You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

SPORTS BUG

It was around 5:30 on a rainy Saturday afternoon. In October of 1953. My sister, Kappy, answered the phone and yelled “It’s for you”. I picked up and found John Freeman’s excited voice saying “Wana go for a ride? I’ve got my dad’s VW bug. I’ve been reading in magazines that they are just like a sports car.” “How”, I asked “did you get his car?” John explained. “He’s on a business trip. I’ve got the keys. It’s a company car and it’s new. Are you gunna come?” I said I would.

I ran out of the house. Jumped on my bike and peddled to John’s house. It was a little over a mile away but it was a familiar route as he lived across the street from our school, Roosevelt Junior High. As I rode in the drizzling rain, I was wondering how John had learned to drive. None of us had a driver’s license. We weren’t 16 yet.

When I arrived at John’s house I found another friend, Ron Maines, was already there. It was getting dark when we climbed into the bug. I was in the front passenger seat. Ron was in the rear seat. There were no seat belts. We drove west through the town turning left on Chambers Street and then left again onto Lorane Highway. John chose to drive there because it is a winding two-lane country road with little traffic.

As we drove through the foggy night air, John explained that the car magazines described the VW bug as handling just like a sports car. We drove up over the first rise and down through some curves. John pushed the little car until it began to fishtail a little. On a sharp right-hand turn, the rear end of the bug slid off the road, hitting a low reflector post. It became like a ball. It rolled over and over. As it rolled I was repeating to myself, “I’m not dead yet, I’m not dead yet.” The bug rolled down the embankment and out onto a sodden pasture. If finally stopped rolling. It was upside down. The engine was still running. I spoke first asking “Is everyone OK?” The other two said “Yep”. Then John yelled, “Get out of here. It’s gonna explode”. Both doors still worked and we rolled out and scurried away from the car.

We were in a fog-shrouded pasture with the black silhouettes of the surrounding fir trees framing the damp grassy scene. It was dead quiet except for the still running VW. We stood together about 30 feet from the turtle on its back. We compared our injuries, all of which were minor. When we realized it was not going to explode, so John crawled into it and turned off the key. He then rejoined us standing back a safe distance. We just stood there in the fog, shrouded in utter silence, considering what had just happened and how it would be possible to get that little car back up on the road.

It was then that I became aware, perhaps from movement off on our side, that something was approaching, across the pasture, from the trees. Turning, I saw a boy riding a white horse, bareback. He approached to within 20 yards and stopped his horse. He said nothing. I said something like “Hell of a way to park isn’t it?” He did not reply but with a nudge of his knee, his horse turned and he disappeared into the fog and the trees.

We rolled the bug over onto its wheels and pulled the collapsed front fenders away from the tires. Then with Ron and me pushing, and John driving with wheels spinning, we managed to get the bug back up onto the highway. The trip home was in silence. Except that, we figured out that the bug had rolled over three times. This was confirmed by counting the bumps on Ron’s head. He had been in the back seat holding onto the straps on the door posts on either side of the car. Each time the car rolled over, Ron landed on his head.

When we reached John’s house he pulled the beat-up bug into the garage. Ron and I left John to contemplate what he would tell his father when he returned from his trip.

Epilogue:

I didn’t see much of John after that. A few years after high school, just when the Vietnam War was heating up, I learned that John had an accident while using a rotary lawn mower. Somehow the mower rolled over his right foot. It cut off three small toes. It had happened on the day before he was to report for his draft physical.