Car Crashes, Dog Attacks & School Buses

CHAPTER 156

In June 1991, we had finally had it with the Omni with its overheating no one could fix and decided to trade it in on  a new car. I said I was thinking about getting a Saturn.hMy wife was somewhat skeptical.  She had never heard of this car, understandable since GM didn’t start producing the models until 1990. Saturn was founded in 1985 as an employee-owned private brand until GM bought the brand. Gm spent the mid-1980s presenting the Saturn at shows as a concept car until they finally decided to market it as one of their brand lines of vehicles in 1990.

I had seen some marketing of the car and like the phrase, “A different kind of car company.” Their whole approach appealed to me and I thought it was a neat looking vehicle. She and I went down to a new Saturn dealership in Newark, Delaware to check it out. It was different. No high pressure, a super clean, airy, brightly lit showroom and very friendly people. After we bought our's there was this big celebration as we picked it up and drove away. The car was brought into a special  delivery area of the building and all the available employees gathered around to cheer us off. It was a bit embarrassing, actually.

The Saturn was quickly to the top of my favorite owned cars list. It was number 1, and I’d say still remains in that top spot. Following on the list was the Toyota 5-speed Corolla I had in the seventies, then the 1966 VW Beetle. Fourth of course, was the 1954 Ford; after all, hard not to always love your very first car. There are a couple cars we pirchased since 1961 I would add to my list today, including our 2005 Chevy Cobolt (left) and our current 2009 Honda Fit (right).

I really liked the Saturn. It was sporty looking. The paint was a sparkling blue-green, which changed color in different light. It was also deceptively fast. One of the features it had was this kind of sneaky button next to the gear shift.  The button was marked "performance". When you pushed it down the car got a real boost in power. I have read this button addd an additional 100 horsepower. I believe it. I don’t think I ever lost a street drag with the Saturn. (Yeah, right back to my teen years racing the main street of Pottstown.) I’ll never forget the shock on the face of a Porsche driver as we kicked off from a traffic light. He had been sitting, revving, looking superior, but when the green snapped on I left him standing. It was an amazing car. I dreamed of having it forever.

By 2005 the Saturn had about 150,000 miles on it, but I still loved it. It wasn’t as fast, since a new transmission had been installed. I had gone for pizza at Pat’s Pizza one twilight. It the dark I misjudged the drive in and slammed the car up over the curb - hard. After that I noticed something was definitely wrong and as it were, turned out I had ruined the transmission and had to get it replaced.

I still loved the car and I was shooting for eventually reaching 200,000 miles. It was not to be. In 2005, my wife was taking me in to work downtown Wilmington and picking me up in the evening. One evening I was waiting near the corner on Market Street at Rodney Square as usual, but she didn’t come and she didn’t come, and she didn't come. Obviously I wa getting nervous. I called home and one of the kids said she had left to get me nearly an hour ago. I went back to my waiting place. Perhaps there was a traffic jam on I-95, hardly an unusual occurrence.
Next thing I know this police car pulls up be the curb and my wife steps out of it.

If there was a jam up on the I-95 Brandywine Bridge then my wife had been involved in the cause.  I thanked the police officer and called my daughter to pick us up. I then borrowed Laurel's car to take Lois to the emergency room at Christiana Hospital, where we spent the evening into the wee hours

of the morning. The lady she had collided with was also there, but we avoided her. Everybody came out physically unharmed, but the Saturn was totaled. Because the other woman was rear ended she tried to put the blame on Lois, but that didn’t fly and we got a nice settlement from her insurance company.

It unfolded this way. It was not a nice evening weather wise, drizzle and haze. Lois had been coming in to get me and she came to a place where there is an exit ramp onto the Brandywine Bridge off of Route 202 joining that traffic with the interstate. Both roads are very crowded at rush hour. The woman came zooming down the ramp, went directly across the three lanes of traffic on I-95 to the extreme left lane nearly scraping the concrete divider. She then suddenly swung back across the through three lanes of traffic directly into Lois’ path on the far right (no political inference intended). Lois trying to avoid her went off on the shoulder, but so did this lady and Lois slammed into her car’s backside. In the end the lady was able to drive away, but the Saturn couldn’t move. It had to be towed away. The police who investigated, after interviewing some witnesses, sited the lady for reckless driving and not keeping her vehicle under control.

It was very well that Lois was free and clear of any responsibility, but my beloved Saturn was towed off to a wrecking yard and we were left without a car.

Meanwhile, back in 1991 my father sold “The Old Blue Shark” on June 27 for $950. That was my 50^th birthday by the way. “The Old Blue Shark” had been my father-in-law’s car, it was an older model Chevrolet Bel Air. I can’t remember exactly what year, but it might have been a 1969.  Chevy stopped producing the Bel Air after 1980. He died in 1981. We hated the car. It was huge, difficult to park and eventually my dad took it to store it in his back yard.

My dad was an eighteen-wheel jockey. He was discharged out of the Navy in January 1946.

Honestly, I don’t even remember that first year after he returned from the South Pacific. I resented his return because now my mother gave all her attention to him, not me. I don’t know what he did or if he even had a job anywhere. We still lived at 424 Washngton Avenue with my grandparents after he returned. I started first grade at East Ward Elementary in September of 1947 and as far as I recall he wasn’t driving a truck yet. That began sometime in the fall of that year. I guess he didn’t want to go back to the jobs he held before the service, which were as a stoker in the Lukens Steel Mill at Coatesville and at the Modena Scrap Yard near where he grew up. Can’t blame him.

I think he was looking for something that gave him more freedom. He had a fondness for

Western Movies, saw himself riding the range, but wasn’t much opportunity to be a cowboy in Downingtown. He had a good friend named Joe Bender (Pictured left.). They had served together in the war. Joe was a mechanic at a truck terminal in Glen Lock, Pennsylvania and suggested my dad apply there. He told dad, “Don’t tell them you know engines or Old Man Hires'll make you a mechanic.” Dad didn’t tell Old Man Hires he had such skills and he was hired to drive milk tankers.

I don’t know where my dad learned truck driving. Of course prior to 1986 a CDL license wasn’t required, just an ordinary driver’s license would do. My dad didn’t test for or receive his Class A CDL until it became legally mandatory. He started off pulling milk tankers long distance. I don’t know from where to where, but I know he was seldom home during the week thereafter. His schedule stayed pretty set my entire childhood no matter who he hauled for or what he carried. He’d leave early Monday morning, stop home for a bit on Wednesdays, then be on the road through Friday.

He drove tractor trailers most of his life after that. He loved it. In his later driving years, he

generally hauled Hazmat or wide loads, quite often to Buffalo. He had started hauling milk at Hires, left them to haul steel and sugar for Atkinson Trucking out of Philly and worked for several other transports during his career, including A. Duie Pyle, the Miller Brothers and himself. (Photo right, dad driving for A. Duie Pyle, 1985.) During the late fifties into the sixties he had become what they called a Gypsy. During that period he hauled a lot of tomatoes.

But in July 1995 he called his boss in Buffalo and was told wasn’t much work. He figured he was done truck driving. That was on the fourteenth. On the thirtieth he went to the OJR School District offices and apply for a school bus driver job. He was almost 77 years old. He had been a truck driver for 48 years.

For the school bus job, for which he obtained a Class B CDL. He had to take a physical in July, then he had to pass a test. He took his first on October 4, but missed a few things. He took a second test on October 18. He passed everything except parking in a small space. All those years of driving the big rigs, but he is struggling with a school bus. On the 29^th he was back again and this time he passed. He started working as a school bus driver on November 4, 1995 and continued doing so for the next 14 years. (Left, dad on his school bus run, 2004.) The school district finally took him off the buses in 2009. I suppose they didn’t want the kids driven by a man about to turn 91 that fall.

Lois and I went out for our 30^th wedding anniversary on September 16, 1991. The next day Lois brought home a dog from the Delaware Humane Shelter. Both of us were volunteers there. She helped out at the counter and I came in a couple nights a week to walk the dogs. My favorite dog was Shadow,

a gray Pit Bull with clipped ears that had been rescued from a terrible life. Now she was a sweeyheart. I would walk her and toss tennis bowls across the field for her. She really liked chasing down tennis balls. She would fetch them and bring them back to me, only problem being she wouldn’t let go of the ball. I would carry several out with me. If I threw another ball she would drop the one in her mouth to chase, but no way was I going to try and pry a tennis ball out of that Pit Bull’s jaws. After chasing balls she would run over and jump in a plastic wading pool the DHA kept in the field for just such purposes. Eventually, Shadow got adopted into a nice home where she had her own room, plenty of treats and as many tennis balls as she ever dreamed of. 

Now as I started to say, Lois brought home a dog, a Border Collie, named Charlie (Left). Charlie liked my wife and he was very protective of her and my daughters, but my son and I were in mortal danger. I don’t know the dog's history. I do know his previous owner had been a woman. It was pretty obvious that Charlie did not like men. He would growl and snap at my son. After a terrifying night when he came after me until I somehow got him contained in the basement, we sent him back to the shelter. I was angry, feeling they needed to put some history out when someone adopted, like which dogs ate men for breakfast.

   

In November Reba Greenleaf called my parents. She was the lady living with my Uncle Ben. My Aunt Dot (Right)  had died in 1985, her death hastened by her alcoholism. At some point Ben met Rebecca Ora Reba Whiteman Greenleaf a nice Jewish widow. She and he began to live together, which proved very good for my uncle, even though she was 10 years his senior.  Reba died in 2002 at age 91.

She reported to my mother that Uncle Ben wasn’t too good and so she took him to the

hospital. She called the next day to say he was feeling better, but he had fallen recently and was pretty banged up. He had a cracked vertebrae and they were taking x-rays of his gull bladder. He had come home from the hospital, but a week later she called to say he wasn’t doing well. He was having trouble eating, couldn’t get food down. By the 30^th he was back in the hospital. He was in the Special Care Unit at Lancaster Hospital. Dad went to see him on the seventh of December and he was much improved. Ben was back home for Christmas. (Left, Uncle Ben and Reba Greenleaf, 1990.)

As usual now, we had Christmas at our place and we were home watching 1992 arrive on TV.