Facing Death and Danger

This blog is about death and the many times I’ve looked at it directly. From death of family members and loved ones to the times I’ve escaped my own I will share these experiences. If that subject upsets you, maybe do not read this blog.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about one of my mother’s boyfriends who had had a heart attack while alone on his boat and unable to call for help, died. (Read it here). But by that time I had faced my own possible death and two possible abductions.

The first time I faced death I was three years old. I was in what we called the attic playing with my older brother and some neighborhood kids. We were in the middle of a serious game of Cowboys and Indians. This was the mid 1950’s and that was the game young boys and girls played in backyards, playgrounds, basements or attics. Movies in the theatres were The Searchers, Gunslinger, Dakota Incident, and The Last Wagon. On television the top shows were, ‘Gunsmoke’, ‘Cheyenne’, and ‘Sargent Preston of the Yukon’. With that for our entertainment, one can see why we would gleefully imitate them.

The boys in the neighborhood loved to act out Cowboys and Indians. On this fateful day, I was the lone captured cowboy amidst a band of angry savages. Of course I was to be a sacrifice. But first, I needed to be tied up and placed on the stake. (A small wooden chair was to substitute for a stake and a pile of stuffed animals was to substitute for the fire in which I was to be burned.) I was stripped naked, (yeah, I know), and a rope was circled around me while my captors whooped and hollered. The rope went around my neck a few times. I got angry and started to scream. That only inspired my captors to heighten their battle cries. I wriggled and raged leaning my chest and head forward against the rope to free myself. The rope tightened around my neck.

As I struggled, I felt myself fade, much like falling asleep. All sound and light around me vanished. I went out. I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but when I woke I was on the floor and my brother franticly called my name. I opened my eyes and he sighed, “Oh, she’s okay.” He dressed me. Perhaps he was frightened by the incident and had a lot of nervous energy, he picked up the rope and shouted, “Let’s make a Tarzan swing.” Off he raced to the second story window to tie the rope around a branch of the old oak tree buttressing our house. The rest of the kids followed him.

I was left alone. I don’t remember what I did next, maybe enjoyed breathing? I carry a small scar on my neck from the rubbing of the rope against the thin skin.

Then next time I faced, I can’t say death, but certainly danger, I was eight and had gotten a sore throat. After speaking to my Uncle the Doctor, he told my mother to bring me to his office. She packed my older sister and little brother with me into the car to drive downtown to his medical office. This was the era when Doctors made house calls. But as I was in acute pain, we went to him.

My Uncle was positive I had strep throat but it had to be verified by test results. He scrapped my throat and put the scrapings in a petri dish and sent it to the lab. He told us he would know by tomorrow and then he’d give me a penicillin shot, but for now I was to eat Jell-O and drink Seven Up to soothe my enflamed throat.

My mother was given $35.00 from my father to pay for the doctor’s visit. She offered to pay my Uncle, but he told her to put that away. It was a ‘free’ visit’ as we were family. My mother was thankful and ecstatic. (Even I knew she now saw that $35.00 as hers.)

My mother made a few calls using the office phone. She called her sister (married to the Doctor) to tell her the news. Then she made a quick call to my father to tell him the news. (My mother and father were divorced at this time. I suspect she blamed him for my illness as us kids had spent that previous weekend with him.) All I wanted to do was go home, roll up in blankets, and sleep.

We piled back into the car. My sister, little brother and mother were in the front. I sat the back, isolated, as I was told strep was contagious and we didn’t want my little brother to catch it.

My older sister reminded my mother that we didn’t have any Jell-O at home or Seven Up. As we passed the Tom Thumb market, my mother pulled into the lot and parked along the side of the building. Tom Thumb was a small grocery store on the first level of an apartment building. It was a precursor of today’s 7/11 stores.

I remember pestering her to only get Seven Up, because my throat hurt and I wanted to go home. She shushed me and said she would be just a minute. My sister and little brother went in the store with her.

I knew they’d be in there a long time and resigned, lay across the backseat to rest. It was a warm spring day and the car windows were rolled down. I remember looking out and seeing the blooms on lilac bushes. I heard birds sing. It hurt to swallow so I did my best not to. I sat up because it seemed that I had to swallow more when lying down.

When I sat up I saw an old man at the car door. He looked like what we’d call homeless these days in those days we called them bums or hobos. With a grey scraggly beard, beat up jacket, and the clearest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. I will never forget his eyes. He stared at me like someone starving and I was an overloaded buffet. He reached a long skinny arm in the window to lift the handle and open the door.

I heard my sister yell something and the man quickly backed away from the car and slinked into the nearby alley. Relieved I saw my family, arms full of grocery bags, and my little brother sucking a Popsicle.

My mother seemed upset that the man tried to steal her car not realizing that the man was trying to get in the back, where I was. In her defense, in this era, abduction and/or kidnapping of children weren’t common. It happened but only the most salacious of crimes were reported in the press. So it wasn’t something parents thought about or worried about.

At this time, people didn’t lock doors of cars or homes. Stranger abductions grew as family habits changed. My family was at the forefront of these changing roles. My parents divorced in 1959, my mother was guided (pushed) to return to school and get a college degree. She was told it’d help her become independent. With m y mother in school and my father living in an apartment there became a new gap for us kids in which my older sister did her best to fill. She was eleven when she stepped up to manage food, pay bills and clean house all while going to school.

It was my sister that mentioned the man at the car door to my Aunt when she called that afternoon to check in on me. My Aunt came over and made dinner for us, She chastised my mother about leaving me in the car alone. My mother rebelled against anyone that appeared to lecture and they argued. Finally, my Uncle dropped by that night and gave me a shot of penicillin. He said he didn’t have to wait for the results he knew it was strep throat. Physically, I recovered quickly.

The next time I faced possible mischief it was Halloween. I was nine. I wrote about it in short story form. You can read it here

Next blog: The times I knew I was in trouble