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You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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About Me
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Writing, beading, cross stitching, crocheting, cooking, Rv'ing, gardening, griping, sleeping, do nothing are the things I like to do. What I hate doing is ironing, talking on the phone, working. I'm a gal that takes retirement seriously.My Photos (36)
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Here is another "true" story
My mother had lots of phobias and her biggest one was fear of bridges. As a young girl I thought all mothers cowered in the floorboards while fathers drove over bridges. This problem never bothered me, but the year I was twelve this particular problem enabled me to help my mother find a perfect solution.
"Why don’t you go with me to see your Aunt Rade?" mother asked.
"Sure, can I wear my blue suede shoes?" I begged.
"I don’t see why not," Mother sighed. "Just keep out of that awful Oklahoma red dirt, I would hate to see you ruin your new shoes."
Our neighbor drove our car up to Hugo where we dropped her off to visit her folks. She is to drive us back to East Texas Sunday evening. This way Mother avoids driving over that long narrow, Red River bridge.
Mother drove away from Hugo right smack into the bowels of South Oklahoma. All the roads were dirt and wide enough for only one car.
I couldn’t wait to get to Aunt Rade’s and show off my blue suede shoes to all my cousins. I knew thay were all envious of me, me being a Texas city girl and all.
After rounding a sharp curve, Mother put on the brakes and came to an abrupt stop.
"Oh no," she gasped, "now what will we do?"
Before us was one of the worst bridges I had ever seen. It was nothing but two boards, no bigger than our tires, stretched across a big ditch. Mother got out and we both walked over to the "ditch". She looked down it’s bright red, dirt banks and shuddered.
"I can’t do it," she moaned.
She slowly turned around and walked, with her head bowed, almost on her chest. Then she stopped, straightened up, looked me right in the eye.
"Have you ever wanted to drive a car?" Mother asked, putting her hands on her hips.
I thought about it and decided it couldn’t be too hard to drive and I sure wasn’t afraid of some little old bridge. Mother turned the car around and drove about two miles back down the road. She stopped, turned the car back around, and had me get in the driver’s seat. She scrunched down beside me and shifted through the gears while I pushed in on the clutch. We stopped and started four or five times, or at least until the car quit bucking during gear shifts.
With the radio blaring out rock and roll, I crept along about five miles an hours (in second gear), and thought this was a cinch. This couldn’t be better, me listening to the radio, wearing my blue suede shoes and having my elbow resting on the open widow, just the way my dad drives. Suddenly, we rounded the curve and there was that "old Oklahoma bad-boy bridge" looming down the road and that’s when my mother hit the floorboards. I looked at her, looked at the bridge, looked at the steering wheel, looked at the speedometer and thought I was going to die.
"How do you stop this thing?" I screamed.
"Put your foot on the brake," screeched Mother.
I rammed my right foot on the clutch thinking it was the brake and all the car did was buck and sway, buck and sway. Not thinking clearly, I opened the door and stuck my left foot out to get the bucking bronco stopped so we wouldn’t hit the bridge, or worse, miss the bridge. My foot hit the dirt and off flew my blue suede shoe. "No! No!" I hollered at the top of my lungs. All at once the door swung open with me attached. I put my arms through the opened window and held on for dear life losing my other blue suede shoe.
In the meantime my mother, never having to get up from the floorboards, grabbed the steering wheel with her left hand giving it a jerk to the right. Using her right hand to apply the brakes, we miraculously glided to a top. When we got out of the car we discovered the tires were kissing the bridge boards, perfectly.
We searched for my beloved blue suede shoes but the woods were impervious to us and we had to forge ahead and get to Aunt Rades’ house. Once again, Mother put me back in the driver seat. I steered while she literally pushed us across the bridge. She could walk over a bridge, she just can’t ride or drive over a bridge. Lucky us.
I hated not being able to show off my blue suede shoes like I wanted. My cousins didn’t think anything about me being barefoot, but I was crushed to lose my shoes.
After our retrun home, Mother took me out in the country and slowly taught me to drive our old ’49 Hudson. From then on going to see her relatives in South Oklahoma was a treat for her and for me because I could do all the driving on those bright red dirt roads.
As strange as it might seem, my mother altered my life that day because I later became the only fifteen-year-old that could drive a stick shift in my high school, and I was a "girl". If it had not been for Mother’s phobia I would not have been the Queen of Drivers Ed. and every kid needs to be good at something.
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