It was a dark and stormy night....

It was a dark and stormy night...  What a trite phrase. It calls to mind campy old movies featuring fearful, defenseless women trapped in a spooky house while the thunder crashes and the knife-wielding murderer slashes.

When I was in high school, I worked part-time at the same restaurant as my mother. It was a pretty good setup because we only needed one vehicle to get back and forth. On a Saturday night, we headed home from the regular 5-9 shift. It was probably 9:30 by the time we left, having everything cleaned up and put away leaving the restaurant ready for the breakfast crowd. 

A fierce storm has blown up, and we drive with extra caution as the wind buffets the car and horizontal sheets of rain beckon us to follow them off the road. At home, the rain has intensified. 

We are faced with a 30-yard dash through the deluge. This involves a Herculean leap over a large puddle where water pools on the slab in front of the garage because over time the cement has settled some. Up one shallow step, through the gate, and a mad race up the sidewalk under wildly whipping tree limbs while nonstop lightning illuminates our path. The biggest challenge is right before the steps up to the door. During my entire life, the gutter has never had a downspout attached to it. The opening is at the corner of the house and water pours out of it onto the sidewalk. Even in a gentle rain a lot of water rolls off the roof. On this night, the cataract resembles the release of floodgates at a reservoir.

I splash behind the curtain of water, which is shooting clear across the walkway. Water is two or three inches deep because it can't flow away from the house as fast as it is gushing out of the gutter. Efforts to avoid puddles have been in vain as cold water floods my shoes. I take the steps in one stride and yank the door open. Mom is right behind me with her head down, clutching her purse and the strings of a plastic rain bonnet protecting her hairdo. Up two more steps and into the kitchen where we stand dripping on the spotless linoleum.

Mom kicks out of her orthopedic support shoes that waitresses and nurses everywhere wear while I toe my soggy white tennies off.  Shivering, we blot our faces and arms on kitchen hand towels, and I help Mom with her zipper as she shrugs out of her sodden uniform. I am reaching behind my back for my own zipper when

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone, disregarding the torrential downpour, is beating on the outer storm door.

Mere seconds have passed since we got out of the car. Our driveway is half a mile long. There were no headlights behind us. No strange vehicles lurked in the circle turn-around in front of the garage. I glance out the window over the sink trying to spy another car, but it's raining so hard I can't even see the garage.

Mom is in her slip and pantyhose, and I read headlines of murdered women in her expression. Thoughts of the Clutter family streak through my mind. A shriek escapes my lips before she shushes me.

Not only is a storm raging; we are also all alone. My father and brother left earlier in the day for a weekend fishing/camping trip. Her horrified expression scares me more than the racket outside. Lightning, followed by another deafening clap of thunder that rattles the windows, reveals two indistinct shapes on the steps. The kitchen wall facing the door is all windows, and my first instinct is to turn off the light so whoever is out there can't see in. Adrenaline surges through my veins as my body prepares to defend itself.

Pasting on an expression that says whatever is out there should be more afraid of her than she is of it, Mom flicks the switch for the outdoor light and yanks the kitchen door open just in time to witness my dad and brother trying to squeeze through the storm door at the same time.

"I knew it was you!" she yells at Dad as he elbows onto the landing in front of my little brother and kicks off his boots. "No self-respecting burglar or rapist would have knocked on the door."

Mom Left Dad Hanging

If the following had happened today, someone would have taken a video on their i-phone, posted it on Facebook, and in a few hours, it would have gone viral. Soon, people would be tweeting that the entire incident was staged. I will try to convey what happened using words.

A limb had died in the hackberry tree next to our house. It could have crashed through the dining room window if the wind blew it down. The ladder Mom used for washing windows wasn't tall enough to reach the tree limb. It would have been dangerous for dad to perch on top of the ladder while sawing above his head. He decided to bring the utility tractor into the yard and stand in the scoop of the front end loader. It would be much safer.

This restored beauty is very similar to the tractor Dad had when I was a kid.

                                     

Now obviously, he couldn't stand in the scoop and run the tractor controls to raise it at the same time. Nearly every time my mom operated machinery, something went wrong. Nevertheless, dad fearlessly situated the tractor under the offending limb and showed her which lever to use to raise and lower the hydraulic front loader. The scoop just did raise him high enough to comfortably saw the branch off.

My dad never liked objects with handles very much. He wasn't 'handy' at all. I've never seen him do carpentry work. But he was using a rip saw on the limb, so I think the saw must have been something my grandfather left in the garage when he moved to town and our family moved into the farmhouse.

Dad braced himself by wrapping his left arm around the tree limb. His back was to the tractor. The little Ford began running very rough, coughing and sputtering. I think my mom was giving it too much choke. If someone reading this thinks they know what was wrong with the tractor, please don't try to educate me.

The interval between coughs grew until the engine shuddered and died altogether. When that happened, the hydraulic pump also stopped working, and the loader began drifting away from my dad's feet. I'm sure he noticed that the tractor was going to die, but I don't think he expected hydraulic oil to leak back to the reservoir and let the loader down so soon. He should have turned loose of the tree and rode the scoop back to the ground. Instead, with his only means of support obeying the laws of gravity, he was left dangling by one arm from a dead limb. 

It was too high to let go and hope he landed on his feet like a cat. If he had, he would have struck some part of the loader. He dropped the saw and held on with his other hand.

I was outside watching the operation from the safety of the front step. When the tractor died I heard Mom say "Oh." It wasn't her conversational voice, and it wasn't a scream. It didn't sound like 'oh dear.' Or 'Oh My God!' It was a low guttural sound like a monster had fought its way out of her stomach, got caught deep down in her throat, and erupted out of her mouth. "OHH!"

I'm sure terrible scenarios of Dad being seriously injured and questions like how long he could hold onto the limb and would the limb break and should she tell Lisa to dial 0 and ask the operator to send the fire department and why did the tractor die and will it start again and is it out of gas all flitted across her panicked thoughts.

My folks didn't have the type of personalities to remain calm in a crisis. Amazingly, my father kept his composure and managed to explain to my mother how to restart the tractor and get the scoop back under his feet, all the while clinging to the rotten limb.

It all ended fine. The limb was cut down, the house wasn't damaged, and Dad never asked Mom to operate the tractor again.

Once they recovered from the scare, they each had fun with the story. Dad teased her that the only thing she could think of to say was 'Oh.' Mom liked to say to customers at her job, "Did I tell you about the time I hung my husband in a tree?"