One of the great lines in the television show “Home Improvement,” was when Tim the Tool Man Taylor told his three sons, “Your mother allows me to do one stupid thing a month – and I am not wasting it on you.”
In 1972, I wish I had only committed one stupid act a month.
Unfortunately, if occurred two or three times a week.
My somewhat melancholy personality of my seventh-grade year in junior sigh some 42 years ago started to change during the summer of 1972.
Yes, a wilder side began to surface.
Dad had purchased a larger trail bike for my brothers and me to cruise around the farm on, and I took advantage of the added power.
I became less concerned about safety, and speed became one of my early demons.
I loved riding the motorbike at full throttle, jumping terraces, and cutting corners.
I had picked up the joy of speed from riding with my neighbor Melvin Benes the previous summer, and now it was my turn at the wheel.
I would pay for it.
The afternoon of Wednesday, July 19, 1972 — a year to the day that Melvin rolled a tractor on top of himself after driving it too fast — I was speeding down a cattle lane on one of the trail bikes at full throttle. The lane had a five-string barbed wire fence on each side, which offered an alley about 15-feet wide. The lane also included a turn at about a 45-degree angle, which was perfectly safe — if I slowed down.
I didn’t.
As I made a high-speed, left-hand turn, I lost control of the bike, and the ride side of my body brushed up against the fence, scratching my right arm and tearing a huge gash in my right leg.
I was able to regain control and move away from the fence but then lost control again, spilling the bike in the middle of the lane. My right arm stung, but I didn’t feel any pain in my leg.
I opened my torn-up pants and saw my leg had been sliced open with a five-inch-long gash about a half-inch wide and to the bone. Pieces of pink flesh that resembled uncooked hamburger were dangling outside the wound.
I got back on the bike, rode it back to the house, and showed some one of our hired men what I had done to myself. One of the men wrapped my leg in one of Mom’s white dishtowels to stop the bleeding, which, surprisingly, was somewhat minor.
Thank goodness, my mother wasn’t home.
My older brother, Blaine, drove me to a Lincoln hospital, and Dad met us there.
I remember lying on the emergency room table when my Korean War Veteran father came in and told the doctor he wanted to see my leg.
Dad took a quick glance, muttered some profanities, turned slightly pale, and left the room.
After getting stitched up, Blaine took me home, and I was back riding on the trail bike a half-hour later — only at a much slower speed.
But the pain killer wore off two hours later, and the after affects set in.
For two or three days, I walked stiff legged, resembling Chester from Gunsmoke.
From that point on, I slowed down for corners (especially those near barbed-wire fences).
I was very lucky. Had I been a few inches closer, I could have fallen into the fence, slicing up my face, neck, and a major artery or two.
As any smart 13-year-old would do, I lied and to my father. I told him that I had been staring at some of the Shetland ponies and wasn’t paying attention to the curve.
However, I do believe he knew by the severity of my wounds that speed played a key role in yet another one of his sons’ trips to a hospital.
Next week, part two.