Sitting on the Front Porch of the County Store

It seems as if it's a good time for another "sitting on the front porch of the country store" story. In the mid-1970's, my mother and daddy owned and ran the Hopkins Grocery in Broughtontown, Lincoln County, Kentucky. As most of you already know, my mother's parents had owned and ran this store for the preceding 42 years.

One early evening, while sitting on the porch loafing with a few of our regulars, we looked up and saw a car heading toward the curve in front of the store, weaving very erratically. The car wasn't going very fast, but it sure appeared the driver was drunk. Coming towards the curve from the other direction was Delbert Perry and his wife in their car. Delbert's wife was a very poor car driver and Delbert had never learned to drive. Delbert's wife was driving the car and could not see the approaching car heading toward them. From our view on the porch, we all could see what was going to happen.

As the two cars met in the blind curve, they had a head-on collision. There was a tremendous bang and a solid thud as the cars collided. Luckily, neither car was going very fast or someone might have been killed. We all ran off the porch to check on everyone. Everybody seemed to be alright physically and for that we were thankful.

Delbert and his wife climbed out of their car, shaken, but unhurt.

They were very aggravated about the accident, as well they should have been, because the other car was nearly completely on the wrong side of the road. The guilty driver was extremely drunk. He had a passenger in the back seat who was really drunk as well. There was also a little old lady in the passenger seat, and luckily, as far as we could tell, none of the three were injured.

Someone ran and called the police, and while waiting for them to arrive, we tried to sort out what happened. The drunk driver had a case of 24 pints of whiskey in the back floorboard of his wrecked car. He was taking them back to his home to re-sell. The old lady in the passenger seat was his mother, who he had taken with him as "cover" so the police might not be as apt to pull him over. The drunk man in the back was a hitchhiker they had picked up along the way.

After all the occupants got out of the vehicles, we all stood and watched as the vehicles began to hiss and drip various types of fluids from their mangled bodies. The drunk driver, realizing he was in serious trouble, began to run away from the wreckage. It was amusing for us to watch someone that drunk try to run. As he tried to run, he fell down several times in the gravel. He would stagger back to his feet and run a little more before falling again. We got tickled, realizing he wasn't going to go very far. He ran down our yard and plopped himself down in the driveway of our barn. He just sat down and placed his head into his hands.

We helped everyone else to the porch of the store and tried to provide as much comfort as we could. We really felt sorry for the little old lady. She wasn't hurt, but was having a hard time figuring out what had just happened.

The very drunk hitch hiker plopped himself down on the front porch with his legs hanging off the edge, and his back propped against one of the posts on the porch. In the most slurred speech I've ever heard, he exclaimed, "I knew we were going to wreck after I got in the car with them. He was drunker than I was." In just a little bit, he pulled a harmonica from his pants and began to play a drunken little tune.

Several of us, including several of our regular customers, wandered back out to the cars to see the damage. There set the case of whiskey in the back floor board of the car. Dennis Smith, one of the young men in our community, thought he'd like to have one of these pints of whiskey. He asked us what we thought. I'm sure we all encouraged him to take one. Dennis finally decided to get one for himself before the law got there. He said he was going to get a bottle and hide it until after the police was gone. Then he could come back and retrieve it and keep it for himself. He felt the police would just pour it out or keep it for themselves. After working up enough courage, he pulled out a bottle of the whiskey and tossed it gingerly across the fence into Paul Ray Kidd's pasture. We didn't see it, but we all heard it land on a rock and break into a million pieces. We all just about died laughing. Dennis said, as only he could, "One $%^#& rock in the whole ^&*%$# field and I hit it with my bottle of whiskey!"

We walked back over to the store porch. By this time, lots of people were stopping at the store to see what all the commotion was about. Lots of people are milling about, asking questions and generally just being nosy. Delbert and his wife were pacing back and forth nervously. The little old lady, who hadn't said two words the entire evening, was just sitting on a bench rocking back and forth. The drunk driver was still sitting in the driveway of the barn with his head in his hands, as the drunk hitch hiker continued to play that mournful tune on the harmonica.

It was then that my mother said to my daddy, "Jess, you've got to do something!" She had no more than uttered those words when the harmonica playing hitch hiker passed out completely and fell off the porch into the gravel. In the distance, we heard the sound of a police car's siren as it rushed to the scene.