas. Then Bob got out and tried pushing while I drove. Still no luck. Let me tell you it was a real joy sucker that situation. Not to mention the fact that while we were sitting there discussing what a bummer it was, one of us remembered the freight train that rumbled nightly through Gamboa on its way to summit and beyond. That's kind of when things got tense for Bob. He decided to hike out to the highway and flag down a passing car for help. (We are talking 1975 here, I don't think the CIA even had cell phones then.)

Now another thing you have to understand about the Gamboa road is that it was only used by people going to Gamboa. We are talking about 300 families or so, and not a lot of them are out and about on a week night. So Bob sat out there for what felt like hours before I heard him waving down a passing car. "Hey, Hey, Stop, Help, No, don't go" I heard along with the distant sound of a car coming and going. It was several minutes more before once again I heard his screams, this time an octave or so higher. I could imagine him jumping up and down on the side of the road, waving his muscular arms, his long wild hair blowing across his face and I almost didn't blame the driver when I heard Bob yell "Stop, stop, Damn You, You &*#$%"

It was about this time that I yelled out to him that perhaps I would have better luck getting some roadside assistance so he came back to the car and I went out to the road. It was perhaps another 15 minutes later and I was looking at my watch and wondering how long it would take that train to reach us, seeing as how if it was on time it had passed through Gamboa a few minutes before, when Jimmy Dufus came tooling down the road and I just raised my hand and waved and he pulled right over. He was more than willing to give us a hand so he pulled his car over on the side and he and I walked back to where Bob was waiting at the bus. When we walked up we could see Bob out in front of the bus in the headlights placing something on a neat little pile he had made there. He turned and headed back for the bus and set to work trying to remove the fan from the dashboard. When asked what he was doing, He replied in a resigned voice that he was trying to save as many "things" of his mothers out of the bus as he could before the train hit it. Jimmy and I talked him into putting that aside (though he was very reluctant to leave the fan) and try pushing again now that there were two of them to push with me to drive. It took several times, but we were able to rock it back (to my chagrin, I would have still rather gone forward but understood Bob had "lost the mood"). Bob was able to get over the second track backwards with some help and we turned and headed back out to the highway.

Somewhere along the way we saw the train pass by in the night but we weren’t talking much and to the best of my knowledge that was the last time Bob ever took me driving in his mothers bus.