In the early 1970’s I was working full-time at Weber State University, while at the same time I was a student at the University of Utah, working on my PhD. At this time we were still living in Liberty, Utah. Because of the oil embargo and fuel being very expensive, a neighbor and I, who also worked at the University, took turns driving to work. One particular morning it was my neighbors turn to drive, because his car was low on gas. He stopped at a little gas station in Eden. Eden was another small village east of Liberty and south of Paradise, but still located in the Ogden Valley. His car was a small but relatively new Renault. He was proud of the gas mileage he was getting and kept careful track of it. He claimed he was averaging 42 miles per gallon. This was at a time that big heavy cars were the mean and the average mileage was more like 12 to 17 miles per gallon.
Before your humble narrator continues with this story, I have to provide a little background so that I won’t appear as an airhead or a very irresponsible person. This apology has to go back a few years, so bear with me. I lived in the State of Washington, and the compulsory education law required youth to remain in public education until they were 15 years of age. In February of 1949, I turned 15 years of age, I was halfway through the 9th grade and I quit school. I should probably qualify that word, student, because it only applied to the fact that I was going to school. I wasn’t really a ‘student.’ At the time, I worked as a school janitor after school. My family would qualify as poor; my father barely eked out a living at his little tailor shop. I had a lot of excuses to drop out, but mainly I wanted to make money to buy a car and sup- port my smoking habit. I also wanted to buy a few things to make life a little easier for my mother. When I told mom and dad that I was not going to finish high school, they did not protest, even though mother was obviously disappointed. I got a job almost immediately, working on a hog farm. Most of my early jobs were menial and short term, but I was seldom without a job. The first car I bought was a 1934 Ford Coupe with a rumble seat. Mother lied about my age so that I could get a drivers license at fifteen. It was easy to find justification, after all I needed transportation to get to work.
In the spring of my eighteenth year, my former classmates all graduated, and I somehow heard about the GED test, a test that one could take to receive their high school equivalence diploma. I was eligible to take the test at the end of that summer, which I did. I had studied nothing and had no idea what questions were in the exam, but I arranged to take the test. Probably as a surprise to everyone, I passed it relatively high and received my high school diploma two months after my classmates, even after missing three and a half years of school. My score was also high enough to allow me to gain admission to Utah State University after I was discharged from the Army.
Why am I telling you all of this and what has it got to do with my neighbors car and our ride to work that day? Well, if you must know, I’m telling you this so that you will know that this high school drop out turned out to be more than just a dumb high school drop out. After two years in the army during the Korean Conflict I was accepted at Utah State University as a freshman student. I not only completed a Bachelors degree there, but a Masters, as well. Now, after working several years as an educator, I decided that it would be to my best interest to go back and get a PhD. At the time of this event that I am about to unfold to you, I was a student at the University of Utah as a candidate for that degree. From a person, who, while attending secondary school had no interest in school, studying or even reading, I became a devoted and serious student. At the time of our little drive to work, I happened to be studying French. My PhD program required two foreign languages. I didn’t have time to take foreign language classes, so I was learning them on my own; usually whenever and wherever I could find a few minutes.
Back to the story! When my friend and I, in his little ‘gas saver,’ left the service station, I was studying French with my nose as deep as it could get into a little French tutorial book. I had learned to concentrate, and when necessary very few things could break my concentration. My friend had forgotten to write down in his notebook where he kept track of his mileage and gas usage or the number of gallons he had purchased and the mileage on his car. As we drove away from the station, he asked me if I would take the wheel while he did that. Well, my hand went up and took the wheel, but my mind was still studying French. While he was writ- ing in his book and while I was studying French, the car continued down the road, at least for a ways.
All of a sudden we heard a crack as the car broke a mailbox off at the ground. We realized that we were flying through the air, seeing nothing but blue sky above us. Then we landed, fortunately, on all four wheels about thirty to thirty five feet out into a pasture and about twelve feet lower than the road. The car travelled another fifty feet through a barbed wire fence before coming to a stop. The doors were open, so all we had to do was get out and examine ourselves to see if we were in one piece. Fortunately, we were. My glasses had come off and in a strange way, they seemed to become our focus. Once we found my glasses, we reviewed the damage to the car, and everything seemed to be OK. He turned his engine on and it started. He could put it in gear, and we drove through the pasture a ways until we found a place to drive up a small bank to get back on the road. When we got onto the paved road, we realized that all four of his rims had been bent, and the ride to work was like driving on railroad tracks, up and down and from side to side. Other than to laugh at our experience, very little was said all the way to work that day. Were we in shock???
The car got new rims and my neighbor drove it for several years after that, until one day his wife rolled it over on the way to church; the roads were icy and she was in a big hurry. She was fine, but the car had finally met its waterloo. As Forrest Gump remarked “It Happens.”