My FirsT HeaD on EnCouNter WiTh A TRaiN

When I was in the 3rd grade my family moved from Fort Rucker, AL to Stephen, MN.  Stephen, MN was a completely different kind of town.  It’s located near the upper left tip of MN near Canada.  The town survived off of farming sugar beets and potatoes.  The population was probably about 400 maybe more.  My family was treated like OUTKASTs, especially me for some reason.  

It’s funny when you think about it.  Everyone thinks that people down SOUTH are racist because they use the N word more often.  I find that not to be the case.  Older people from the south grew up using that word and they have it beat into their skulls.  It’s not like they truly feel a hate towards blacks, it just they don't know anything better. You heard the expression you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well the same applies here.

 Anyways I have come to the conclusion that people up NORTH are more racist then people from the SOUTH.  Don't see that many African American families near North Dakota or Maine do ya.  As a matter of fact you don’t see that many families of any ethnic background anywhere around those parts.  Don’t get me wrong there are a few, but they are few and far between.  The people in those necks of the woods have some of the most vile tongues when saying the N word.  They use it in a hurtful derogatory tone made out of spite and malice.  

The reason my family moved to Stephen, MN was because my dad got out of the ARMY and found a job up there working as a mechanic on combines.  My dad was a diesel mechanic and air traffic controller in the military and he has been working on cars all his life.  My fathers a Chemical Engineer now and was even built hydrogen fuel cells so cars can run off of water.  He’s almost as smart as me.  Well he is on something’s I’ll give him that. He just lacks style and flavor.

My mother at the time worked at this small diner in the middle of town.  She was a waitress at the time.  She knew everyone because that’s where they would all go to eat and she was their server.  My mom was a DARLin Doll.

So my first friend I met in Stephen was this kid named Todd, his mother ran the town newspaper.  She would send us on silly missions like we were spies, and we ate it up like lil children. 

Must have been, because we were lil children.

I have a lot of crazy stories about living in that town.  That’s the thing about small towns they have a lot of dirty secrets they try and hide.  Me being an observer and a curious child at that found a lot of them.

This story is about my head on encounter with a TRAIN.

Me and a few of my trailer park friends would take our bikes and ride along the train tracks.  We would find all kinds of neat and rare things along the racks; flattened coins, dried up clean animal bones, and one time we found a tongue being preserved in a blowing bubbles container.  We don’t know what kind of tongue but the chemicals that it was preserved in smelt horrible and burnt the cuts on my hands.

Anyways one day me and my buddies were cruising the tracks when we decided to go visit my mother at the diner.  She would sometimes give us the change from her tips and we would go load up on PENNY CANDY and play ARCADE games.  This time she wasn’t there. I had forgot it was her day off.  We left bummed, but not completely down and out. We decided to head back to the trailer park and make some ramps to jump our bikes.

There something you need to know before I continue on with this story.  You need to know the layout of the town. 


 First you have most of the FARMs on the outskirts.  Then you have the houses, trailers, and grain silos the closer you get to the center of town.  When you get to the center of town you have all the commerce; Banks, one school k-12^th grade, and all the other things like diners, stores, town clock and whatnots.  There was one large Silo in the middle of town that during lunch time (12 or 1) and dinner time (6 or 7) would sound for people to know.  How ridiculous?!?! The kicker is the TRAIN TRACKS about 5 rows of tracks ran through the middle of town. 

Where my buddies and I lived, you had to cross the tracks to get into town and you had to cross the tracks to get back home.  I guess you can say us TRAILER PARK KIDS lived on the wrong side of the tracks. LOL

So we were riding our bikes back home.  When I felt like I bummed heads with somebody.  I stop to look around and all I could see were my friend’s faces in a state of shock looking at me.

 I ask, “What’s wrong?  Why are you staring at me like that?”

One of my friends says, “You are bleeding.  Something hit your head.”

Me: What hit my head?  I’m not bleeding.

That’s when I felt the top of my head.  I could fit my hand under my scalp.  When I took a look at my hand it was covered in blood.

Friends:  They were moving one of those train carts.   Maybe a TRAIN SPIKE shot at you?

That’s when I sprang into action.  Blood was glazing over my eyes and I felt dizzy.  I grabbed my bike threw it over my shoulders and ran home.  I was weaving in and out of traffic, screaming for help.  NOBODY DID ANYTHING. 

I just continued running home thinking to myself, “I’M GONNA DIE.”

When I made it home I started pounding on our side door.  I was pounding with all my strength.  The doors were locked and I was feeling weak.  I was covered in blood from head to toe, and I didn’t know what to do.  My mom answers the door in a fit of screams.  My dad runs out of the work shed, he had built, because he knew something was wrong.

That’s when I kind of blacked out. 

I remember my father whipping my head clean with a wet towel and saying, “I see white.  I see white.” 

I remember my mother calling 911 and the ride to the hospital with her in the ambulance with me.  She was crying because I kept asking her if I was going to die.  She would kiss my hands and tell me, “No.  YOU have a harder head then most people.  YOU get that from being POLISH.”

The town hospital was not equipped for situations like this, so they had to rush me to some hospital in FARGO North Dakota, I think.  I was only in 3^rd grade at the time.  I’ll ask my mother later to get this fact strait.

After it was all said in done I had about 30 stitches in my dome.  Doc said I was lucky.  Whatever hit me scratched my skull.  If it would have been a little lower, who knows?

I had to stay awake the whole night after I got back home.  Just to be on the safe side.  The Docs didn’t want me slipping into a coma.  So you wanna know what my parents did they stayed up all night with me and made me watch IT by Stephen King.  They thought it would scare me awake.  How LAME.

IT was ridiculously funny.  It’s about and alien spider that manifests itself as a clown and preys on the fears of others to gain control of their souls.  How silly.  The only movie that came close to scarring me as a child was CAPE FEAR with Robert De Niro, and only the part when he’s about to sleep with that lady and he breaks her arm and bites her cheek off.  Other than that I have never been scared by any horror movie.  Startled maybe, but scared never.

Anyways that’s one of my many head wounds.  I  will save another head wound for another TRUE story.

THE END

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!