It would have been just another weekday afternoon except that football summer practice had started and Lee — all 90 pounds of him — was intent on making the freshman football club.
As such, Lee had managed to go from his morning paper route to football practice to his afternoon paper route. It made for a rather full day and his practice uniform showed the long days as Lee would leave the sweat drenched uniform in the locker room from day to day since he couldn’t peddle papers and tote all the padding together at the same time on the brand new 5 speed that his brother had won recently as a prize in a local contest. Lee figured his brother would never notice that he had borrowed the bike for the day.
On this weekday Lee had finished getting beat up on the football field by his peers who didn’t have any more grit than Lee but certainly were carrying more weight. Every inch of Lee’s body felt all that extra weight that came with every extra hit. Lee was long on grit but short on brains enough so as to realize that being smaller than everyone else he should be going for the legs instead of full body contact that always left him bouncing off other people unnoticed like some unnoticed fly on the back of a grazing elephant.
That late afternoon on the way home all Lee could think about was eating since his entire nourishment that day had consisted of two pieces of toast sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. The breakfast of champions.
However, before he could scour the empty cupboards the 14 year freshman had to pedal his brother’s new bicycle the 5 miles back home. Now, keep in mind dear reader that this 5 miles was on top of the countless miles already tracked through the day in going from the morning paper-route, football practice, and the afternoon paper-route.
The trip home use to be half that distance until a few years prior the city of Sturgis Michigan in combination with the Sturgis municipal airport had decided to expand the airport with the consequence of closing down the most direct road home for Lee. For years Lee and his brother still took that route home even though the road was closed and the extended runway built over the area that had once served as land for the now absent road. It was just that much more convenient … and safer.
You see, on that old road that had been closed down there was hardly any traffic, and as such having to navigate a busy thoroughfare was not a concern for Lee or his siblings. However, once that Airport road was closed, the routes home for Lee were not convenient or safe.
In years to come once Lee was out of the “bike riding” stage of life another road finally was open. Before that was built though Lee had only three choices. He could take the path along the rail road tracks which made havoc with his bike tires and found him more than once cheek by jowl with trains that for whatever reason thought they had the priority both on the track and ten feet on either side of the tracks. More than once when the trains were moving slowly Lee had been able to grab a hold of the train as it passed and no longer found a need to continue pedaling as the train would give him a lift. It is a minor miracle that Lee was never hit by a locomotive while riding his bicycle on those narrow trails that ran parallel with the train tracks.
The second option was to add an extra mile to his trip by going a round about way through a wooded area that would bring him out to a place where he could avoid riding US 12 — a very busy two lane highway.
The third option was riding US 12.
US 12 was a hazard and in retrospect Lee had no business riding his bike on that two lane highway. More than once semi-trucks had passed by him so close he could have reached out and touched them as they passed. (Keep in mind that Lee rode his bike as far towards the gravel on the side of the road as possible.)
Well, on that summer weekday in August of 1974, hungry from not eating all day, weary with pedaling all over the small city of Sturgis, bruised from being beat up by peers twice his weight in football practice, Lee decided to ride US 12 home has he had many times before and in a irrational fit of being responsible he had tied his practice uniform to the bike’s cross bar to bring it home to be washed.
However, the adventure this time was going to prove to push Lee’s next meal off for another 24 hours for in his making his way home that day he met a 20 year old driver in the closest quarter encounter imaginable.
Quite apart from the warning of a horn laid upon, or the sound of screeching tires, Lee on his bike was hit from behind by a car, later found to be traveling between 55-60 mph as driven by a young lady new to her driver’s license. All Lee would ever later remember was the initial impact, and rolling along the gravel side of the road. The next thing Lee remembered was that he was lying perpendicular to the road on the gravel side of the road with hands outstretched above his head. When he came to Lee’s first site was the automobile’s back tire ten inches from his eyeballs. Of course, the first instinct upon such a site is to stand up and walk away from the menace. However, Lee was having just one problem with that idea … the automobile tire in question was sitting square on top of the top of his right hand. There was no getting up and removing one’s self from that situation without getting the machine off of his hand and so quite reasonably Lee started screaming like a fool to “get this damn car off of me.” I don’t know how often Lee screamed that before his request was obliged, but after seemingly a long stretch in hell the automobile in question rolled of his right hand and Lee arose to communicate his great displeasure.
It all got bleary after that. A middle aged man suddenly showed up trying to control Lee in his fevered realization that where there had once been skin on his right hand there was only blood. Blood was everywhere. Blood streamed from not only the and, it streamed from a head wound that fortunately, compared to the hand wound, was insignificant.
In due course of time an ambulance showed up and carted Lee away, still as concerned with his sitting down to his next meal as he was with his bloody appearance.
Not only was it a bad day for Lee but it was a bad day for Lee’s little brother as well. Not only had Lee been riding Carl’s new bike, but he had also thrown on Carl’s league bowling shirt. That shirt would never be worn bowling again. Once in the Emergency room the attendants wanted to slip the shirt over the mangled hand. Lee had a better idea as he started to scream at the powers that be to cut the dang shirt off as opposed to trying to slip it over his hand. Everyone agreed that wasn’t a bad idea…. except probably Carl.
Anyway, soon enough Dr. Dettman was in the ER looking at the wound. Doc Dettman was more concerned about the head wound then the hand wound. Soon enough they drugged Lee to deal with both the pain and his adolescence expressions of pain.
Doc Dettman was wrong. The head wound required just a few stitches. The hand wound required more than a few weeks in and out of hospitals in pursuit of a couple sizable skin grafts. The upside though was the necessity of Lee to miss several weeks of high-school.
The moral of the story is … if you want to get away with cobbing your brother’s bike and bowling shirt get hit by a car. It is the only way to never hear a complaint uttered against your older brother’s chic.
