Chapter 9: 100 Mph Car Crash
This occurred during my senior year in high school. Several friends and I drove to my brother's home in Columbus. We went to a drive-in movie and drank over a case of beer while downing shots of rum. On the way back to my brother’s, we made the last turn to his home. George is driving, doesn’t know the road, and drunk. Another friend is in the front seat, I'm in the back. The stretch was a mile long and then a 90-degree turn. He floored the accelerator, I saw the speedometer, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles per hour. I tapped him on the shoulder, “George, slow down, there's a huge turn up ahead.” “Tis ok.” Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, and one hundred miles per hour as we hit the turn. The car was violently spinning, and we slammed backwards into a culvert ditch. We hit so hard that both were in the backseat due to the seat brackets shattering. The alloy wheels cracked, and the car looked like an accordion.
The only injury was George’s broken wrist. Surviving such a high speed crash qualifies as a miracle.
His parents had two homes, one in town and the second was a trailer in the country. For some ungodly reason, ten of us decided to have a party in the trailer during a blizzard. George and a fiend always prided themselves on how well they could handle their liquor. They each had a fifth of 151 rum, we stood around clapping while they chucked. 20 minutes later, his friend is passed out and we couldn’t find a pulse. Panicking, 911 was called and arrived surprisingly fast considering the weather. They pumped his stomach and said if we hadn’t called, he would have died from alcohol poisoning. George had poured the rum out and was drinking water.
He became quite successful as vice president for a food brokerage firm in Oregon. Drove a Mercedes, beautiful boat and his 5 bedroom home was paid for. He was married with one son. He also died in his fifties. We talked every month. Once, he brought up the subject of the Screaming Skull. I was seven, and we’d talked about this movie for weeks. He laughed, remembering I was superman and would beat the Skull. He said, “Here’s little Bobbie Hall striding fearlessly into the theater. As soon as the movie started, the Skull came at us with flaming eyes, and you’re instantly gone.” I said, “Yeah, that first scene scared the crap out of me and I ran crying all the way home.” He said my superman suit was the reason he started bullying me, which I had never known. Every day after school for 2 weeks, he’d punch and slap me around. Mom and his mother were friends, and this started to wear on them both. Mother told me several times to hit him back. He’d backed me up to my front door, I’m crying, and suddenly punched him in the face. I’d knocked him down, and his mouth was bleeding. Mom was right, this was the last time he ever hit me. I learned a valuable lesson that I held the rest of my life. We don’t understand the strength we have until we’re forced to use it. Bullies prey on fear and if we have absolutely none, they sense it.
The last time I talked with him, he told me about the increasing pain he was experiencing in his gastronomical tract. The doctors were having difficulties pinpointing the cause and also prescribed the same powerful meds. Bill had been on. I inquired if he’d explained about the glass he’d eaten for months as a teenager. This certainly might have something to do with his condition. His dad had died suddenly, and he went through a strange mindset to say the least. He’d forgotten about that. He passed 3 weeks later.
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