As I Remember It

This actually happened … to the best of my recollection.

I think it was Thanksgiving vacation in 1958 or 1959. My mother and I were visiting my sister and her family in Nashville, TN. As it turned out I also had a college fraternity brother who lived in Nashville and he agreed to fix me up with a friend of his girlfriend. We planned a raucous night  ... starting out by buying a bottle of Southern Comfort at a local package store  ... which we all swigged on throughout the night. I don’t remember any of the details of what we did that night until such time as my fraternity brother, feeling no pain, was driving along a country road … at far too fast a pace.

I didn’t tell him to slow down … but, overcome with a premonition, I turned to my date and said, “Excuse me,” and crouched down on the backseat floor. It couldn’t have been five seconds later when our car went out of control and crashed into a tree … after which all hell ensued. My date was screaming. (I told her to keep quiet … she wasn’t helping.) My fraternity brother yelled, “She’s not breathing … she’s dead!”… so I popped out of the car to see what was wrong. His date was face down in a drainage ditch and so I said, “Or course she’s not breathing, her head is under water!” Being sensitive to possible spinal injuries, standing in the cold water, I gently rolled her onto the ditch bank and pushed a number of times on her chest.

She then choked, spit out some water and came back to life. Both girls were full of cuts and broken bones, the details of which I have long since forgotten. But I did grab the liquor bottle and throw it as far as I could into the woods. Some passer-by must have alerted the authorities for it was not too much later that an ambulance and the police arrived. Our dates went off in the ambulance and my fraternity brother and I in the police car … I think to the hospital. When we arrived, I tried to get out of the police car and discovered that both my ankles were severely sprained and swollen.

I spent the rest of Thanksgiving both on my sister’s couch or on crutches ... thanking my premonition for not suffering worse consequences.. My fraternity brother was never charged with anything.

Both girls survived their injuries with a bit of plastic surgery and I received I think two free trips back to Nashville to be deposed and then testify in the resulting damages suit. But it was settled before the trial started.