𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟑: 𝐌𝐲 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥

 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟑: 𝐌𝐲 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥

After another run or two with Dick, it was my turn to give it a try. I didn't have a car of my own so I took our farm's blue and white 1982 Chev Scottsdale half ton pickup.

A pickup truck is not well suited for rural delivery of mail or newspapers for several reasons. First, they're too high for the paper boxes. Second, their windows are too small. Third, they are much too hard to reach out the passenger side. Fourth, there is generally no back seat for all the extra bundles of newspapers. Fifth, they are too hard on fuel. Sixth, their brakes do not dissipate heat well enough and burn up. Eating brakes is even more expensive than drinking fuel.

So, there we were with the Bowes farm's truck out on the paper route. Dick warned me to keep my speed down. There was a problem with that. I had a Reputation to keep up. One of driving a little wild at times. I was known for my skill behind the wheel. Reining that in for economy wasn't easy.

I found that it wasn't too big a deal reaching the paper boxes on my side. Dick did the passenger side papers. I quickly got the hang of pulling up to passenger side boxes close enough for him to reach them even though they were too low for me to see once we were beside them. Our truck had four rectangular headlights, and I had installed halogen high beams, so night time visibility was pretty good.

Dick told me one of the things I needed to be carrying was a billy stick. It was for finishing off animals that were hit by vehicles in the night and putting them out of their misery and suffering. I didn't see how that would be a necessary item so I pretty much ignored what he suggested.

As I got into the swing of it, on the really good condition boxes I could get them without stopping if they were high enough. Most I had to pretty well come to a stop for.

Learning to manage traffic was a big deal. As the route wore on, the Early Risers started coming out. Dick taught me how to time pulling onto the wrong side of the road to deliver a paper to a driver's side box. Do it wrong and you're in a Head On Collision situation. The driver's side boxes after about 5AM were nothing to take lightly. I learned that some people got up, got dressed, got in their car or truck, and drove all the way to work still at least half asleep. You didn't want to be on the wrong side of the road when a sleep driver was coming. That could get you hurt or killed. You slowed down so that you were still rolling for the box, waited for the oncoming driver to pass, then dove in, serviced the box, and dove back out to your correct lane as fast as possible. Driver's side boxes were heavily preferred for ease of access, but they were far more dangerous once the sleep drivers started turning out. And always, always, always use your signal lights when there is other traffic about. It helped keep people aware of your movements, and would be your ONLY excuse in court if something ever did go wrong.

Everything seemed to be going well and Dick was in a good mood, chatting away the time. He seemed to enjoy having company on the route for a change and having his hands free.

We went up the Queens Line past our farm and continued up the Beachburg Road as far as the hill before the tree plantation. There we turned back and headed back for County Road 21 and back towards Cobden past Dick's place.

In those days, County Road 21, or the Foresters Falls Road, met Cedar Haven Road and Alva Drive at an intersection. You stopped, and could turn on to Cedar Haven, or go straight through to Alva Drive. It's a lot different now, but that's how it was then.

Dick was a very cautious and responsible driver. I wasn't. If I could see at stop signs and no one was coming I went straight through them. We had to go on Alva Drive, and then back out and up Cedar Haven. As we approached Cedar Haven and Alva Drive, I could see clearly no one was coming, so I blew through the stop sign and up the hill on Alva Drive. Dick had grabbed the dash and braced himself and yelled for me to slow down as he realized what I was intending to do. I was going to Save Time and brakes and gas by not stopping. When we had gone through that intersection before, it was with Dick driving and we came to a full stop at the stop sign. That really disguised the dip across the road as you crossed Cedar Haven and started up Alva Drive. It was almost completely unnoticeable from a dead stop. Now we were hitting that dip at about 45 or 50 miles per hour.

What followed was the truck bottoming the front suspension, launching up into the air, and coming down nose first with a crash, and then the rear tires hitting the ground and bouncing on the leaf springs. A cloud of sparks and dust and scraped asphalt was in the air all around us. Newspapers and newspaper delivery paraphernalia flying all around us in the cab. Those trucks in those days had no passenger handholds. And we weren't wearing our seatbelts for ease of mobility. I had a hold of the steering wheel, but there was really nothing for Dick to hang on to, which resulted in him being catapulted off the seat into the roof, and slamming back down into the seat with an accompanying very loud utterance I simply can not repeat as a Christian. He was holding both his hands on the top of his head and yelling bloody murder at me for not slowing down.

"YA DAMN STUPID SHIT-FER-BRAINS!!!" That was about the nicest thing he called me or said to me for the next several minutes of virtually non-stop and surprisingly creative verbal abuse.

In hindsight his blue language rant makes me think he would have been a dead ringer for what Howie Meeker probably sounded like off-camera when one of his young charges really messed up on the ice. There was likely lots of film on the cutting room floor for Howie Meeker's Hockey School. Dick, on the other hand, sure didn't trim any celluloid for my benefit.

It turned out, the reason he was ranting so feverously was he hit the roof so hard, the top button of his ball cap left an indentation in the sheet metal. Knocked his glasses off as well, and basically completely disheveled and discombobulated him. I got jostled around, too, but not like him. His knees were almost level with my eyes at the height of all the calamity. I heard how hard he hit the roof, too, over all the other noise. Just a big metallic 'BWHANG!'. It almost folded him into a ball against the ceiling. It was quite a sight. Those trucks didn't have headliners, so it was basically cranium on steel. Except for the hard little nubbie on the top center of his cap, which seemed to be what really hurt.

Dick could really dress a guy down good, I soon found out. He might have taken a swing at me in the heat of his anger but he was too busy holding the top of his head with both hands. His hands on his head didn't hamper his mouth one bit though. He roundly cussed me out for several minutes while the rat in me tried to smother the grin threatening to spread across my face. I always had Respect for my elders. Always. Don't get me wrong there. I just thought tightly wound Dick was over reacting a bit. And no harm done.

Farm boys are used to pain, and have a high threshold for it. They have to. From that, some can have a bit of a mean streak when they see others in discomfort. As a case in point, a couple of brothers down the Queens Line from us were working at freeing up the clamps for a set of used Unverferth T-Rail Snap-On duals. The younger brother gave himself a nasty pinch when the rusted seized binder suddenly and unexpectedly closed on his hand. He was jumping around holding his hand in his crotch, when his older brother turned to me with a huge smirk on his face and said, "I didn't feel a thing!"

So Dick, being a retired farmer himself, would get over it. The atmosphere in that cab was just a little hot and colourful for a while.

We finished our boxes on Alva Drive, and CAUTIOUSLY reapproached Cedar Haven. We continued around the Cedar Haven loop to the Zion Line, and finished up back at Dick's house. He had calmed down quite a bit by that time but was still rubbing the top of his head with one hand. He said there was a dent in his scalp from the nubbie so he wasn't wearing his ball cap as it was still a bit too tender there.

As Dick went to get out of the truck, something strange happened. His door didn't want to open. He forced it a little and it sprung open with a creak. I went to get out to check and my door didn't want to open at all. I had to slide over and out the passenger side door. When I came around to the driver's side, the reason was clear and hit me like a punch in the stomach: The rear of the driver's side fender was overlapping the front of the driver's side door. OH NO! A bent frame! We hit that dip so hard at the Alva Drive/Cedar Haven intersection it bent the frame of the truck!

Ohhh kar-app...

That wasn't an old truck at the time. My first night driving and I wrecked our truck! Now I've got to go home and show Dad what I did to our truck with my doggone lead foot driving. Now it was Dick that had a smirk on his face as I left. He seemed to think it looked good on me for him garnering such a headache out of it.

Dad took it surprisingly well. There was no cussing out from him like there was from Dick. I got on the phone and started calling around to see where we could get the truck put on a rack and the frame straightened. Barely 100 miles of newspaper delivery and a bent frame truck just because I blew through a stupid stop sign. Great. Just DANDY. I supposed there was a Lesson in there somewhere, but I was more focusing on just hating on myself for seriously damaging our beautiful truck. I was being far harder on myself than Dad ever was or would be. Dad knew I was beating myself up for it big time.

I took the truck over to Keith Martin's and we inspected the underside of it and couldn't find any other signs of harm. No radiator damage. No oil pan damage. No motor mount damage. No transmission damage. No suspension damage. No exhaust damage. No cab mount damage. Other than a couple of road rash lower swing arms: Nothing. Pretty near Scot-free. There was just that pesky door and fender interference situation caused by the sagging of the frame under the cab. If we could get it straightened the truck would be just fine. It wouldn't be cheap, but because nothing else was harmed it would still be well worth it. Far cheaper than replacing it.

No appointment was available immediately. I was going to have to wait a couple of nail-biting days to get it seen to at a shop where they had a frame rack. There was a definite worry of the truck being written off if we reported it to the insurance company, so we decided to just handle it ourselves. Insurance companies unnecessarily lose their minds over a bent frame.

That evening, I went out to do some chores, which took me past the truck. Grimly, I looked at our formerly nice looking truck, but stopped suddenly because something didn't look right. There was no overlap of the driver's fender and door! I grabbed the door handle and it opened smoothly. I closed it again and it closed properly. Just a nice click and no binding. I ran around to the other side and the passenger door was fine now as well. It opened and closed as it always did. I opened and closed them both two or three more times in disbelief. The sag in the frame was gone! The frame had sprung itself back into shape! I didn't know that was even a possibility! I ran back to the house and excitedly told Dad the bend in the frame had just disappeared. He came out and checked it over and was noticeably relieved. The truck was in PERFECT condition, no lasting harm done. As good as new. Well, except for Dick's little baseball cap nubbie dent in the roof from him driving it in with his aching head.

And, wherever that blue and white Chev truck is to this day, I am sure there is still a little round dent in the passenger side ceiling, that I got roundly cursed out for, by a FURIOUS Dick Wood, about 40 years ago.