Third Time Is a Charm

by Ed Nelson

  The way the valet eyed my car I hoped he didn’t take off in it. I realized I had a high opinion of my Vette when a Ferrari pulled up behind me. Oh well if the valet was going to joyride that would be a better choice. I wonder what one of those would cost?

  At the Pro shop I explained I was bringing my two younger brothers out to the driving range on Sunday. I needed a regular set of clubs for Denny and a junior set for Eddie. The Pro showed me what he thought would be good starter sets in their respective sizes. I paid for them and asked they be stored in my locker. We would pick up shoes, gloves, tees, etc. on Sunday.

  While we were finishing up a nicely dressed gentleman approached us. The Pro introduced him as Mr. Johnathon Whitestone the Third. Mr. Whitestone was on the Board of Directors of the Riviera Country Club. I took that formal of an introduction as a warning to play it very straight and be on my best behavior.

  “May I call you Rick?” He asked.

  “Certainly you may, Sir”

  Hey I ran around with the Buckingham Palace crowd.

  “May we have a word in private?”

  I thought that meant that we would move elsewhere. No it meant the Club Pro would leave us.

  “I am so pleased that your parents have applied for a family membership in the Club. I’m certain they will be voted in.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “Since you are going to be a member of our family I would like to invite you to join in one of our activities.”

  “I would love to, what is it?”

  I can tell genteel blackmail when I hear it.

  “We are having a charity auction two weeks from Saturday. We would like you to participate.”

  “That sounds like fun, what is being auctioned?”

  “We are auctioning the young eligible bachelor members of the club for a dinner date.”

  “You realize that I’m only sixteen so can’t be considered an eligible bachelor?”

  Thank goodness. A nightmare avoided.

  “We had a brief conversation about that. There will be a special category for future eligible bachelors. Bids can only be made on the behalf of young ladies who are eighteen or under.”

  Cripes.

  “Then I will be glad to participate, count me in. The night of the auction should I wear a tuxedo?”

  “That would be very appropriate. We will mail the complete details to your parents.”

  “It was so nice to meet you Sir, and I am going to enjoy being a member of the Riviera Country Club.”

  “We are glad to have you Sir Richard.”

  I wondered where else I could qualify for the open? Too late I guess, my parents have applied for membership already. It would cause too much embarrassment all around. Who knows since the girls must be eighteen or younger it may not be too bad.

  After that playing golf was a relief. Again Steve Whitney and his caddy joined John Jacobs and I to play the round. I did a little better coming in two under par for the day. Not good enough to guarantee qualifying for the sectional but getting closer.

  Driving home I enjoyed the day with the top down. It was so neat driving the Corvette.

  As I drove onto an overpass, the front end of the car started shaking like I had a flat. I slowed down by taking my foot off the gas but not pushing the brake as I had been taught. The shaking got worse.

  A bus coming towards me started to veer so I had no choice but to turn to the curb and jam on the brakes to avoid it. The Vette came to a stop but the shaking continued. That is when I realized I was in my first large California earthquake.

  With the car stopped I saw ripples going through the concrete of the bridge. The blacktopped cement was flowing like water. Then there was a tearing ripping sound. A crack opened in the bridge. It ran under the bus. If it opened anymore the bus would fall through.

  I climbed out of the Vette without opening the door and ran over to the bus to see if I could help. There were people trying to get out the door but they were so slow! From the looks of the passengers it was a senior’s tour of really old people who could hardly navigate the buses steps.

  The first person coming down was a lady who had to hold onto the rail as she tottered down. I picked her up by her waist and set her on the ground. The next in line, a man this time received the same treatment.

  As I set the man down another driver had joined us and was moving the elderly lady out of the way. Other motorists were coming to help. I didn’t spend much time looking, instead picking up old people and setting them down.

  There must have been almost fifty people on that bus. What I thought was the last person off was the driver. He stopped in the door way and told me there are two people in the back who can’t even walk, they came with wheelchairs.

  The only thing I could do was head to the back of the bus and pick up the first person I came to. I got half way back to the front and handed her off to the driver who had followed me.

  I turned for the last man. He was rather large and I had to put him in a fireman’s carry. Halfway to the door there was further grinding and groaning from the pavement. At that moment an aftershock hit. I bounced my head off the bus ceiling.

  It momentarily stunned me, but I recovered and kept going. Expecting people to be at the door I was surprised to find no one there. They were far back waving and yelling for me to move.

  I can take a hint and moved as fast as I could towards them. I was most of the way there when I heard a tremendous crash. Arriving at the apparent safe line there were people sitting or lying down everywhere. Several men helped me lower the man on my back.

  I turned to find that the crack in the overpass had widened and the bus had fallen through. The middle of the bridge was missing. Something was wrong with what I was seeing. No, it was what I wasn’t seeing. My Corvette had gone with the bridge. Walking to the edge I saw its mangled remains down below.

  The perfect California day was not so perfect anymore. Everything seemed to be under control. People were being taken off the bridge. No one seemed to be hurt which was a miracle. If nothing else the way I had been hauling people off the bus could have hurt someone.

  I asked a policeman who had taken over supervision of operations if there was anything else for me to do. He told me to help those on the bridge to be completely off it in case it collapsed. It didn’t take long. There was a convenience store on the corner at the bottom of the bridge.

  Two other guys and I went to it and bought several cases of one gallon jugs of distilled water used for ironing and several packages of paper cups.

  That done I asked the store manager if I could use his phone, but found out there must have been lines down as there was no service.

  I did the only thing left for me. I turned around and walked home. It was about five miles. Add to that walking the golf course for eighteen holes, and my run in the morning and I was just plain tired when I got home.

  As I walked I fretted about my used to be shiny new Corvette. It was a total loss to an Act of God. I’m not a religious person by nature but I had a few words for God on that walk. I would probably pay for them later.

  I was the last one in so Mum made a little fuss. When she realized I was fine she was happy. I told her and Dad about the Corvette and the bus load of people. If I hadn’t helped all those people I could have saved the Vette. Even as I thought that I knew the loss of the car was nothing compared to the lives of all those people.

  When I expressed concern about losing the car to an Act of God I was told not to worry. First that amount of money was nothing to us, and secondly we had comprehensive coverage with a rider for earthquakes on our personal property.

  That is when I learned the difference between collision and comprehensive coverage and what a rider was. Good to know. Since it was my car I had to call the insurance company, part of my learning experience according to Dad.

  Chapter 19

  At dinner we talked about replacing the Corvette. Dad was all for it. He hadn’t had a chance to drive i
t. Mum didn’t care I had one car already. I was the one that was ambivalent, I knew I didn’t really need two cars and I already had the Corvette feeling. While it was nice it wasn’t going to become a religion with me like it had some people. Now that Ferrari I saw at the country club that was worth a prayer or two.

  Not that I was dumb enough to say I wanted one of those right now. Even though I am rich there are limits with what my parents will let me get away with. There was no danger of me being a spoiled rich kid.

  The subject of the bus rescue came up again. Denny wanted to know if I would get another Boy Scout award for it. I told him I doubted it because I wasn’t going to come forward and take any credit. I had only helped a few people off a bus, big deal. I didn’t even realize I was in any danger until the event was over, nothing heroic there.

  The subject changed to retrieving the corpse of the Corvette. The coin dropped first for Dad.

  “Rick you don’t have to worry about taking credit. The reporters will be here in the morning.”

  “How will they know I was involved?”

  “They can track you from the license plate on the Corvette.”

  “Rats!”

  “That’s the way it is Rick,”

  “Well I don’t want to go through all that again. I refuse to do any interviews.”

  “You have to give them something.”

  “Can it be in writing?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  So we as a family talked about what would be in my written statement to the press. I liked what Eddie said the best. He wanted to tell them I was a Boy Scout doing my good deed for the day by helping an old lady off a bus. I had to do so many because I was over a month behind on good deeds.

  We all agreed that was a winner but wouldn’t fly. It finally boiled down to a statement that I could see the people on the bus couldn’t get off the bus as quick as needed so I was expediting matters, but never felt myself to be in danger so no hero to see here.

  That wouldn’t make them happy but that was what they were going to get.

  Dad would get a copy to his paper first thing in the morning. Power and telephones were out everywhere. Jackson House was running on its generators. The Wyman’s down the hill were also included in our little power grid and Mum had checked on them.

  The last conversation I had for the day was telling Mum and Dad about my volunteering for the charity auction at the country club. They agreed it was tantamount to blackmail.

  Mum expressed her concerns once more about the sort of people that could be involved. While ninety percent or more of the members of the club were fine people there would be some bad apples. She told me she would think of something.

  I had been scheduled on the simulator at the flight center today but that was out. I spent the morning riding George. We had checked the area all around our house and found no damage. I thought I would go look at the Corvette but Mum and Dad discouraged that.

  I let, well didn’t let, Denny trounce me at pool.

  It was a nice leisurely lunch. All the help made it into work. The only news we were able to get was on radio as the television stations were still out. The quake was 7.6 on the Richter scale, bad but not really bad. It had done a lot of property damage but there were no reported deaths.

  The outages were all due to lines being down. It was hoped that service would start returning to Los Angeles County early this evening. The police were encouraging everyone that could to stay home.

  Dad’s old golf clubs were in the first basement so we got those out. I spent most of the afternoon working with the boys on how to swing. They both had the natural tendency to try to pick the ball up with the club rather than let the angle of the club face do the work. They started to get it and were hitting them pretty good. As a matter of fact we had to quit when we had lost all the golf balls over the wall into the adjacent park.

  Power was restored by Saturday morning in our area. There were not many areas left with outages. The phone lines were working everywhere. After my morning routine and breakfast I and the rest of the family got ready to go to Mrs. Carpenter’s funeral service.

  Ben rode with us. He was very quiet and you could tell he was upset. When we arrived at the funeral home we were escorted to a small chapel. There was no casket as she had requested to be cremated. There was the urn with her ashes and several pictures of her at various ages.

  To Bens surprise there were about ten people there. He knew them all. Even though all of Mrs. Carpenter’s age group and children were gone Ben had friends. Even Jane the Blacksmith/Farrier was there. You could tell very quickly they were an item.

  It appears Mum had Janes phone number so she contacted her and from Jane got a list of Ben’s friends and called them. The service was really for Ben. That really brought it home to me how much family and friends meant when you really needed them.

  There was a prayer reading and then Ben gave a small talk with some of the highlights of his grandma’s life. He made no reference to her wild youth, only the loving care she gave to an orphaned child.

  Our small entourage followed the hearse to the cemetery where Mrs. Carpenter’s ashes were interred in the mausoleum next to her late husband.

  As a group we all returned to Jackson House where refreshments were served. Ben was able to give his friends a tour of his living arrangements and the stable for which he was responsible. You could see him become animated as he talked to his friends. You could also see the pain on Dad’s face as they drank all his Mexicali Delight.

  I spent the rest of the day studying both high school and flight school. After dinner the family took a walk together. All in all it was a nice day.

  The phone started ringing early Sunday morning. The reporters had found the owner of the smashed up Corvette. After the first three Mary took over phone duty and read my statement. When pressed further she told them she had an exclusive on the rest of the story and they could read her column, Brat.

  Denny, Eddie and I headed to the Riviera Country Club. Waiting at the Pro shop were their new clubs. They tried on new shoes which were added to my account. When did I get an account?

  The hardest decision for Eddie was in picking head covers for his Driver and Three Wood. He finally settled on Bullwinkle and Rocky.

  The driving range was fun, we spent several hours there. We saw Dean Martin. Frank Sinatra came over and talked for a while. He was still interested in another song, but I had my doubts.

  The boys were both learning fast enough that if they kept it up they would be good golfers. Unlike pool I had no intention of ever letting Denny get the better of me.

  The rest of the day was a lazy Sunday. On the way home we drove down to the beach and admired the young ladies in their swim suits. Eddie thought that was a bit of a waste.

  I was very satisfied with my T-Bird and don’t think I will defect to the Chevy ranks again.

  Chapter 20

  I went out for an early ride on George. It wasn’t very long but I found that if he didn’t get out he got pretty rambunctious. Later as I wiped him down Ben came out to talk. I asked him how he was doing since his grandmother had passed.

  “I’m okay Rick it was a long time coming. That wonderful woman that loved life hadn’t been there for ages. There was nothing left but a shell. It is easy to say she had a good life and it was her time but I still miss her. I didn’t visit her every day at the rest home but I knew she was there. When I woke up this morning my first thought was that I should go see Grandma today.”

  “That has to be hard.”

  “It is and it isn’t. I miss her, but she wanted to move on, anything was better than lying in that bed, wasting away and slowly losing her mind.”

  “At least she went out like she wanted to. She didn’t want to die in a sick bed. The home had called me and told me her time was near. I spent the afternoon with her, but she didn’t know me. Later I went out for dinner.”

  “When I was out she plainly asked for ‘Help’, the nur
se asked what sort of help, ‘Up’ is what she said. So they lifted her into her wheelchair. She died sitting up about ten minutes later.”

  That left a tight feeling in my throat. After that I went for my morning run then lifted weights.

  After that I cleaned up and went to breakfast. Today was British accent day. The kids and I would only use that, tomorrow was Spanish day. We had been doing this for what seemed like forever but it was only since we had moved here.

  Mum and Dad were debating whether we should learn French or German next. I was lobbying for Russian. Denny thought Japanese would be cool.

  Whatever was chosen would require adding someone that was fluent in the best accent of that language. I would hate to learn Russian with our equivalent of a hillbilly accent. This debate had been ongoing. I think the truth is that none of us kids were anxious to pick up more studies.

  Dad the fink was getting by without learning any languages.

  He claimed that as he was born in America he didn’t need to learn any other language. At the same time it wouldn’t hurt Eddie and Mary who were born here to learn other languages. As I said he’s a fink.

  I was informed at breakfast that the insurance on the Corvette was going to pay out. However my rates would be going up. Apparently stopping to assist people in trouble was not a good reason to park over a crack which could open up and lose the car.

  Dad didn’t think it was going up enough to justify changing insurance companies. Mum begged to differ. It was a matter of principle. I stayed out of it.

  Before the discussion could get heated Mum had a long-distance phone call. The caller asked for Olive Jackson. This caused some confusion for Mrs. Hernandez who answered the phone. She told them Peg Jackson lived here but didn’t know of an Olive Jackson. I heard her ask who was calling. I don’t know what was said but she exclaimed.

  “The Queen of England?”

  Mum stood up and held out her hand for the telephone. Mrs. Hernandez handed it off like she was getting rid of a rattlesnake, very quickly.

  “This is Olive Jackson.”