A Quick Exit from the Car

Ema had been staying with Mom the past week after Mom's successful surgery to clear up a bone spur in her toe.  Her recovery has gone more smoothly than planned, so I am sure Ema felt like her visit was a waste of time in some respects.  Her patient was too healthy to help much!

One advantage to having Ema downstairs for a week was hearing some of the stories again.  Each time Ema starts with a story, I learn something new about her childhood or about Gumpy.  Last night, she filled me in on a few details about the time Gumpy walked out of Leonard Lester Peck's car.

Gumpy and Leonard were on their way home from something.  While Gumpy wasn't a drunk, this was during a time he enjoyed a few barley pops with his evening activities, so while Leonard was driving, my grandfather fell fast asleep in the passenger seat.  In the middle of a dream, he thought he heard his mother calling, so he opened the door and started to walk out to see what she wanted.  

You read that correctly, he opened the car door and proceeded to try walking to his mother's voice.  Mind you, Leonard was driving down a country road at about 50 miles per hour at the time.  How Gumpy didn't die that evening is a mystery.  Leonard slammed on the breaks, turned around and found Gumpy dazed and confused on the side of the road.

I was aware that he felt pretty beat up for a few days.  His right shoulder was never the same and a chunk of his scalp never grew back properly, which is part of the reason he loved his comb-over haircut so much.  It covered a big red scar.  

What I didn't know was that he had trouble lifting his right arm above his shoulder after everything had healed.  The doctor said that he could help fix his arm, but that it might require a costly surgery.  In those days, private insurance was non-existent.  While my great-grandfather had a decent job with Hillsdale County, his income helped support his family, a few nephew's whose parents couldn't afford to care for them and a few neighbor kids whose folks were in the same boat.  Raising all of these kids was my great-grandmother's full time job.  Gumpy knew his parents could not afford his surgery.

So he did the next best thing.  He went out to the clothesline, grabbed it with both hands and kicked his feet out from under him.  I guess you could hear him screaming in pain across Waldron but he regained full motion in his shoulder.

That's how my grandfather was, resourceful and never at a loss for an idea.