Dad's Last Run

Thought For The Day

Sometimes I try to imagine the morning it happened. It's not the sort of thing one likes to fix upon, but still, as you are growing up there are unreasonable fears that emerge from time to time that lock into your head and refuse to let go. I really don't know precisely what happened but I can give you a recreation based on what I have been told.

It was a bright Spring day, the sun was shining, birds singing like the beginning of a Disney movie. My grandfather was taking the horses which were hitched to a wagon down to the creek for water. Grandpa Ratliff was a blacksmith, a burly, barrel chested man with arms the size of large fence posts. He once asked me to pump the bellows for him when I was very small. I could not reach the handle and so he lifted me to it and I hung there while he moved it up and down.  Dad was nine years old.

Now here I have to stop and imagine, what is was like to be a nine year old boy in Pocahontas, Arkansas in 1920. The truth is, I couldn't begin to imagine something like that but I'll try. It must have been a weekend or the summer or he would have been in school. I do have a little knowledge about nine year old boys. I was one once, raised one who was and have five grandsons who have reached that age. I have also observed a number of them as cohorts of the others. So, what do I know? They are impetuous, fearless, excitable, happy, delightful, changeable and filled with expectation. They are optimistic beyond description. Oh, and deaf to directions from others, especially older others. 

So, I can see dad vaulting off the front porch and running full speed to catch the wagon and yelling at the top of his lungs for grandpa to wait for him. It was just about then when his left foot, stretched out to full speed extension, fell upon the old, rusted nail that impaled his foot right at the Dorsal Metatarsal and opening his young foot to a severe case of Septicemia (Blood Poisoning) which would forever change his life and possibilities. 

The blood poisoning was so severe that his leg had to be amputated to midway through his femur and left him with what he affectionately called his "stump". Today that would never have happened in Pocahontas, Arkansas or almost anywhere in America. And the other thing that might not have happened was his love of music and the way he played the guitar, fiddle, harmonica and other stringed instruments without the slightest notion how to read music. And he might not have met my mother which would have had a serious impact on me and my beautiful sisters. But that's another story.

©Herb Ratliff, February 8, 2012, All Rights Reserved