Doomsday 1962
By Rich Jones
Early in 1962 America’s popular syndicated astrologer, Jean Dixon, predicted the world would end on February 4, a Sunday. She was not alone. Doomsday predictions were rampant, as millions flocked to holy sites across the globe, a phenomenon that so impressed a 15-year old Stephen Spielberg that he replicated it in his 1977 Close Encounters blockbuster. The expected total solar eclipse on Earth simultaneous with the alignment of five planets in a 17-degree arc in the sky passed without drama, except perhaps the disappointment among those expecting Apocalyptic change. As an avid news follower, I was aware of the hoopla, but anticipated nothing would happen to planet Earth. But what happened to me that day did change the course of my life. Happily for the better as it turned out.
Sunday February 4, 1962. I had recently turned 14 and was in the 9th grade. Shortly past midnight I was being driven home from a job babysitting the two kids of a couple my parents knew through work—the driver and my father had been co-workers at one time. He was driving a Volkswagen Beetle, the stripped-down, just the basics European import that was still something of a novelty in the US. Influencers of the day joked about its resemblance to underpowered toy models that sounded like a swarm of insects. As a habitual class clown, I picked up on that vibe and chided the driver about “his noisy lawnmower.” I heard him say, “Let me show you what this baby can do, Ricky.” We were heading west on an open stretch of Big Bend when I felt the Beetle accelerate up a hill. Through the misting rain the headlights illuminated a left-hand curve.
The next thing I remembered was blinding lights in the back of an ambulance. I ached all over, my head throbbing, and flashes of pain pierced my left leg. I couldn’t move my head or body because of the restraints. I could see an EMT sitting to my left. On my right side I could hear my father’s voice behind me, “You’re going to be all right” but I couldn’t turn my head to see him. I had no awareness of what had happened and at first thought I was in a movie or a dream. The dull headache and constant pain convinced me it was neither.
I heard the radio blaring a doo-wop hit of the day, 'Duke of Earl'. I have never forgotten the thrumming cadence of Gene Chandler’s deep bass voice singing “Duke duke duke Duke of Earl duke duke Duke of Earl duke duke…” My father loathed pop music with visceral passion. I didn’t want him to go into a rage. “Could you please turn down the music,” I murmured to the EMT. I had often uttered those same words sleepily to my father at home when I was trying to sleep. He listened to his stereo at high volume—at 11 we would say today. The thin walls of our house did little to mute the sound. “OK, kid” the EMT said gently responded, “we thought you would like the music.” “No thanks,” I squeaked.
Hours later I woke up in a large room to the sound of tinkling. “Jingle Bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,” I sang. In the dim morning light I could make out that I was in a ward. A man in black was moving through the room ringing a little hand bell at each bed, mumbling. I don’t know if he stopped at mine.
A few hours later my parents appeared at my bedside and explained what had happened. The driver lost control of the Beetle going around that curve. In those pre-seatbelt times, I was thrown out of the car. I was found on a hillside some distance away where winter leaves softened the landing. My injuries could have been much worse, they said. I had lost consciousness, suffered a concussion, numerous contusions, a subdermal hematoma. Both bones in my left leg were broken just below the knee. I was now in St. Joseph’s Hospital, about three miles from home. Long afterward I chuckled when I realized it was a Sunday morning. The jingling bell must have been a priest coming to signal morning prayers.
Monday afternoon flowers began to show up around my bed. I remember one especially large arrangement from the driver and his wife. I think it had fruit on it. On Tuesday cards from school classmates arrived, and later in the week, a set of bongo drums from my homeroom class. I honestly don’t remember ever having so many friends, but it was the bongos that turned on my tears. For years I had tormented my classmates with the incessant drumming of my pencil on the desk, a deeply imbedded nervous tic. That simple gift of bongos made me feel accepted, welcomed, and liked, a feeling I had never had from classmates. It would be months before I could try to play those drums. The full leg, 20-pound hip-to-toe cast immobilized my left leg and prevented me from holding drums between my legs.
Weeks later, my first days back at school posed new challenges. Practicing at home, I had learned to use the wooden crutches. I quickly determined it was awkward and inefficient to carry all my weight with my armpits. To be mobile I had to raise my weight off the top of the crutches, transferring it instead to my arms and shoulders by gripping the crutch handles. At school, I had to negotiate the stairs—two flights to reach the second floor of this early 20th century, high-ceilinged building. I figured out that I needed to go up backwards. With both crutches tucked under my right arm, I grabbed the banister with my left hand, and lifted my hips and the heavy plastered left leg, while planting my right leg on the higher step. Navigating the crowded hallways between classes was easier. Students steered clear so they wouldn’t get tripped by the crutches or bump into the heavy cast that I carried at an angle 18 inches out from my hips. My body went to high gear to build my shoulders and back quickly for the job they now had to do. I could walk really fast because the length of the crutches doubled my stride. In the morning I was driven to school but walked the mile home. Towards the end of my eight weeks in a cast I was able to make the trip in about half the time as walking on two feet. Before the accident I weighed less than 100 pounds. I was never below that after the cast was removed.
I now found it easy to make friends. I was a novelty. Students I barely knew wanted to sign my cast. It was so large that I had to get pants a larger size to roll up the left leg. Girls volunteered to bring me lunch in the cafeteria or carry my book sack. I enjoyed this attention and let others know it with thanks and a smile—quite a change from the ill-tempered, wisecracking kid who had a reputation as a sourpuss.
None of my injuries did lasting damage. When the leg was finally freed from its cast, I was horrified. From thigh to ankle, it had atrophied into a straight thick stick shrouded by a mass of clotted dark hair, giving off a foul odor of dried sweat and dead skin. I could not wait to hop into the shower. A few weeks later, I returned to my after-school job, mopping the floor and washing windows of a local family-owned shoe store. It felt good to be back to my previous routines earning money again.
The accident put a financial burden on my parents. Money was often tight. As an office manager, my mother conscientiously kept track of every expense incurred by the accident—the hospital bills, a few weeks of home care, taxis to and from school the first few weeks, follow-up doctor visits, new pants that would accommodate the cast, the crutches and the cost of many replacement tips required because I walked so much during the school day. After the final all-clear from the doctors, my parents submitted their claim to the driver’s insurance company, and as far as I know, were fully reimbursed. But there was more. A cousin of my mother’s was an attorney for a law firm that specialized in family and labor law. He filed an action against the driver—I assume a suit for negligence. About 18 months after the accident, my parents were awarded $5,000. After the settlement, the driver told my father that he should be thankful. With that sum of money, he could now afford to send me to college. Insulted, my father slugged him. But there was a large element of truth in what the driver said.
Five thousand may sound today like a paltry sum to compensate for the trauma my family had gone through. The equivalent today would be close to $50,000. At the time it was enough to expand my thinking about college. I was by then headed into my junior year of high school, with grades that put me in the upper 10% of my class. Although both parents and my older sister had attended college, none had graduated. My mother once had advised me, “Typewriter repair. That’s a profession with a secure future for you to think about!”
Given the family’s financial limitations my thoughts about college had been limited to local options. The settlement made me think I could go anywhere I was accepted. Even Duke, which for some reason struck my fancy at the time. I visited the campus by Greyhound with a classmate and applied for early admission my senior year, but Duke thought otherwise. At Kirkwood High’s College Night senior year, I was intrigued by the possibilities offered by a 2,000-student liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota: Macalester College. Its curriculum emphasized international studies and offered several programs to work or study abroad. That sold me. While enrolled there I spent a year at the American University of Beirut sandwiched between two summers doing volunteer work in France. The experience in Beirut set me on a course living, studying, and working in the Middle East for the next 25 years. In August 1968 waiting at Orly in Paris to board the college’s charter flight back to the U.S. I chatted up a classmate and made a note to myself to follow up with her when we got back on campus. Almost a year later to the day we were married. Happily, we still are.
Until I sat down to write this narrative, I had forgotten the exact date of the accident, and that it was the day soothsayers had predicted the alignment of the planets would lead to some global phenomenon. They were never explicit about just what event would engulf our lonely planet. Of course, nothing planetary did happen. The planets had nothing to do with my accident. But remembering that prediction made me ponder: Just how would the course of my life have been different if I had just kept my mouth shut in that Beetle early the morning of February 4, 1962?
Another great story! Loved reading this one too!
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