Knockout

We’re in Miss Gedda’s third grade class, Morrison School, 1953.  Deep into winter, hard packed snow on all the streets.  School will start in a minute or two.  The fifth grade boy just rang the bell. Each fifth grade student had a week assigned to ring the hand held brass bell.  Time for one more slide on the slippery street.

I’m running full speed and brace myself for a long slide on the shiny snow.  Larry Trout is behind me.  We’ll see who can slide the furthest.  I slide 20 feet or more.  I feel myself coming to a stop then Larry’s feet skid into mine and blackout.  I lay crumpled in the street.  Larry doesn’t know I don’t get up.  He runs into the school.  He can’t be late for class.

Out cold, out in the cold I just lay there in the middle of the snowy street.  Cars go by but no one stops.  Windows partly covered with snow obscures the driver’s view.  There lies , a 9 year old boy unconscious in the middle of the street.  Death is just a matter of time.

But, Bob Morrison, no relation to the namesake of the elementary school, steps out of the village garage across the street, to have a cigarette.  Smoking inside was banned because of the gasoline hazard from the snow removal vehicles inside.

Bob looks out at the street and sees a crumpled mound of clothing that wasn’t there a short while before.  He walks toward it and is stunned when he realizes it is a boy lying still.  Was he hit by a car?  How can he be there?  Who is it?  These thoughts run through his mind.  “Oh my God”, he thinks out loud, it looks like Sonny.  Instinctively  he picks me up.  Yup it was me. Out cold still. Limp.

He heads toward the school carrying me.  He drops the cigarette and is now gravely concerned.  Is he dead?  No movement at all.  He gets to the school door and kicks it open and goes to the vacant Principal’s office.  One small desk two wooden chairs. I’m placed in the chair away from the desk and propped up.  Still out cold.  But breathing.  Miss Bant rushes in, she has the double duty of first grade teacher and Principal.

I don’t know what anybody did but I am waking up, crying, with a real nasty headache. How did I get into the Principals office?  What did I do to deserve that?

My mom is called as she is home alone.  Dad is working on the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company’s electrical pole lines and cannot be reached.  He has our 1939 Chevrolet at work.  Mom doesn’t drive.  She can’t carry me home.  What to do?  All the teachers walked to the school.  No cars available.  No thought of an ambulance for a trip to the hospital.  No ambulance service available, I guess.

So, Bob Morrison, uses a village pickup truck and takes me home.  He knows where I live as he and his wife Ann are good friends with my mom and dad.  Bob carries me into our house where mom is waiting on the snow covered front steps.  Five steps high,  Bob get’s me into the front porch and together with mom I’m laid down on the couch.

I have a terrible headache and want nothing but sleep.  I’m given two aspirin and after awhile crawl upstairs to my bed.

Worst thing I could do, so say the trauma experts today and even back then too, I guess.

The day goes by and Dad gets home and is highly disturbed that his son, only son, is sleeping after getting knocked out.  He runs upstairs and wakes me up with loud yelps of Sonny, Sonny, get up.  And I do.  My dad slowly calms down.  He admonishes my mom for letting me sleep.  He had first aid classes, mind you, and he knew keeping a knockout victim awake was critical.  Mom never had the luxury of first aid classes.

Dad offered me anything I wanted so I asked for potato chips.  I loved potato chips back then and still do today.  There you have it.  Childhood trauma in the early fifties, up north, in deep winter.

I returned to school the next day.  No doctor ever saw me about my definite concussion.  Head seemingly working right 65 years later.  I still think my life was and still is a knockout.