Jeeps Happen! | The Beachside Resident

By: David Sherman

Article Category: David Sherman 1 Comment

“What is wrong with you? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby?”

Everyone has heard this little facetious gem from time to time, some of us hear it quite often; for me, it seems like theme music. It is the “Evergreen” to my “Star is Born;” the “One Tin Soldier” to my “Billy Jack;” the Ba-bah-bump-ba-da-bump-bump to my “Beverly Hills Cop,” and I for one have grown weary of its gross overplay. Thus, I will set the record straight once and for all: To the best of my knowledge, I was never dropped on my head as a baby… For me it was the Jeep.

Glenview was never really a working farm, at least not while we lived there. Thirty-eight acres of mostly woods and marshland with one horse, two ponies, eight Muscovy ducks and one mallard, all with names and none ever butchered, hardly constitutes a working farm. Glenview was more of an expensive hobby than a farm, but even a good hobby-farm needs vehicles: a tractor, two old flatbed trucks, and an early 50′s pickup. But the pride and joy of the Glenview motor pool was a jenyuwine Korean War surplus U.S. Army Jeep. She was named “Elvira,” and she would prove to be a truly spiteful bitch.

Behind the house, the yard, and the corral, were the Woods, the traditional sanctum sanctorum of boyhood. On the far edge of the Woods was the Marsh, a sinister wasteland crawling with water moccasins, man-eating fish, and possibly crocodiles as well. Over the years, I had come to suspect the Marsh was sentient. It certainly abhorred clean clothes, and would contrive all manner of ways to trip unwary boys, thus covering the offending garments in the stinky, black slime that was its very essence. As for getting a mom to believe this… forget it. You cannot win. Come back slimed: “You tracked mud in the house!” Hose off all the slime first: “You tracked water in the house!” Strip down to your underwear before coming in: that’s the day the pastor has dropped by to visit! I’m telling you… you cannot win.

Of course, the more forbidden the Marsh became, the more we would venture into it. One of my best tree houses was on an island in the Marsh itself. Okay, technically speaking, the island was only six feet in diameter and was only separated from the mainland by a three-foot stretch of murky water a foot deep, and the tree house itself only consisted of five rungs worth of ladder leading up to four boards going every which way in two trees. It was still a vast improvement over my first tree house: a cardboard apple crate fastened about five feet up a pear tree with no less that 30 nails. It lasted until the first good rain. (So shoot me; the design needed work… I was five!)

All was well until my father marked about two-dozen trees with a big white “X,” including the trees on my island. How he failed to notice nine pieces of lumber, all painted bright white in said trees is beyond me. I would have preferred camouflage, but the boards were already painted white when I found them …lying around …in a pile of boards …meant for a white fence! No amount of pleading could dissuade him. My appeals exhausted, the final day found me perched in my doomed outpost with two peanut butter sandwiches, a “G.I. Joe” canteen, and dozens of small squares of wood. (All coincidentally about the size of a fence-post cap and painted white.) With food, water, and ammunition, I was ready for a siege.

It was only fitting that the enemy arrived in a jeep, the enemy in this case being Walter Carey, a young black man who did odd jobs around the farm. He was armed with an axe and a chainsaw. Walter was strong as an ox and had the sort of patience that causes most Christians to cite Job, especially where my twin brother Don and I were concerned. Today would prove the greatest test of that demeanor, for as soon as Walter came in range, I opened fire. Which is to say I started whipping blocks of white, rough-cut 1×6 at poor Walter who was just trying to do his job. Don just stood to the side laughing at the whole affair. At times, Don and I got along, but this was not one of those times; this tree house had never been shared territory. If the “No Trespassing” sign didn’t make that clear, the “This Means Don” painted on it certainly did. In fact, Don had been taking great pleasure in this all week, now his laughing only meant he got 1x6s chucked at him as well. For his part, Don chucked them right back along with any sticks he could find. It was a glorious battle …until Walter finally had enough.

One arm up protecting his face, Walter jumped to the island and climbed the ladder, with me raining down a wrath of lumber. He caught a foot and dragged me close until he could grab the back of my belt and then, hauled me down like a sack of potatoes …though a sack of potatoes rarely kicks and screams. Walter plopped me down in the back of Elvira and growled at me to stay there. We’d never seen Walter get mad. I stayed. With tears in my eyes as Walter dropped both trees with the chainsaw, I stayed. As Don taunted me while Walter wrapped a chain around the first tree, and fasted it to the front of the jeep to pull it out of the Marsh, I stayed. When Don caught me across the face with a well-thrown branch just as Walter put Elvira in reverse, I went ankles over elbows… right off the back.

Any earlier kicking and screaming was nothing to what ensued at that point. Walter hit the brakes, and immediately realized that his view of the area was deficient by one boy. The worst part was that when he found me pinned under Elvira, with my arms and legs flailing wildly in twelve directions at once, it only got worse. Walter had not just run me over, he had stopped and gotten out with the back right tire of that damned jeep still on my HEAD! (Hence the flailing!)

Fortunately for Walter (and certainly for me!), the ground was quite soft that close to the Marsh. My hard little head just got smashed down into the muddy soil. Yeah, the thorns under my right cheek dug in pretty deep, and the tire left clear tread-marks on my left, BUT my head did not pop like a grape, as it would have in most other terrain. It was months before Walter stopped apologizing to my parents. Virginia in the ’60s was not a good place for a young black man to drive over little white boys, but my mother eventually convinced him that she blamed Don and I rather than him.

To this day I’m not sure how I was to blame, and after all these years I don’t even blame Don. (Anymore.) You can’t very well blame the enemy for simply returning fire.

I just figure that sometimes JEEPS HAPPEN!