Just Another Day

Swish!

"Good game," Eddie said.

I held out my hand and waited for the slap. "You, too," I replied, trading the sweat on my hand for the sweat on his as I pulled the grey Sports Illustrated sweatshirt over my head. "See you next week?" he asked.

I looked at dad, who was pulling on his own sweatshirt. He nodded. "Yea, I guess so," I said.

"You're turning into a pretty good ballplayer," dad said as we drove away from the high school in his new Olds '98. He'd started up Saturday morning basketball the first Saturday after we moved into the area back in 1971. It was now September of 1992 and it was still going strong.

"Thanks," I said. "I'm really enjoying playing with you guys."

They'd started playing at what was then called Radford College. They'd been kicked out of all kinds of places, from the community center in Blacksburg to the Blacksburg Armory to the community center in Radford. Now, since he was the varsity wrestling coach, Dean Underwood was able to get us into the high school.

"Well, your game is really getting better. You shoot well and you pass real well," he said. "That one you made to Norm today was a beauty." Dad always knew how to make me feel good about just about anything.

Smiling from ear to ear, I settled comfortably into the leather seat and closed my eyes. It was a short ride home, but it was always one of my favorite parts of the week. Dad would usually turn on the radio and we'd listen to Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, laughing their heads off about some person's car problems. After getting home dad would invariably cook scrambled eggs with cheese. Sometimes he'd throw in a side of bacon to go along with it.

"Uh, oh," dad said suddenly over Ray's prolonged guffaws. I opened my eyes to see him peering nervously in the rear view mirror.

"What's the matter?" I asked, sitting up abruptly and looking behind us.

"This guy's going to hurt somebody," he replied, as a maroon-colored Jeep Wrangler whizzed dangerously by us on the right-hand shoulder, mere inches from dad's outside mirror. "Better to have that guy in front of us, though, so we can keep an eye on him."

I sat transfixed by the speeding Jeep as it passed car after car, weaving in and out of traffic as if trying to make up laps in a NASCAR race. The driver must have been doing at least 75 in the 45-mile-an-hour zone, but it didn't appear that he cared about much of anything besides getting to the front of the slow-moving pack.

He must have passed at least five or six cars, when, as he passed yet one more car on the gravel shoulder, one of the driver's right-side tires caught the edge of the road. Jerking the wheel too hard toward the left, the Jeep raced violently across the two lanes and into the grassy median. Skidding from one side to the other, the driver desperately tried to regain control, but turning too far sideways, he flipped the Jeep and it careened seven or eight times before coming to rest in a drainage ditch between the four lanes of asphalt.

Dad and I were about a quarter of a mile behind the Jeep when it rolled, and as we neared, dad pulled the Oldsmobile to the side of the road, and throwing it into Park, jumped out. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, everyone rubber-necking at the Jeep that was now sitting on it's rag-top roof, tires still spinning toward the sky.

"Come on!" dad yelled, racing across the road, deftly dodging the tortoise-paced traffic. "We've got to help him!"

I followed as quickly as I could, shaking nervously, still not believing the accident I'd just seen. I didn't know what we were going to do for the driver, but I had complete trust in my dad. He'd know what to do, even if I didn't.

Racing to the ditch, we saw the driver lying unconsciously, face down on the concrete. He'd been thrown from the Jeep after its second or third flip in such a way that, on it's next flip, the Jeep actually rolled over him, coming to rest about ten feet behind him. Luckily for him, he'd landed face down in the ditch, which was six to eight inches lower than the grass surrounding it. Had he landed in the grass itself, he may have looked like a bug after it hits the windshield of a speeding car.

Dad raced to the man's side, held his finger on his neck and felt his thready pulse. Jerking around he yelled, "Call an ambulance!" to a man who had stopped to look at the carnage.

Turning his attention to the Jeep, dad's keen eye noticed a golden-brown liquid seeping from beneath the hood. It was rolling slowly but surely down the drainage ditch toward the bleeding and unconscious man.

"Battery acid!" dad bellowed. "It'll burn him! We've got to stop it!"

Almost instinctively dad ran toward the acid and grabbed a large handful of dirt. Throwing it into the ditch directly in the acid's path, he looked up at me and said, "Come on! Throw some dirt on it!"

Kneeling next to the ditch, legs quivering from the adrenaline, I threw handful after handful of earth on the ever-expanding pile. After the acid started to pool behind the makeshift dam, dad and I looked at each other, took large, deep breathes, and immediately heard sirens in the distance.

We waited there until the EMT's had things under control. Since we saw the whole thing and were the first ones on the scene, dad figured we'd know better than anyone what had happened. Better than anyone, that is, except maybe the driver, and he wasn't talking.

We drove home that morning and I told the story to mom, who was amazed beyond belief. Dad cooked his eggs and bacon, too, throwing in a little extra cheese along the way. After breakfast he went out and did his usual Saturday morning things, like watering the garden and raking some leaves. I don't think he gave our adventure another thought. And I'm pretty sure he never checked on the man's condition. He almost acted like it was no big deal, like it was just another day in the life of a super hero.