DATELINE

Around 19 and about 39 or so, at least before I was born, an incident took place that durn near could of been the end of me even before I had a beginning!

 

It was one of those early fall or late summer day's, I was told, but dont recall now just which it was. You know how it is, your pa and ma tell you family history stuff when your just so tall, and it goes right in the one and out the other ear or so the saying goes! I do have a news paper clipping somewheres though, either First Love or Billy Boy saved it.  I bet it was First Love, you know how female types can be when it comes to collect­ing keep sake stuff!  I am glad she did.

 

I think the article was in the North Bend Times, cuz that's where they lived back in them days. Well, not actually in North Bend, but out across the big Coos River Bay, northward apiece, oh maybe a quarter mile at most, up the new State 101 highway, cross the McCullough Bridge, a hard turn right, and into the settlement called Glasgow.  Coal was discovered there along the slopes to the bay.  That's where Billy Boy took First Love to live when they were married.   Together they finished building a home previously started by others.  I dont remember it at all. But years later when I returned to Coos County, along the southern Oregon coast, I lived just two houses away from the one they built.  Now isn't that ironic or something like that?

 

But anyways, on this particular day Billy Boy who was tempo­rarily laid up from work with Port Orford Cedar poisoning... he always had trouble with that allergic reaction from the ce­dar sawdust mill cuttings where he worked as a Sawyer... the poisoning finally costing his job which led us all up to Portland town right at the beginning of the big war... being off work and all, he gath­ered First Love and their fishing gear, jumped in his '33 Essex

convertible and headed up the Coos to do a little fishing, or so they thought!

 

It was a straight shot drive from where Billy Boy and First Love lived to where they in­tended to go that day.  Just around a few bends as the roadway followed the northern side of the Bay, where the waters slack off in gentle rock and sway with the ebbing tide, and where salt water finally gives way to the fresh running water just about where the Millicoma joins the Coos, here where the Herons walk the banks, otters sometimes come out to play and birds can be heard to sing their songs of majestic melody.  Along the way log booms rest near river bank's edge, nudged into place by the fast, swift and skit­tering small log boom tugs before continu­ing the journey on down the river's run to the mill towns of Coos Bay and North Bend.

 

It was up the Allegheny side they went that day, the road now nothing but a well rutted ungraveled passage winding up can­yon walls cut by the river's way. Not unlike the weather found frequently flying over any Pacific Northwest coastal area, it had rained not to long before Billy Boy and First Love ven­tured up that now slippery slope of a road. Billy Boy not a dare devil, specially consider­ing First Love was pregnant and all, begin to  now feel the wheels slightly slide as he negoti­ated the curving path high above the rushing and raging rain swollen waters of the river below.  He looked des­perately for a place to safely turn around, head back down to town.  None could be found.

 

Billy Boy said nothing of his concern to First Love, though she later admitted she knew it all along.  First Love was sort of tuned into these things.  Kindda canny, that was.  But at the moment the mood in the car was swiftly changing from a fun day of fishing, sort of like an easy adventurous run, to a som­ber one. 

 

The coastal sun had disappeared behind darken clouds, their thunderous showy dis­play threatening with more pouring rains from the skies, the scene now even more obscured by the tall evergreen firs hugging the roadside curves.  Billy Boy and First Love's day of  fishing fun was about to end, though they did not know it.

 

As the first loud clap of thunderous roar was heard, the Essex's  front wheels were grabbed like some invisible hand now taking control and pulling the car hard left, away from the right banked roadway!  Billy Boy fought the pull, the canyon preci­pice now looming near!  First Love choked off a star­tled scream as the convertible started a slow motion slide over the rutted roadway's edge, then picking up speed as it rolled and tum­bled down toward the river flow 100 feet below!

 

The rolling ride down the river wall was a terrifying route, the car turning over and over before ending the dizzying and cha­otic run.  Dazed and semiconscious, Billy Boy was the first to gain his senses as he arose from the sandy shore, looking around, then up and down, he quickly took all in, spying where he, First Love and car had once been, there, way up on the road, now a cut appeared through the oak, alder and small leaf maple trees and under­brush that grew to the water's edge, and where the car now hung upside down, wedged between three small trees preventing all from plunging into the river's water, the car's canvas top ripped apart! Billy Boy quickly realized that he had been thrown through the roof top along with fish­ing gear now strewn around the ground. Strangely, not a sound was heard 'cept the soft roar of the Millicoma as it ran its course over the nearby boulders, just by chance not hit by the car left hanging there as if suspended in mid-air.

 

Billy Boy's eyes quickly passed to the river's edge then on to the deeper parts, there he saw shoes upside down, speeding along with the river's torrid flow.  First Love's loafers!  With fear now rising where some had re­sided, he pulled hisself up to run to the river's edge....First Love could not drown!

 

Suddenly Billy Boy halted course, the shoes were now gone, but First Love laid not five feet away, just raising her head and softly uttering a groan!  She was not in the water, but lay on the river's sand where she landed when thrown from the abruptly stopped car!

 

Well, now even recalling this I sense a rush just thinking that could of ended it all, but you know how this ends cuz I couldn't be here telling you of this if all had not ended so well!

 

Yup! Neither Billy Boy or First Love suffered a crack, a break or bloody nose!  Oh for sure bruises and aches did come along, but nothing more serious than that, I find it amazing, and so did both of them then!

 

Well, I 'll end this little tale by telling you that old Mr. Proctor, a farmer from up the hill driving by only minutes behind, saw the sliding cut in the roadway path, hollered down to see if all was alright.  He then returned with his tractor and pulled that Essex right off those trees and up that bank!  Billy Boy fired it up and drove, well maybe "limped" is more like it, he and First Love back into town!

 

After a soaking warm bath together, Billy Boy and First Love went to bed that night thanking the "powers" above that look over pregnant ladies and fishing men!  They were shined on that day, for sure.

 

I've traveled by that spot a time or two since then.  In fact, once floated by on an inner tube in hot summer's sun, earning a third degree burn and being laid up for three days  myself before returning to work.  I think there's a moral somewhere here to discern!

 

T. Condon July 20, 1998