HOW I NEARLY MANAGED TO END MY EXISTENCE

As I looked over my last Post, I noticed the gap between my KNOLLWOOD summer and becoming a U.S. sailor. ( I'm talking about the fall of '44, when I was treading water while trying to figure out which branch of the services offered me the best chance to be a hero.) It was during this period when my inherent idiocy nearly resulted in my termination (I mean getting myself killed.)

In the first part of that winter of 1944 there weren't many young men left in Saranac Lake. Those of us who were old enough to enlist (17) were still trying to make a decision. A small group of us hung around downtown every night, sitting around corners talking and making periodic visits to the Minute Lunch for coffee or to shoot the breeze with Harry and Bill.

One night, three of us offered to do a bunch of dirty dishes out back in the sink for free cheeseburgers. Harry and Bill readily agreed. The three of us, myself, Wally Gay and someone - I can't recall who - went back and attacked the dirty dishes and silverware.

Even the act of doing dishes turned on my imagination. I imagined that all of the dishes and utensils would be much more sanitary if I dumped in a little Clorox from a nearby bottle along with the soap. It took only a minute for us to realize with horror that the Clorox had turned all the silverware black. We told Harry what happened. He did not dance with joy. He fetched a large bottle of Gorham's silver polish and said "Take off all the black." We were to find that we were dealing with a task of the magnitude of Hercules' labors in the Augean stables. Each piece required seemingly endless rubbing. My pals were furious with me, but had to share the blame. In terms of barter, those were the most expensive cheeseburgers we had ever gulped down. When the clean-up was done, we all went home - exhausted.


Without any doubt, another incident which occurred that winter was the scariest experience of my life. Most of the cars of this period had bumpers and spare tires mounted on their rears. There was a lot of snow, and a few of us started a new evening activity: jumping up on the rear bumpers of cars as they went around corners and hanging on to the spare for support. We'd ride from one end of town to the other, and jump off as the car turned a corner. Most of the drivers were driving quite slowly, because the roads were slippery.

One particularly slushy night, I was doing a bit of bumper-jumping with a pal, Wallace (Baldy) Baldwin. We jumped on the bumper of a big Packard as it slowly turned the corner of Bloomingdale Ave. by the St. Regis Hotel. Bloomgdale Ave. is a fairly long street and it runs out Saranac to put you on the road to Bloomingdale. There a few streets off it, the last one being Pine St. to the right.

WELL! This car had a single occupant: the driver, and we were no sooner on his rear end than he started to accelerate. (I'm certain he was not aware of his "passengers.") He went faster and faster and Baldy yelled to me "If he turns out the Bloomingdale Road, I'm jumping at Pine St."
That's exactly what he did and, indeed, Baldy did jump at Pine St. There I was, all by myself on a dark and wet night on a guy's bumper who was acting as though he wanted to set a new speed record!

As the car moved faster and faster (on the curved and undulating Bloomingdale Rd.) my parka started fluttering wildly. My first thought was to ride it out the five miles to B'dale, but I was starting to panic.

Then I had an idea.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a quarter and started tapping it noisily on the rear window. I could see the driver's silhouette, and he was plainly scared. His head was rapidly turning back and forth and he began to slow the car down. He must have been doing close to 60 when he started to decelerate. Thus, when we got down to about 15, it felt as though we were almost standing still. I jumped and tumbled head over heels in the wetness and slush, but was uninjured! When the car stopped, the driver jumped out with a flashlight in his hand, but he never saw me. I had jumped in the ditch and run into the woods. I have to believe that this poor soul never had a clue as to what was going on!

I trudged back to town on the wet road and slush (about a mile+.) It was the end of my bumper-jumping career and my insanity could easily have cost me my life!

I have often thought about that driver. He must have gone to his grave wondering what possibly could have been making the noise that scared him out of his wits and made him stop on the Bloomingdale Rd. on that cold, slushy night. Who knows? He may have considered it some kind of supernatural phenomenon! He must have told his eerie story over and over. I have certainly related this tale of utter stupidity over and over, and never do it without realizing -once again - how lucky I am to be alive to tell it!!