CADILLAC

Just finished watching one of my old movies...3000 Miles from Graceland. It's a 'B' movie, at best, so if you've got nothing better to do...you can watch it. But I wouldn't get all shook up if you never see it.

What brought back a memory...is a big red '59 Cadillac that appears in the movie. It's one of those old cars that is about 1/2 a football field long and wide enough to sit 5 people...in the front seat!

Well maybe that's an exaggeration...but you know what I mean. In those days..cars were BIG. Especially Cadillacs.

But the feature on the car that brought back the memory...was the big FINS on the back.

They took me back to 1964...4th grade at Franklin Elementary School. In those days, the bus picked me up before school, and we rode it to an old school out on Niblack road behind Bunker Hill. Other buses came from other parts of Vincennes too, and the kids that were to go to Franklin...got off their buses, and got on the one that was headed to Franklin. We went through this routine in the morning before school...and in the afternoon after school.

In the afternoons...there was usually a 30 minute wait from the time 'my' bus from Franklin got to the old school...and the time the other buses got there. (The high school went later in the day than the elementary school.) So, while we waited, we were allowed to get off the bus and play on the playground until the other buses arrived.

One day...one of my classmates...Frances Scott...got off the bus and ran across the parking lot toward the playground. While running...he turned around to see if the rest of us were catching up to him. Since he was looking behind him...in the opposite direction that he was running...he didn't see the parked car that he was quickly approaching. He turned around...just in time to run head first into the rear...of a 1959 Cadillac. The height of the fin on one corner of the car...was the exact height of his forehead.

You know the old comment...nothin' bleeds like a head injury. OMG! We thought he was dead. But teachers came running, got some pressure put on the injury, and he was okay.

Maybe the wildest thing...the difference from 1964 to today?

Today...an ambulance would be called...Frances would be whisked away to the hospital ER, have a CT scan, be seen by a neurologist and his parents would be in the hole about $6000.

But in 1964...he was cleaned up, ice and gauze applied...a bandage taped on his forehead...and he rode home on the same bus that I did.

The next day, the bus pulled in front of his house...and out comes Frances with a goose egg the size of an orange on his forehead.

Frances survived...luckily. Don't mess with a '59 Cadillac. Ask Frances.


Dan