The First Day
Accident
by Don Drewniak
My driver's
license was in my wallet two days after my
sixteenth birthday. Yes, I had passed the
Massachusetts' driver's test, but events would
soon prove I shouldn't have. My father owned a
1954 light green, four-door Ford. He also had use
of a job-related pick-up truck.
When I showed
him my new license that evening, he made the
mistake of tossing me the car keys and saying,
“Take the car tomorrow.” I called two
of my best friends, Lenny and Jack, to tell them
I would drive them to school.
We made it to
Durfee High (Fall River) without anything
resembling an incident. Traveling too fast
downhill on the lower stretch of Columbia Street
on the way home, I came too close to a parked car.
Bam! The right-rear fender hit the protruding end
of a wrap-around bumper. Bumper 1, fender 0.
Except for
racing at drag strips, seat belts were all but
unknown in the 50s. I slammed on the brakes and
screeched to a stop. No seat belts. Thud! Jack,
who was on the passenger side of the front seat,
smacked his head on the interior of the
windshield. No damage to the windshield. No
permanent damage to his head.
“Dammit!”
yelled Lenny as he slammed into the back of the
front seat.
“Any
damage to the other car?” I screamed.
Lenny uttered
a less than convincing "No" a few
seconds later.
I shifted into
first and left a few feet of rubber as I rapidly
departed the scene of the crime. Not a word was
said as I headed toward my house. Parking the car
just out of sight of the back of the house, I
told the other two to stay in the car.
I assessed the
damage, a ten-inch in diameter shallow dent.
Racing into the yard, I opened the cellar door
and grabbed two ball-peen hammers from the Old
Man's workbench. (It was commonplace in the 1950s,
at least in my hometown of Fall River, to refer
to one's father as the Old Man.)
Off we went to
a secluded area near a deserted mill located less
than a mile from the house. We jacked up the
right-rear of the car and removed the tire. I
went to work. Lying under the fender, I held
one hammer against the outside of the dent and
began gently tapping the inside with the other
one.
This was
something I learned to do a few years earlier
from having watched the Old Man when he owned an
automobile repair shop.
Several
hundred (or so it seemed) taps later, came music
to my ears from one of my co-conspirators, “It
looks like new.”
With my face,
arms and shirt covered with five-years worth of
gunk that had fallen on me from underneath the
car, I slid out from under the fender and let out
a whoop. It looked perfect to me. But how would
it look to the Old Man's eagle eyes? After a week
went by without him saying anything about the car,
I finally began to sleep soundly.
I secured a
part-time job at Fall River's H. Schwartz and
Sons Lumber and Hardware three days after the
accident, A few weeks later, I bought my first
car, a 1952 Ford, for $99.00.
“Wait a
minute,” said the Old Man as he inspected my
new pride-and-joy. He then headed to the basement
of our home.
He returned a
minute later with the two ball-peen hammers.
“Here,” he said with a slight smirk,
“these are in case you put a dent in your
right-rear fender.”
|
