Author: Tom Darby

It didn’t snow very often, however when it did, it caused lots of driving problems. The situation was no different the day the five of us piled into the bus for the trip home.

On the bus were Peggy Gensaw, Debbie Wolcott, Vicki Billy, Shirley Baldwin (our driver) and myself.

We were climbing up the hill towards Klamath, when we found ourselves in a heavy, wet snowfall. The road was slippery and so we were unable to continue.

We were jus’ south of the first big corner, before coming to what the locals called the 30 mile-turn. 30-mile turn was a sharp curve with a sign that warned drivers to reduce their speed to a recommended 30 miles-per hour, especially when wet.

It was also one of the most accident prone spots between Klamath and Crescent City. It was at this point that California Highway Patrol Officer Johnny Jones instructed Shirley to turn the little yellow van around and head back to Crescent City.

As she turned the vehicle, a Ford F-150 coming from the opposite direction, appeared from around 30-mile corner. The driver saw the mini-bus as it straddled the roadway, but it was too late.

The truck slammed headlong into the school bus. Shirley’s door popped open and for a second I thought she was going to get tossed out of the vehicle.

However she had her seatbelt on and that kept her inside the van. The three girls in the back seats were bounced from where they sat.

One girl, Debbie Wolcott sailed towards the front of the van.

It dawned on me that she could strike the windshield if she wasn’t stopped. So I put my hands out as if I were going to catch her.

However, the top of her head slammed into my face. I felt my nose pop and could see blood on my shirt as the vehicle finally came to a rest in ditch, in a semi-upright position.

Other than a few scrapes, bumps, bruises and one bloody-nose we were alright. The people in the pick-up truck were unhurt.

I spent the night with my friend Danny Ross.

The next day Dad came and picked me up. That’s when he learned that the brand new glasses I had jus’ gotten that day, had been broken during the accident.

It would be nearly two weeks before I’d get a replacement pair.

 

The keys were jingling as Dad tried to insert one into the church’s doorknob. It went in easily but now he could not get them to turn in the lock and he could not pull it out.

“Well, I was afraid of that,” Dad said as he looked down at me.

He gave the set of keys one more tug then he let out a heavy sigh.

Dad had carried his toolbox to the door with him. He was prepared for the lock to give him problems.

Father Charles had call him, saying there was a difficulty getting into the church the Sunday before. That was nearly a week ago.

It was important to get the lock fixed as church would be the following day and Father Charles would not want to hold Mass out side.

The first tool Dad pulled out was his Philips screwdriver. He started removing the faceplate behind the knob.

“They should have put in a separate lock from the knob,” he said to me. Then he added, “It would be more secure that way.”

Removing a knob from a door was something I had never seen. And I was keenly interested in what was about to occur.

“I’ll hand you the tool you need, Dad. Ask me. Let me help,” I said nearly begging.

“Flathead screw driver,” Dad directed.

It sounded so exotic to me. I looked down into the old beat up gray chest full of tools,

“Which one is that?” I asked.

Dad looked at the tools then pointed, “That one.”

I picked it up and handed it to him.

He started to pry the faceplate away from the wood of the door. It would not budge.

Dad shifted his position. Still the faceplate would not loosen.

“Give me the hammer,” he commanded.

Immediately I grabbed it and handed it to him.

He struck the yellow handle of the flat head screwdriver a couple of times and still it would not come loose. Dad changed positions again, then he turned the keys, which were still in the lock.

The knob turned free and the door opened up.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dad, said out loud.

Dad had gotten the door to unlock, he had fixed it. Then Dad discovered that the keys still would not come out of the lock.

“At least we got the door to open,” he commented as he swung the door wide to look at the other side of the knob.

Dad examined the inside doorknob for a moment, making several thoughtful, “Hmm’s” as he looked and wiggled the knob back and forth. I reached up and pulled at the keys.

“Don’t,” Dad half-shouted.

I pulled my hands away and put them behind my back.

Dad then picked up the Phillip screwdriver and proceeded to undo the faceplate on the inside of the door. I had seen this part done before and nothing interesting had happened because of it, so I wondered into the church.

There was the altar and the many rows of pews, plus the two marble statues, one of the Virgin Mary and the other of another saint I did not know. But the most interesting item to me was the life-like cross with the body of Christ on it, as he was dying.

“Damn it!” Dad said loudly.

I walked back as quickly as I could to see what the problem was, thinking perhaps by wandering off I might have caused him some problem.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Nope,” Dad said as he shook his head back and forth, “I can’t get the knob off,” he added with a sigh.

While Dad was standing outside the church and I was inside examining the situation. I decided to reached up and grabbed the knob on from my side of the door and pull it straight towards me.

Suddenly I heard the metallic ring of the knob on the other side as it bounced off the cement steps. In my hand was the inside doorknob.

“What in the hell did you do?” asked Dad.

I could tell Dad was frustrated but he was even more surprised.

I held the small brass globe out to him, “I—-I—-I just pulled back on it,” I stuttered.

Dad reached down and took the knob from me.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said.

He shook his head then dropped the knob into his toolbox. We two spent the next half hour or so replacing the old knob and lock.

Later I heard Dad tell Mom, “I spent an hour beating on the damned thing and he walks up and it comes off in his hand.”

“Now, Tom,” Mom said, “You know that if he hadn’t done that, you’d still be there cussing at that doorknob.”

Dad laughed at the thought.

It was a warm summer day and I was looking forward to going horseback riding. Grandpa Bill asked me that since I was going out that way, to check on his watermelon patch, which he had hidden in a cornfield.

Freckles was a young horse and could hardly wait to get saddled. We set out across the pasture to the back side of the barn and through a small thicket before we encountered grandpa’s cornfields.

At first I thought I knew where I was going, but after nearly an hour of slipping from one corn row to another, I was completely lost. I stood up in my stirrups to see where I was located in the field.

Unfortunately I was too short and the corn stalks were to high. So I decided to stand on the saddle for a better view.

That’s when a crow cawed somewhere nearby. Freckles shivered slightly.

Before I could get seated, the crow cawed again, this time closer. The noise sent Freckles into a panic.

The horse jumped straight up and came straight down with a jar. Somehow, though I managed to keep my balance and not fall off the animals back.

The third time the crow cawed however, Freckles took off running and I had to walk home.

Adam could climb most any tree with great ease. And he had discovered a way to make his talent pay.

He collected moss and sold it by the pound to the burl shop at the Trees of Mystery. The finer the moss, the better the price and the higher Adam had to climb.

One day I tagged along.

With me around he could toss down the moss and I’d stuff into the burlap sacks. After filling up the sacks, Adam invited me up into a tree he had dubbed, “The Lookout Tree.”

I reluctantly climbed up the tree to the level that Adam was perched at.

Adam was spread out on a fat limb much like our gray house cat used to spread herself out on the windowsill. I clung on for my life.

Then we heard a sound. At first it was distant but it kept growing louder as each “snap” was heard.

Adam saw it first, a huge buck. It paused to sniff the air and then the ground.

My brother had his knife in hand by now. He gripped it so tight, his knuckles turned white.

Suddenly he rolled off the limb and in a moment it was over. I scrambled down the tree because Adam needed my help.

The struggle was hard as I pulled Adam out of the marshy bog in which he laid trapped face down.

Every Springtime I would be asked by Pa Sanders to help him with his vegetable garden as he put it. Funny thing is — his idea of a garden was a couple of acres larger than most people’s plot of land on which their homes were built.

I naturally jumped at the chance to get out and get filthy-dirt, something Mom was generally against.

My job for the first six years was to ride on the platform Pa dragged behind his John Popper and pick up the rocks and clumps of weeds that refused to turn properly. However when I was 12 years old, Pa put me in the tractor seat saying I was tall enough now to operate the yellow monster.

That meant I got the job of running the tiller into the earth, turning the weeds that had overtaken the land since the end of the summer before. Once I finished this to Pa’s liking, then he’d take over and I go back to where I had first begun by pulling rocks and clumps.

Then we’d plant crops: peas, green beans, corn and Lima beans. Then as spring slipped into summer, I’d end up heading south a few miles to help Grandpa Bill and Uncle Adam on their dairy ranch. By the time the summer came to a close, I was back home and in time to help both Ma and Pa Sanders harvest what had been planted.

More than a few times I made myself sick as dog after eating too many peas and pods or snapped green beans. The worst though, was the day I ate a pound or more of raw Lima beans.

By the end of the day I could hardly stand up as my gut and bowels were in an uproar. It took me a day-and-a-half to get over the back-door trots.

Lima beans, I learned are better served cooked and with lots of real butter.

We were jus’ sitting down to dinner at six in the evening when the all the lights of the home flickered. About three minutes later our telephone rang; there was an emergency.

Dad and I headed towards Yurok Volunteer Fire Department, which was jus’ down the street from our house. Within minutes we were racing with lights and siren south on Highway 101.

We were en route to a possible plane crash. The aircraft had struck a power-line and was underwater in the Klamath River near what remained of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Dad decided the old washed-out bridge was the best vantage point to get to the downed craft as it was closer to that side of the river. I told Dad that I could get to the plane while he secured ropes and tethers.

Pulling off my shirt and shoes, I jumped into the water, which was a 30 foot plunge. I dove down to see if I could get into the plane or get a door open in the event someone were still alive inside.

On my third return to the surface, Dad shouted for me to grab the line he was tossing and to tie it to the aircraft. I did as instructed.

Exertion and the cold were taking a toll on my body and I found myself struggling to get to the bank and out of the water.

Dad dropped me a rope which I secured around my waist and as he hoisted, I climbed up to where he was positioned. It wouldn’t be until 10 that night that the plane would be hauled to the north side of the river.

And it wouldn’t be until the next day that Jim Long and Jim Haddad were identified as having died in the crash. Both were big Del Norte High School Booster supporters.

And their deaths had a huge effect on a lot of athletes the next morning.

 

We had only one local market north of town; the Woodland Villa. It was owned by Kathy and Doug DeVol’s parents.

Mom and Dad sent me nearly every other day for one thing or another. This included milk, eggs and cigarettes.

It was one of my favorite things to do, because it gave me a chance to look at the comic books. Once a week I’d to buy a comic book and an R/C cola using money I had earned delivering newspapers.

One day I saw a couple of the neighborhood boys taking a couple of soda bottles the crates behind the store. I thought nothing of it, until I realized they were returning the already-returned bottles for 5-cents.

Sad to say, I didn’t tell on them.

The foul ball came flying at me so quickly, I didn’t have time to duck out of the way. I was standing in the doorway of my teams dugout, when it struck me in the chest and knocked me down.

The ball dropped between my legs as I plopped on my backside. I picked it up and handed it to the other teams catcher as he rushed to recover the foul tip.

Suddenly I heard the umpire behind home-plate yell, “Out!”

He was pointing at our batter, who had hit the foul ball towards our dugout. This is how I found out a foul ball, still in play, touched by a player of the batter who hit the ball, causes that batter to be out.

It would turn out to be one of many rules about baseball nobody bothered to explain yet expected me to know. I learned most of them the hard way and this was jus’ Little League.

 

It was nearing the end of the day for my students and the summer-school class I was teaching for Del Norte County Parks and Recreation. The last half hour of school, I usually allowed my students to do whatever they would like, barring destruction or death.

This afternoon they elected to have an informal dance. We had a radio in the room, and it was tuned to KPOD broadcasting out of Crescent City, 20 miles away.

The disc jockey spinning the tunes that afternoon was Dave Angell.

The song, “Hound Dog,” came on the radio and the kids danced like crazy people suffering from electrostatic shock therapy. It was funny to watch this group of kids ham it up like they did.

When the song ended, Dave came on and said, “News out of Memphis, Tennessee—-the King is dead. Elvis Presley has died…”

While I don’t remember the rest of what Dave read from the news wire, I do know you could have heard a pin drop in that small classroom at Margaret Keating School.

Our joy had turned to sadness within seconds. I’m certain now it wasn’t pins dropping on the floor, rather tears.

 

Vestal Skaggs lived across Highway 101 from us when I was a kid. He used to come over and help fix our cars and trucks.

One time I hired him to fix my 1968 Dodge Charger and I paid him with a keg of beer. I don’t think you can find guys like that anywhere anymore.

He got that old car running so well that I out-ran a California Highway Patrol one night as I raced from Crescent City to Klamath. It was so fast with the new 383 under the hood and a 440 Interceptor that I was parked in the driveway by the time Officer Johnny Jones zipped by Redwood Drive.

Yeah, it was bad of me and dangerous too, but Vestel gave me high-five when I told him about it. Though it’s a strange memory, I’ll always cherish the excitement he felt for my stupidity.