Nathan B. Spooner
One day in 1960, after coming home
from my first year in Bakersfield Community College, my friend J. L. came by in
his sky blue 57 Chevy hardtop. We drove off to go visit some friends.
We headed up the highway going
south out of Ridgecrest. J.L. seemed preoccupied with something and was
mumbling about having a beer before going to see about making up for an
argument that had occurred with our mutual friend a few days before.
Speeding up South China Lake Blvd
toward highway 395, the car somehow swerved into the dirt along side the
highway. As he tried to correct and get back on the highway, the front tires
contacted with the pavement and the next thing I remember was waking up in the
Ridgecrest Hospital with a doctor and nurses looking down at me.
This was 2 days after the
accident. Someone mentioned they had assumed you don’t survive first, second,
third and fourth burns on the body with blood and ooze pouring from the chest
between the ribs.
The Chevy had landed on me after I
went through the windshield and landed on the ground. A nearby resident, Mr.
Shultz heard the accident, came there, jacked the car off my unconscious body
and help the ambulance drivers take me to the hospital.
After a month or so and some basic
skin grafts, Dr. Drummond had me transferred to the Shriner’s hospital for burn
victims in Santa Monica. Many surgeries later, just before Thanksgiving, my
father drove there and I went home.
The odd thing about this whole
story: the day I had come home from college, I wrote a one page story about 2
people driving up the highway with the car spinning out of control and
crashing.
Eventually the paper document
disappeared but I do remember that the 3 paragraphs, one short, one a bit
longer and the last more that half the page corresponded to the 3 shift gears
of that manual transmission in the Chevy.
Good thing there were no seat
belts cause the hardtop roof had been crushed flat and level with the tops of
the doors.