Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been told about all kinds of accidents. At a meeting with my lawyer, he warned me to be careful leaving his parking lot since a driver recently swerved to avoid an accident and plowed into his car head-on as he was exiting and crippled his SUV. On a visit to cousins in Pennsylvania we got the airbag count on another accident, also with property damage but thankfully no injuries. Not so lucky was the victim of our silverware drawer mouseicide that played out in our absence and was the subject of Hickory Dickory Dead.
Moment of silence, please.
I’m a large fan of omens so I will take all these narratives as a sign that you’re ready to hear about my Very Bad Accident of March 29, 1974. I was home on a college break at my parents’ apartment in Riverdale, which is a tony section of the Bronx that doesn’t like to admit it’s the Bronx so it’s Riverdale. My father had purchased a car, probably an Oldsmobile since they were his favorite, and it needed to be picked up in New Jersey. At the time, I was driving the car of my dreams, my little 1968 cherry red VW bug with a sunroof. It was the second used car I had purchased with my waitress money since age 16, having previously owned a 1963 Chevy Nova with three-on-the-tree (as opposed to four-on-the-floor) and if you’re old enough to know what that is I thank you for your maturity.
My father had been actively against my buying a Beetle because of all the red flags thrown up by Ralph Nader and other consumer groups who said it was a deathtrap, and since my dad rarely prohibited anything I bought the Nova instead. But three years later, I was a defiant college student and I sold the Chevy and got the bug. Now on this early spring day it was the very car I would transport him in to pick up his own new car and it would be the first time he would ride in it.
We drove along chatting, my father’s 6’2″ frame folded like a pretzel into the little bug passenger seat, and all was fine until we hit New Jersey’s Palisades Parkway. Coming around a curve, the sun suddenly disappeared and so did the road. A fog of snow had come out of nowhere. We were in a white out. There was no forecast of it, no hint it might occur, and this was before all-weather tires were mainstream so by the end of March everyone’s snow tires were off and the regular baldy ones back on. It was the classic moment of an accident waiting to happen.
Did it ever. At the top of the curved hill the shroud of snow lifted for an instant and we could see the cars further below us fish-tailing all over the place; into guardrails, onto the shoulders, into each other, and as I pumped my brakes I could tell I had no control of the bug and my father and I looked at each other in that split second and knew we would be active participants in whatever went down. We slid into the fish-tailing heap of cars sideways.
A larger car hit us and then a Caddy hit us both and at the end of the mess it was eight cars in total smashed together in the spring snow at the end of the curve. Mine was the only small car involved. The bug looked less like a car than a folded red wallet. My left arm was pinned between the door and the steering wheel and I turned to tell my dad I couldn’t open the door only I didn’t because he had blood trickling down his forehead and everything after that is a blur. Someone helped us out of the car. Someone else assured us an ambulance was coming. My dad kept saying he was fine and when the ambulance arrived the paramedics helped us in and laid my father down and started asking him questions. Who was President? What year was it? What state did he live in? He answered them all correctly and then he said he had a question. One of the medics leaned in over him and said to go ahead. My dad looked around at all the faces and said, “Are those harps I hear?”
I couldn’t believe he was clowning at a time like this. The EMTs all looked at each other and then at my dad’s half-smile and then at me shaking my head and they started to laugh. Our merry ride ended at a New Jersey hospital where they stitched my father’s forehead and splinted my arm. The storm had overtaken the area and we had no way to get home. Phone lines were down and local transit was all but wiped out. A police car took us to a bus station. A bus eventually took us into New York City. We took the subway to 34th Street and then the last express bus to Riverdale.
We trudged into the apartment at midnight having left at ten o’clock that morning. We stood in the silent foyer like zombies, me in my arm-splint and my dad’s head wrapped in gauze bandages covering the scar he would have to the day he died. Our feet were cemented to the floor in exhaustion. From the darkened bedroom my mom’s voice called out, “Did you remember my cigarettes?” We fell down laughing.
Daughter’s Foto suggests A Way Out
transportation for the apocalypse