I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [10]
My brother John told me about an incident that happened once on the drive from Dedham to Florida.
THE CAR STORY
There are sections in the state of Georgia where the land is flat and the earth red. We were driving on a dusty road cutting through this sanguine landscape, traveling south.
On the far horizon, another road bisected our route. The intersection made a thin, rusty cross on the crust of Georgia. As we barreled along, my father spotted a farmer’s pickup truck approaching the intersection from the east. “Slow down, Georgiana! There’s a truck up ahead.” “I see it,” she answered, stepping harder on the gas pedal. My father approached hysteria. “My God! You’re going to hit him! Slow down!” Boss’s jaw jutted. “Woman, for the love of God!” he screamed, “WE’LL ALL BE DEAD!”
We beat the pickup truck through the intersection by 99 percent of our car’s length, not enough to avoid having our rear bumper caught by the front bumper of the truck. Our car spun several times while somehow continuing, eventually coming to rest in the center of the road some fifty yards south of the intersection. The truck, too, had spun a bit, but, seemingly little affected, came to rest straddling the middle of the intersection, with its front grille facing us. My mother, behind the wheel, staring straight ahead, announced to the windshield, “Aw, shucks, that man was going too fast!”
You could hear my father’s teeth grinding. Slowly, he opened the passenger door, got out, walked to the back of our car, and stood, staring at our bumper. On one side of our vehicle, it had been ripped loose, but it remained attached on the other, so it stuck out of the rear end of the car like a spear—a shiny steel rod quivering from our backside, aggressive and challenging, like a narwhal’s horn. The truck driver opened the door of his truck and climbed down. A beefy monster of a man, his fists clenched, face swollen with the flush of fury, he stomped toward my father. My siblings, watching from our car’s back window, saw big trouble. Oblivious, my father continued to stare at the back of our car. Then, Pop seized the tip of the bumper, dug his feet into the dirt, and bent the steel bar back into its original place. It must have weighed a thousand pounds!!! According to John, the truck driver stopped in his tracks, stood for several moments, goggle-eyed, and then, as air vents from a bladder, diminished, he quietly turned around, slipped back into his truck, and drove off. Unaware, Pop returned to the passenger seat, slammed his door shut, sat for several moments in silence, then grunted, “Drive on, Georgiana.”
(image credit 1.7)
My mother always said how she loved it down in Florida, with the hot sun and the orange groves. She luxuriated in it, though she always worried about her barefoot children getting bitten by a snake.
Unfortunately, technology blew in like a South Florida hurricane, bringing telephone and teletype to replace the telegraph. Come winter, back in Dedham, my depressed father joined the unemployed.
Soon, orders came from Boss. “Andrew, we’re going to New York. That’s where there’s work, and that’s where the arts are.” There was no arguing, so Pop followed her lead; he sold whatever he could (including the Ford), and we packed our