Paul v Jeep
I’ll begin by stating that when it came to the business of growing up, I might have been just a little slow. For some unexplained reason, I remained naïve and seriously unchallenged for a while longer than some of my friends.
In any case, my moment came exactly at that time when I turned 15 years of age. It involved driving, but you should understand that I had already been driving for a few years. The driving I had done was in a variety of motor vehicles, from farm tractors to gravel trucks to regular cars. Most of my driving was off road – on the farm, or in the woods, or on back roads of some kind. My time on normal roads in ordinary vehicles was limited, and all of it was in the company of an adult. We didn't have anything like driver's ed in our town.
I was eligible to get a driver’s license at age 15, so I picked up a copy of the preparatory test booklet and began studying it and practicing the driving maneuvers I would be tested on. My birthday that year fell on Friday, and my dad drove me to Dover Foxcroft [a neighboring town] to take the written and driving tests. I passed both and returned home with the special document that meant I could now legally drive on my own.
The first opportunity to do that came two days later on the following Sunday. It was raining hard for the second day in a row, and after our family returned home from church services and we all had lunch, I was going to be allowed to travel on my own to deliver a birthday card and potted flower gift to my Aunt Lottie.
Lottie lived on a farm about 15 miles to the south. I had spent several weeks there during the summertime when I was younger [as did my two brothers] in her care. It was a special and favorite place to spend time and I always looked forward to being there with her. I of course was excited to be able to make the trip and deliver her gifts.
I would be driving my dad’s jeep, a 1943 Navy surplus vehicle that he purchased from his cousin [Lottie’s son]. We were getting the jeep ready to use as a driveway snowplow for the coming winter [I ended up doing the work and eventually had about 50 regular customers]. Since the jeep had no top, we were in the process of constructing one out of wood. On that day, the top consisted of a hardwood frame – totally open to the weather. So, since it was raining cats and dogs, I found a piece of ¼” plywood and tacked it over the wood frame above my head.
I bundled up in a raincoat, baseball cap, and headed out. I had wrapped the card in plastic and tucked the flower behind my seat. As I left the yard my dad’s last and only instruction, other than to drive with care in the rain, was to stay on the main road. You see, between our town and the town where Lottie’s farm was, there was a small hill and the main, paved road went around the bottom of the hill. There was a dirt road straight up and over the hill that cut off about 2 miles in distance. My dad was cautioning me to follow the paved road.
So I drove carefully and steadily, fighting the rain [more seemed to be coming in the back and running down my neck than onto the front of the windshield], and arrived at Lottie’s farm in good order. She of course was pleased that she had been remembered, and we enjoyed a pleasant hour together over tea and some of her mince meat pie. It continued to rain hard.
On the return I seemed to be the only vehicle on the road, and I felt comfortable upping my speed to about 35 [maybe 40] or so, but the water was still blowing in from the back-draft and I was wiping it off the inside of the front window every couple of minutes. I soon approached the junction in the road leading to dirt-road-over-the-hill vs the long way around on pavement. It was late. Raining hard. Very cool. The caution to stay on the main road was there, somewhere, but of course I chose to save a few minutes and get back home and get dry.
So up the hill I went, slowing to about 30 when I hit the dirt section. This road, incidentally, has a turnoff that leads to a small lake and a number of summer camps. Otherwise, the only ordinary traffic of note on the road itself comes from one of the two small farms along the road, one just north and one just south of the topmost point of the hill. On this day, as you might imagine, there was no traffic at all.
As I crested the top of the hill, beginning to think that I was going to be fine and get home safely the piece of plywood covering my head let go and sailed off into the woods. This only made things moderately wetter inside the jeep, so I decided to forge ahead without it.
A half mile down the homeward side, keeping myself mostly to the center of the narrow, hard-packed gravel roadway, and having more difficulty with my vision [water was now almost flowing down the inside of the front windshield and the small wiper was working overtime to clear the outside], I happened to notice the heavy flow of water in the ditches on both sides of the roadway.
Moments later, I saw a small washout in the dirt road on the right side and steered left slightly to avoid hitting it [it was like a large pothole]. I actually almost lost sight of the road because of all the rainwater, and was wiping it away from the inside of the windshield with one hand, and when I looked out again the road was gone! It wasn’t in front of me anymore! Then, I glanced to my right and there it was – almost across the right front seat! I realized in that instant that I was sliding sideways on the gravel, and remembering my driving lessons [in Maine driving on snow and ice is quite common and being taught how to deal with it is quite ordinary], I turned the wheel in the direction I was skidding: to the right.
I was going about 30 miles per hour, and recognized that I was in gently curving skid, heading for the ditch on my left side. Glancing at that ditch and seeing all that water running downhill, I had only one thought: I was going to get myself stuck in the mud. You see, the jeep’s transmission was not the best, and at that time it had no reverse gear. So, all I was thinking was that in spite of having four-wheel drive, I would be unable to back out of the muddy ditch.
The ditch itself, along that section of the road, was perhaps 5 or 6 feet across, covered in grass, and perhaps 2 feet deep. Behind the ditch there was a grassy bank, perhaps 10 feet wide, beyond which was a line of trees. An old wire fence lined the edge of the trees.
I eased my foot off the gas pedal and held on to the wheel as the jeep continued on it’s curved path toward the ditch to my left. Thinking only at that moment of how long it would take me to get unstuck, if I could do that at all, the jeep dove straight toward the grassy bank.
Then, the light went out!
When it came on, I found myself lying on my back, behind the wire fence, my head propped up against a large tree. There was no sound except for the rain hitting the leaves above me.
I sat up and saw that I was within a yard or so of the wire fence. Standing, I understood that my arms and legs worked fine, and that I was no longer driving the jeep. The jeep! Where was it?
I climbed over the wire fence and then I could see down into the ditch. There was the jeep. Except that all I could see was its four wheels, pointing straight up, and one of the rear tires was still spinning. That told me that the light was out for only a minute or two, perhaps less.
Oh boy, am I in trouble now, I thought. What have I done? I looked more carefully, and discovered that the jeep was absolutely upside down. It was suspended across the small rain-filled stream at both ends, and the jeep’s windshield was hanging in space above the water. It appeared to be undamaged, although the hardwood framing we had attached to the jeep was broken in several places.
I sat down in the wet grass, trying to compose myself and struggling with what to do next. I of course would have to get help and that meant having to call home. This was 1953. There were no cell phones.
Then, I reached my first decision. Two miles further, at the bottom of the hill, were several homes, and I could have walked there to get to phone. Or, less than two miles behind me, back on the dirt road, were two farmsteads, and they certainly would have a phone. So, I chose to go backward and walked to the first of the two farms.
There was nobody home. I supposed it was no surprise, and it turned out I didn’t know that family anyway. Well, there was still another farm, owned by an older couple who were well known to my family and who surely would be there. I think it was Mr. and Mrs. John Ford’s farm.
I reached that second farm [by now it was only an hour before darkness would be settling in] and saw that there was no car or truck in the driveway. I first thought that they, too, might not be home, but when I stepped up onto the back porch and knocked on the door, I was greeted by Mrs. Ford.
I quickly told her I needed to use her phone and that I had been in a small accident a short distance away, she took my hand and led me inside her shed. She put out some newspapers on the floor and told me to stand on them. She said she would take me inside to her phone in just a minute, but first I needed to stop dripping and she needed to fix me up a little.
What? I was alright. What did she mean, fix me up? She had gone in the house for something, having told me to stand in place until she returned.
It was then I happened to look down, and when I saw that the entire front of my raincoat was pink! As I was trying to puzzle that one out, she came back into the shed with a handful of first aid materials. She said I had a bad cut on my head, just above my right eye, and she would clean it up and apply a bandage. Then I could use her phone.
It turned out that that was the only physical wound I received. I was badly cut, right in the eyebrow, above my right eye. We were able later to figure out that the cut came from one of the bolts used to secure a flat piece of wood across the top of the windshield frame [part of our framework for the jeep’s wooden top]. The next day, however, both my eyes blackened – I looked like a raccoon, apparently from having hit that board pretty hard when the jeep slammed into the bank of the ditch.
She led me inside and I called home, reporting on what had happened and where I was. My dad, bless his heart, was only mildly annoyed that I had not followed his instructions about staying on the main road and more concerned about my physical condition. He told me to stay where I was and that he would be arriving with help in about an hour.
I think my dad understood that I had screwed up but that I had already learned my lesson. There was no need to pile it on.
Anyway, about an hour later I heard him arrive and together we returned to where the jeep was. Ken Davis, one of dad’s close friends and owner of a local auto garage and dealership, was waiting there with his wrecker..
We looked the jeep over and saw that it was largely undamaged, except of course that it was upside down. Ken worked out where to hook on his chains and hoist and within a few minutes had righted the jeep and then pulled it out of the ditch onto the road. It was still raining hard. We looked the jeep over and, except for the broken wood of the framing, nothing seemed damaged. There wasn’t even a scratch or a dent in the thing! How about that for tough old machines!
Ken checked the fluids and turned the key and the jeep started right up. He told my dad to have me bring it into his shop in a few days to make sure everything was still ok, and he left. I had watched all this with one thought: I didn’t want anything to do with that jeep! What will I do now?
That issue was immediately solved when my dad instructed me to drive it home: straight home. He got in his car and drove off. I stood there for a few minutes, realizing what I now had to do. I had fallen off the horse and had been told to get right back on. Wow! So this is what that means!
Well, I did drive home, and when I got there I put the jeep in the barn and closed the door. The enormity of what had happened began to hit and I started shaking, confused and most likely suffering from a mild concussion. In any event, other than my mother treating my wound, and my dad taking a day or so to really calm down, and lots of ribbing from my two brothers, and the start of school coming up and me with the remains of the raccoon look and all the embarrassment of having to explain to friends what happened to the brand new driver and my trying to decide if I ever wanted to drive that jeep again, all was soon well and back to near normal.
I did, eventually, drive the jeep again [of course] and the following winter plowed more snow than you can possibly imagine. I came to understand that I had made a huge error, that by doing so I had been tested and by a stroke of good luck [wet, grassy bank, young man being thrown out of the machine into the woods without breaking a bone. . .] had passed the test and, I suppose as a sort of rite of passage, had moved on into young adulthood. Dealing with the business of not following my dad’s directions and the guilt involved in that took a little longer to overcome.