It is now 48 years after I almost died at the hands of a vending machine manufactured in the 60’s. Solid steel intended to hold glass coke bottles and such, plastic was not a building tool back then. I can hear my parents telling the story of the pipe that should of killed me that day. The enormity of what really happened to me that day only I understand.
This is where “she is a lucky girl” came into play, I think I absorbed that message and excepted things or tolerated things with a tilted view after this. When I took that step back and partially fell onto a dirt patch with sticks and string around it. If you hear my mother tell it, all the sticks around that new patch of something were sticks except one. The one that was between my chest and underarm when I fell was a metal pipe, which fit perfectly under my arm and only left a scratch on me! But for my parents it was the idea that I could of fallen an inch to the left and been pieced by that pipe. Today I see things differently, today I recognize that pipe saved my life. It busted through that machine as it crashed down on my little body, tore right through the front and I think hit something solid. It stopped that machine before it could finished me off. My mother is an amazon, I remember hearing everyone running toward me. My Mother got to me first and picked that fucking thing up off me like it was made of cardboard! I know others got there before she had to test if she could move it away from me, but she lifted that thing up with a monster strength most only read about! It was deer season 1971and we were headed out to take our ATC-90 for its first spin in the snow on one of my fathers hunting trips. The owner of all the vending machines had just walked away from putting them all up off the ground using 2x4 and such. He did not level his machines, just got them off the wet ground in time for the first snow. He was right there with my parents giving away whatever was in the machine to everyone since it spilled all over the ground around me when it got tossed off me. There was no blood, I couldn’t put weight on my leg and I am sure I was screaming. We loaded up and headed for camp. I will never forget listening to my parents argue about taking me to the hospital, my father was pretty set I would be fine if I stayed off it a few days. Well I do think we got a few miles out of town before my brother Jon started screaming too, he could see the bone moving in my leg. Needless to say we turned around, my brothers were pretty mad at me. Until a few hours later and the X-ray showed I had three fractures and would have to stay the night. Then they came into the room scared, crying and apologizing. We used to be a tight family, until the divorce. Nothing I thought I knew ended up to be true, and I know I am not alone here. While we waited hours to be seen my leg got bigger and bigger which is why I stayed the night. They thought it might move and have to be reset in the morning! While waiting my mother found a hunting magazine in the waiting room on the table. On the front of the magazine she found someone had written my fathers name! We had never been in this hospital before, my mother got a message that day from that in which we would talk about again and again over the years.
My father had to hold my hand while they set my leg, I was surrounded it seemed. It is intense being little and knowing something bad is coming! I can truly say I have had worse, but that would come much later. My dad was white as a sheet, I think I was killing his hand as I screamed as two people or more pulled on my leg. People at the top of me holding my shoulders down and the bottom of me. Holding you down on the table as a few try to pull off your leg! I’m being a baby, but I was then!
Today, I cannot get the care I need at Kaiser!
