This is my life and your welcome to it!
I was the youngest of 6 children, (my stepsister from my dads previous marriage)two sisters and my two brothers. Little did anyone realize what kind of a life I would have. My favorite saying comes from an old TV show called HeeHaw. "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." That's what most of my life has consisted of, BAD LUCK!
The earliest I know of anything bad happening to me was not long after my birth. As my mother puts it...
I was right in the middle of my terrible twos and mom would have one of my sister's help keep an eye on me while she did laundry, she needed all the help she could get.
One faitful day, she happened to be hanging clothes on the clothesline outside. She had as usual left one of my sisters in charge of me. Neither of which will to this day admit to it. Needless to say whoever it was didn't do their job. I must have gotten out on the porch and was climbing on the bannisters when I fell and split my head open on a piece of coal. Mom saw what had happened and taking a towel, she wrapped my head to keep my skull together. She took off running down the road dripping with blood and trying to find someone to take us to the hospital. Dad was off at work and Mom didn't have a car or Driver's License.
She came upon a man working on his lawnmower in his yard. He stopped what he was doing when he heard her screaming.As soon as he saw what was going on, he motioned for my mom get in his truck and he proceeded to drive us to Logan General Hospital. I was later transferred to St. Mary's Hospital in Huntington. I still have the scar to this very day, mind you that it's not as big as it was way back then.
After I was transferred, my family moved closer to Huntington so my mother could make the trip to the hospital more often. We found a house in Salt Rock that just happened to be down the holler from my Aunt's house on Smith Creek Road.
For the record, a "holler" is an area between two hills or mountains where neighbors can stand on their front porch and holler at one another and still hear them no matter how far they lived. Sort of like a narrow valley.
There is a creek that runs down the holler that has a tendency to overflow it's banks when it rains alot (hence the name smith creek).
The next time Bad Luck showed it's ugly head, we had just finished a good spell of rain and the creek was pretty well swollen. Mom and I were visiting my aunt when I came up missing. They looked everywhere for me and no one could find me. Mom was getting real hysterical because of thinking that I might have gotten outside and gotten drowned in the swollen water. It turned out that my aunt owns a fold-away bed and I had fallen asleep in it. She had went and folded me up in the bed without knowing what she had done. I was only about 4 years old then and contrary to what you might think, I was real skinny and un-noticeble under bed sheets. Dad showed me how lucky I was with his belt.
It wasn't long before bad luck struck again. That very same creek was involved this time again.
My brothers and I loved to go fishing nearby and we caught our bait around the neighborhood (Back then there was no bait shops around anywhere to sell you nightcrawlers or earthworms). Our favorite bait was Crawdads, of which we could catch behind my aunt's house. Why there? because the creek was full of different size pebbles back there and debris got stuck from time to time. Down by our house the creek was all slate, so there was nowhere for crawldads to hide.
I had my pants rolled up and my shoes and socks off so as to not get them wet. Boy did that water feel good. I got to one point of the creek where there were a few paint and tar lids laying about. I knew that crawdads loved hiding under those lids better than anywhere. Well crawdads weren't the only things hiding under the lide this time. There was a snake there too and I scared it as much as it scared me. It sprang out and wrapped around my leg and bit me on my toe. My brothers went and got my Dad who took off his belt and tied it around my leg to stop the poisen from reaching my heart. He then picked me up and took me to the car where we took off for the nearest doctor or hospital. So it was back to St. Mary's Hospital about 30 miles away. To make a long story short, the nurse told my mom that I was the first kid that she had seen take all those shots in the stomach (around 25 or so) and not cry once.
Well are you bored yet? If not there's more coming. Nothing as exciting as all this, but still... Bad Luck is Bad Luck no matter how you look at it.
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