Dads Accident

That spring I turned 16 was wet. It rained till the ground was soaked and the farmers couldn't get into the fields. It would dry out a day or two, but never enough to get the tractors out. Dad was antsy and worried. In a back field, across the railroad track, was a huge rock that Dad had been plowing around for years. Since he couldn't do anything else, he decided to dig a hole beside the rock, deep enough to push the rock in with enough dirt to work the field over the the rock. He had been back there digging for days. The rock had turned out to be much bigger than expected. About the size of a station wagon. My Birthday was on a Sunday. It was very unusual for my parents to miss Church, but that day Dad was anxious to finish with the rock, and Mom decided to bake a cake and fix a special dinner. (By the way, Dinner was noon and Supper was after chores. I still have trouble thinking of Dinner being in the evening, and lunch is a foreign word. Understood, but foreign.) It wasn't raining, but there was a steady drizzle all morning. Noon came and Dad didn't return home. Another hour and Mom was getting worried. She let J take the car down the road to the field closest to where Dad was suppose to be working. We waited. Then a pickup truck rushed into the drive with J and Dad in the truck bed and Jim, (a neighbor driving) Mom ran out and jumped in the truck and they took Dad to the Hospital. S and I were left not even knowing what had happened. Later another neighbor and his wife showed up to stay with S and I. Mom had called them from the hospital, but we still didn't know how Dad was. R and D were there most of the afternoon. Eventually Jim brought J home and we got to hear what he knew. Mom was still at the hospital with Dad. He wasn't expected to live through the night, but there was still some question as to just what was his worst injury. J had started back to bring Dad home to dinner. He found Dad in the middle of the field nearest the road. Dad had crawled across the field with the rock, over a fence, over the railroad track, another fence and half way across the field that J found him in. J found him unconscious. Jim's home was closer and J went there for help. We learned later that Jim had gone back and finished covering the rock. He never found Dads shovel, but he could see where Dad had been pinned by the rock. Dad had dug himself out with his hands and then had to crawl with a shattered leg. The Doctors finally figured out that the bone marrow (fat) had gotten into his blood stream from the shatered leg and gone through his body with some in his brain. It was clogging his veins and they didn't know how to disolve that much marrow and clear his veins. He made it through the night and then another day and another. Mom stayed at the hospital for days, with one neighbor or relative only bringing her home to shower and change clothes. They wouldn't let her drive. All our neighbors and Uncles showed up to help any way they could. J, S and I carried on at home. I don't think any of us even rememberd it had been my birthday. Chores were done but no one went to school during the five days we waited. It was May 3 when they took Dad off the critical list. I'm sure of the day, because it was Moms birthday. That was her present that year....he was going to live. But, it wasn't over yet. Back then they didn't know what to expect. Now, I imagine it's a bit like a stroke. Shortly after putting him in a regular hospital room, Mom took me in to see him. Dad was not Dad. He thought he was Tarzen and he called Mom Jane and he talked like that. "Tarzen want water. Jane bring water." He didn't even know who I was or seem to care. Mom had warned me, but it was a shock. They didn't release him from the hospital till his mind had cleared enough to know who he was. But little epidsodes continued to intrude in our days for most of that summer. Once again Moms nursing training had come in handy. My brothers and the neighbors put in the crops. Friends and family kept the farm running that whole season. J would have been 15 and S was 13 till Sept. but they did mens work that year. Once Dad had begun to heal, it was almost impossible to keep him down. His leg was still in a cast and I don't know how many of them he broke because he wouldn't stay off of them. Even after he was thinking clear, his personality was rough. He would say cruel things and was impatient with everyone and everything. I remember winning a showmanship class with my 4-H steer. Two of my friends were with us and we had gone somewhere to eat. Someone congratulated me and raised a water glass in a "toast". Dad snapped, "Stop it, she doesn't deserve it." Then he started on a list of things I should have done or done better. By the end he was practically yelling and everyone at our table was upset. That was NOT my Father, and I was so afraid my Father would never come back. It was a bad year. If you asked my brothers, it was probably worse for them. They were trying to do the farm work and I imagine they were yelled at much more than I was. Mom was trying to take care of him and he didn't want taken care of. I had a steady boyfriend then, and W seemed able to handle him better. W spent more of the summer with Dad then with me, and the rest of us were grateful to have him handle Dad. By the time the crops were harvested, (God Bless the neighbors) and winter had settled in and the cast was finally off, things did finally get slowly back to normal. But, it took most of the year. Then when we teased Dad about being Tarzen, he never did believe us. None of it was clear to him, and the teasing stopped. It was a subject we pretty much dropped and it was over.