Everyday Objects

It's funny the journey your mind takes you on when you happen to see an everyday object in an unusual place. Hmmm, what happened here?

As I reached for a table knife this morning to put some mayonnaise on my bread for a BLT (featuring turkey bacon and a homegrown tomato), I thought about my last trip to Wal-Mart. I sat at the stoplight waiting to turn into the parking lot and glanced over at the median. Mostly there was gravel and general road dirt, but there were two other objects, one was a table knife.

It was nothing fancy, not out of an expensive set, just a serviceable piece of flatware. I thought about how it might have come to be there while looking for a parking spot. Didn't think much more about it after that but, it came back to me this morning. I had looked at the knife on the road with some amusement and, today, it finally dawned on me why. In the quiet of the morning at home, before the noise of the day began to crowd everything else out of my mind, I remembered something in my own life that could have resulted in a table knife being left in the road.

The time was the early 1980s, I lived in St. Louis then and was driving a 1971 Mustang. Nice looking car, but it was really beginning to have mechanical issues and I had to keep a close eye on the oil level before setting out. Before coming to work that morning, I had checked the oil and it was fine. I did not realize I had failed, however, to make sure the hood latched properly.

Late morning, my boss asked me to take a legal document from Clayton to St. Charles--in those days, about 20 miles each way. Got in the car, headed onto the freeway, enjoying the nice day, digging the tunes on the radio, just thinking it was a nice change to get out of the office.

It was one of those moments where in split seconds, millions of things run through your mind, such as, "IF I survive, am I gonna need clean underwear?"

While driving at 55-60 miles per hour, I heard a WHOOSH! That was followed immediately with a sound of metal bending and I could not see a thing because the hood had blown up, totally blocking every bit of forward vision. Thankfully the corners of it had bent and been forced by the air pressure up under the frame of the windshield and it didn't blow off and come through the windshield to kill me or someone else behind me. Terrified, I managed to slow down and pull safely off to the side of the road.

I turned off the car, turned on the emergency blinkers...hmmm, what else do you do for safety? Put the hood up. Check.

Cell phones weren't invented, but it was a busy stretch of road, so it wasn't long before a nice office stopped to offer assistance as I was almost hanging on the hood trying loosen and lower it. Of course, when he first came up, he thought it was a mechanical problem. So he came and looked UNDER the hood and said, "why don't you get in and try to start it?"

I smiled and said, "oh, it'll start." "Then what's the problem?" I pointed out how the corners of the hood had bent and that they were stuck. He began to tug and hang on the hood. The hood was winning. Seeing the need to pry those corners loose, finally, he says, "do you have any tools?" "Um," says I, "I'll look."

I opened the glove box and offered him the stubbiest little screwdriver and, yes, a table knife.

I could see there was much waiting on the tip of tongue, by the clearly exasperated look on his face, but he was either a very kind man or was biting his tongue hard enough to bring blood.

Somehow, he finally managed to work one corner loose, the other came more easily and the hood was down! It was still bent though and not latching properly. I was near an exit with a service station and he suggested I go there and ask them to wire it shut for me. I did that and also asked them to throw a quart of oil in it before they did (huge round of laughter from the mechanics).

I bit the bullet, went to a dealership and bought my very first brand-new car that evening. I'm certain though, every time I visit the Waverly, Ohio Wal-Mart I will still see those objects clearly in my mind's eye and wonder if they are making other people wonder how they came to be in that place.