“The greatest lesson in life is realizing I still have a lot to learn.”
— Author unknown
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The view from my office window is thought-provoking.
From where I sit on the southeast corner of the downtown Center square, I have a front-row seat for many things. Chief among them is the number of people operating cars who don’t know how to drive. Or how to read traffic signs.
I also see a lot of wreckers. Towing services. “Why would I notice that,” some may ask? It could be related to my first observation about people driving on the square. Or it could be related to personal experience. And memories. My college “self funded scholarship” was working for Sandlin Chevrolet and Olds and Surratt and Heimer body shops in Mount Pleasant.
Johnny Garner at Sandlin’s took a chance on me based on experience gained working the previous summer at Ogner Volkswagen body shop in Canoga Park, California. A memorable summer gig for a 19-year-old, working for the shop manager, my mother’s baby brother, and my Uncle Bill.
Body shops introduced me to the world of wrecker driving. Experience that afforded me many more stories worth telling than painting cars.
In the late ’60s, wreckers were on 24-hour call for one week at a time. As the newbie at Sandlins, I was tagged “the wrecker driver.” Because no one looked forward to sleeping close to the phone for middle-of-the-night calls from the police department.
Every time I bailed out of bed in the middle of the night and hit the road, I came home with a different story.
Some like the family I rescued from the old roadside park on Highway 67 toward Omaha. Where their big Olds VistaCruiser station wagon’s transmission had given up the ghost and left them stranded. With the crippled cruiser ready to two, I set out to engineer a man, his wife, their child, and the family dog into the wrecker’s cab. Miraculously, there was still room for me to drive. Never mind that we were all close friends by the time I dropped them off at the Holiday Inn. Almost too close.
Other memories still haunt me. It was before the invention of “The Jaws of Life.” A time when wrecker drivers were called on to pull mangled doors open or raise crushed car tops. Hopefully, to free injured occupants. Not to aid in the removal of bodies.
And there were rewards sometimes. Like the time I worked a truck wreck on I-30. An overturned semi with a full load. Of bananas. Green bananas. The job took more than one wrecker service. When the rig was righted and ready to tow, the truck driver announced, “Take some of these bananas with you. We can’t sell them since they’ve been involved in an accident. So, take a case. Or two. Or three.”
I stacked my bounty in the kitchen that night, relishing the thought of fresh bananas. In doing so, however, I failed to factor in one thing. The bananas would get ripe. Every one of them at the same time. Mom made banana pudding and banana bread. We ate bananas on cereal. On ice cream. On toast. On things I never thought of eating. We shared bananas with family, friends, neighbors, perfect strangers.
Then there are those unusual stories. The bizarre stories. Warped humor in some cases. But they became stories because laughing is better than crying.
The phone rings, and in minutes, I’m on my way out Highway 67 again. No details, just that DPS needs a wrecker. In the wee hours of the morning and really foggy. I pull up behind the ’69 Dodge black-and-white parked beside the road. Lights flashing. No other vehicles in sight. Just the officer waving his red baton flashlight and a visibly shaken driver sitting in the car.
The trooper pointed down an embankment to the local funeral home’s hearse. Front front end in a creek bottom. Barely visible from the road. I make my way, sliding down to the hearse and pulling the cable. After slithering in the damp darkness under the wrecked vehicle and securing the line on the rear axle, I opened the driver’s door to ensure the transmission was in neutral.
In the dim glow of my flashlight, the first thing I saw was the last thing one wants to encounter in the middle of a foggy night. Another occupant. The impact had broken the casket from its mount in the back, propelling it forward, allowing the dearly departed therein to partially depart the damaged coffin.
I jumped back, fell down, dropped my flashlight. Said things I would have been embarrassed for my sweet Momma to hear her baby boy say.
While gathering my wits and attempting to get up, I heard hee-hawing from up the hill. “I forgot to tell you the funeral home is dispatching another hearse to transfer the body,” the officer shouted through his uncontrolled laughter. “As soon as you get that one back up to the highway.”
Looking out my office window, watching traffic on the square last week, I thought about how things have changed and what I’ve learned from change. Wreckers are better and safer. Cars are better and safer. Drivers are …. well, not so much.
I thought about how the most important thing I’ve learned really is that the greatest lesson in life is realizing I still have a lot to learn.
That, and laughing still beats crying.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
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A Story Worth Telling 