It was in the late afternoon on an autumn day in 1968 when Mrs. Kooken drove her son, Larry Kooken, me, and several other seventh graders to Herington, Kansas, about 32 miles Southeast of Abilene, for a football game between the Herington Tigers and the Abilene Cowboys. We crammed ourselves shoulder to shoulder in her awesome-looking, brand-new Ford Thunderbird. I even had one of the guys sit on my lap in the middle of the back seat in an effort to get us all in. Of course, in those days, no one worried or even thought about safety, let alone buckling up. Back then, seat belts were just another nonessential accessory meant to boost the car's perceived value.

On our late-afternoon drive to Herington, there was plenty of chatter and laughter, which you'd expect from a carload of young boys. That's about all I remember before driving back to Abilene. I don't know why, but I can’t remember a single thing about the football game, not even who won. Maybe it has something to do with selective memory; I don't know. On our way back to Abilene, if memory serves me, it got a bit foggy, and that's when things began to go awry. Mrs. Kooken wasn’t that familiar with the route, and the darkness plus the fog made it even more difficult to navigate. My guess is we were traveling roughly 55 mph, maybe more. She quickly became disoriented and took a wrong turn onto a paved county road. To make things even worse, a sudden, sharp curve in the road appeared with a sheer drop-off of several feet in her headlights, and we were traveling too fast to make it.

It was happening too fast for her to process, and she went into a paralyzing panic. The speeding Thunderbird went flying off the ledge, sending us airborne over the drop-off, only to be stopped by an unfortunate hedge tree.

Mrs. Kooken had the most injuries, suffering from multiple broken bones. Upon impact, the kid on my lap absorbed the full force of my body plowing into his back. Essentially, his body became my airbag, which, unfortunately for him, left him with a severe back injury.

I think one kid sustained a broken leg, and another a fractured arm. Because my human airbag protected me, I escaped with only a sprain and some bruises. ❦

“ Several years later, I would

have another run-in with

a hedge tree! ”

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