When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #46

46-The ride to the sawmill – someone falls out of the car!

My dad built a trailer to haul wood and other stuff. It had high sides, which were made from about one-inch pipe he welded together. The trailer was big enough to hold about three cords of wood. We had a fireplace in the living room and a coal oil stove in the kitchen. These were our primary sources of heat until years later when my dad had gas heat installed. In Alamogordo they had Prestrige Saw Mill. They cut tree logs into lumber. The lumber was hauled down from the mountains in Cloudcroft above Alamogordo. They would have long rows of slag and log ends, etc. left over after cutting the logs into lumber. Sometimes they burnt this stuff but mostly they let the public come down and buy this slag, etc.

My dad would hitch the trailer to the back of his car and off we went to load wood. I can’t remember how much he paid for a trailer load. It was cheap and you had to load it yourself. We wore gloves. There is nothing that hurt worse that getting jabbed with a piece of wood and having a big fat splinter in your hand or fingers. It was rough cut so it was jagged and you had to be careful. I was somewhere between eight to ten years old at the time. My dad would have all four of his kids help him load the lumber. I liked going as it was an adventure and it fun to explore and climb around on these piles and throw the wood into the trailer and my dad would stack it so he could get in as much as he could. The not so fun part was when we got back home and had to ‘unload’ the wood and stack it into piles. I always hated to go get wood for the fireplace because spiders like to hide in that cozy woodpile. Yuck!

One Saturday we were on our way down to Alamogordo hauling the trailer to get another load of wood and we were about half way there. My dad had a Studebaker. It was a light bluish green car. The back doors were call suicide doors because they opened backwards. The doors did not open and swing out to toward the front; they opened from the middle post and back toward the back of the car. We all had seat belts on. My mom gave specific instructions that Gayle, my twin brother, was to sit ‘in the middle’ and ‘not’ near the doors. He had a fascination about opening car doors while the car was moving. Well dad was driving and we were chatting and somehow Gayle reached past his brother (I can’t remember if it was Geoffrey or Douglas-I was sitting near the door on the right side) and got the door ‘open’ while we were going down the road. Well surprise of all surprises when Gayle opened the back left door, the door opened and it ‘took him with it!’

I screamed, “Gayle fell out of the car!’ I immediately looked out the back window, as I was horrified that he would get thrown under the trailer and get run over and to see if other cars were behind us and they might run over him. Well, God was watching over Gayle that day. He did not get thrown under the trailer and no cars were behind us. We watched him roll like a log down the highway. Dad stopped the car. He had to stop carefully as he did not want the trailer to jackknife or fishtail. We saw Gayle get up and he started running toward the car. He was so afraid we were going to leave him behind. When he was rolling he had brought his arms up (like you were go to lift weights) and that protected his face. When we got him he was crying and his arms were badly burned from rolling on the asphalt highway. Instead of coming right home, dad cleaned him up and asked if he was all right and Gayle said that he was and off we drove to the sawmill! He was just so glad we didn’t forget him! We loaded up the trailer with wood and home we went. We took Gayle into the house and told my mom the whole story and she was horrified and upset that dad did not turn around and bring him home!

Mom cleaned his burns and put tannic acid powder and salve and bandaged his arms. You cannot buy tannic acid now. Back when I was a little girl, you could buy it. It was a brown cocoa colored powder and you got it from the pharmacist. Now they use it in creams, etc. That helped heal Gayle’s arms and he didn’t have any bad scarring. He never touched the car door ever again. We also watched him like an eagle!

This reminds me---
of another story--- with the same Studebaker.
We were about the same age, around ten. We were washing the Studebaker one morning. Gayle was on the top of the roof cleaning it and I was washing the doors of the car. I can’t remember why I needed to go into the house, but I went to shut the car door and slammed it shut but it didn’t close, so I slammed it again. By this time Gayle let out a blood-curdling cry. I turned around to see what the fuss was about. His foot was hanging over the edge of the car roof and I had slammed the door on his big toe! OUCH! I felt awful. I don’t think his toe was cut but I was worried I broke it. He got down off the roof and mom came out and examined it. I don’t think she took him to the doctor. But Gayle has always had a slightly bent big toe. It doesn’t point straight like his other toes. I’m sure it was because I shut the car door on it!

One last thing this reminds me of---
When we lived in Hawaii---
We had 5 kids and I took them to have their pictures taken at K-Mart. I had a 4:00P.M appointment and was running barely on time by the time we got there. The kids got out of the car and Julie was the last to get out. I can’t remember if she shut the door or someone else shut the door but her fingers got trapped in the door and the door jammed and ‘would not open!’ A security guard came and tried to open the door and he couldn’t get it open either and poor Julie was in tears and her fingers hurt. I got inside the door and kicked that door as hard as I could and it dislodged it just enough that the security guard got the door open. We went into K-Mart and they had a little eatery just inside and I asked for a cup of ice for her fingers. They gave me the ice. Like my father and the ride to the sawmill---I took them into the photo studio and took the pictures. Then I took her over to Kaiser Emergency and they x-rayed her hand and thankfully she did not have any broken bones. Julie was a little mad at me for going through with the pictures being taken. I do remember telling her,'Smile and pretend your hand doesn’t hurt!' She smiled. How awful of me as a mother! My goodness! I did the same thing my dad did, a chip off the old block! I think back on that and can't believe I did that! I just cringe when I think of that incident.