Reminiscing

I love reminiscing about events from my childhood and I love to share them with others. As most of you know by now, my grandparents ran a country store in Broughtontown, Lincoln County, Kentucky for 42 years. My mother and daddy then ran it for about 7 more years, so I was involved with the antics of a rural country store for most of my formative years. The list of customers, people, friends, acquaintances, and characters we interacted with throughout the years would fill up a book, and we loved them every one. This story pertains to one of those events of my childhood. I will not give the name of the young man this story relates to, but will add he was well loved by all who knew him.

I remember vividly one particular Sunday afternoon many years ago. We were sitting on the front porch of the store, as was our custom. There were probably 15 or 20 people gathered there, laughing and talking, having a good time.

As we sat there, a car came into view heading toward the store. It was weaving across the yellow line back and forth very erratically. We recognized the car as belonging to one of the young men in our community. This young man was easily persuaded to take a drink or two, or three, or four. He wasn't going particularly fast, but none of us thought for a minute he could negotiate the curve in front of the store.

As he entered the curve, we watched as he simply fell over into the front bench seat, leaving the car driverless. The red Chevrolet continued on a straight path across the opposite lane and into my grandparents ditch, with the driver impossible to see. The car continued down the ditch and into the fence row, destroying posts, wire, small trees, and anything in its way. It finally came to a stop after tearing out the fence for about 50 feet.

Several of us hustled down there and made sure the young man was alright, and he was, although his car was damaged terribly. Someone took him home and someone came and pulled the mangled car away. We were amazed at what we had just witnessed, but were glad no one was hurt.

The next day was very hot and humid. The young man came back with supplies to fix my grandparents fence. I went down to talk with him and take him some refreshments from the store. He was taking out broken posts and replacing them with new ones, as well as stringing new fencing to replace what he had destroyed. He was working very hard and sweating profusely. He was both physically and mentally exhausted. We sat down in the shade and he took a break. He was genuinely sick about the mess he had made. He was hungover, with his car pretty much destroyed, and now was having to buy all this new fencing, as well as put it up.

While sitting there talking to me, he began to reflect on the previous day's events, and in a very melancholy moment, explained to me, "I knew I was in trouble when I looked up and saw nobody was driving."