The three of us stood there gaping at each other in disbelief at what we had just done, Dougy even looked back over the steel railing just to make sure he hadn't imagined it and we all looked with him.
Where the nice round pile of the snowbomb impact should have been was black asphalt and all around it were the fragments of snow that had blown over the windshield of the car, We Were In DEEP Crap!
I was the first to snap out of the shock and I ran across the tracks to see if the car had wrecked because of our screw up. I peered over the edge of the other steel railing and could just see the nose of the baby blue Cadillac where it was parked up tight against the curb, in the dark it looked like the front tire had buckled over.
"Oh Crap" I yelled "It's busted the front wheel off!" John and Dougy dashed over to take a look with me and as we stared down at the nose of the Caddy, the wheel slowly turned straight and the Caddy moved ahead accompanied by the blowing of horns as the traffic that had just been released by the lights came up to the bridge. The Caddy pulled smoothly up the road and then pulled out at the gas station about 30 yds away, the big blue door opened and a tall man in a baby blue suit with white cowboy piping and a white cowboy hat sidled out of the driver's side.(looked like one of those singers off of Hee Haw) He knelt down to inspect the big hood in the fading light and then he kicked the tire with his big cowboy boots, then he turned around and looked back at the railway bridge as if to see how something like this could have happened.
What he saw was three eight year old boys staring wide eyed back to him and it didn't take much thinking to put two and two together and get three mischievious eight year old boys who'd just dropped a snow bomb onto the hood of his Cadillac.:veryangry:
"You Little Bastards, I'm going to KILL YOU!"
the cowboy roared at us and he started up the hill towards us as fast he could manage in those big cowboy boots.
I had been thinking that we would apologizes and pay for the damage out of our paper route money until then but when I saw that cowboy coming up the hill after us with murder in his eyes, that thought was quickly forgotten and replaced by the more urgent thought of 'RUN!!'
Run we did, across the railway bridge and down the tracks towards home as fast as our young legs would carry us, with the murderous cowboy hot on our heels. We had a pretty good head start but those long legs on that cowboy would be eating up the difference mighty fast. When we were about 50 yards down the tracks I looked over my shoulder to see if he was still chasing us and boy was he ever, the Cowboy had already made it up the hill and was halfway across the bridge.
"He's still coming!" I yelled to Dougy and John "If he catches us before we get to the woods we're all dead!"
The woods was a stand of ancient oak trees at the bottom of the railway embankment and there was a path that lead down to them from the tracks. It was a narrow trail that was gooved into the side of the embankment and overgrown with blackberry canes on either side, if we could just make it to the woods we could hop fences all the way home and lose our pursuer. From behind us we could hear the enraged cowboy bellowing and cussing at us and it was still another 100 yards to the woods. Fear causes adrenallin and adrenallin gives your legs speed, we raced down the tracks for the trail down to the woods with renewed strength. John was having trouble keeping up and Dougy was close on my heels when we finally made it to the head of the trail that lead to the woods and I came to a screeching halt, I turned to look back the way we had come and could see that the cowboy was only 20 yards behind John. This was really bad because the snow had bent the blackberry bushes over the path down to the woods so that our escape route was blocked by a wall of thorns.
There was no way we were going to make it to the next path down from the railroad tracks with this long legged maniac after us and I looked around in a panic for some means of escape. That's when I saw the hole under the bent over blackberry canes, it was about 2 feet high and the path was lined with snow. I dove into the hole and started scrambling forward on my belly and Dougy jumped in right behind me as we started to belly crawl down the path to the woods and safety. John must have dove in right behind us because Dougy pushed up hard behind me all of a sudden and shoved me forward so that I was now sliding on my belly instead of crawling. The path gets steeper after the first ten feet or so and I was quickly sliding out of control down the path, blackberry thorns slashing at me on all sides, I covered my face with my right arm to protect my eyes and picked up speed. The well trodden path was grooved like a bobsled run and I rocketed down the hill out of control, somehow I made it to the bottom and landed in a heap against the cattle fence that edged the woods. As I was getting to my feet, Dougy came shooting out of the blackberry tunnel and collided with me sending me back into the fence and then John shot out and landed on top of the both of us.
As we all staggered to our feet at the base of the embankment we could see the Cowboy searching for us and yelling for us to come out and he wouldn't hurt us, then he saw us.
The Cowboy couldn't find a way down to us through the wall of thorns so he started cussing a blue streak again and then we saw him bend down and we thought he was going to belly slide down after us. He popped back in to view again right quick though and started firing the rocks from the railbed at us, these rocks are the size of a kid's fist and if they hit one us they'd brain us for sure,
we hightailed it through the woods as fast as we could while rocks rained down around us as fast as the Cowboy could throw them.
We hopped fences all the way to our street and then we split up for our seperate homes, there was enough light to see by now because the streetlights had come on! I slipped around to the back door of our house and opened the door as quietly as I could but there was no fooling my Dad. The inner door opened and he was staring at me with that hard stare that meant I was in trouble.:angry:
"Your Mother has been slaving over the stove to make you a good supper and you don't even have the common decency to come home on time!" he yelled.
Then he smacked me upside the head with his open hand and my snow hat flew off and down the back stairs to the basement.
Dad was going to give me a second smack when he saw the blood on his hand from where he'd hit the open gash on the top of my head and he stayed his hand. He looked at me hard again then said, "You've been fighting again, Eric". I just looked down at my feet and said nothing while trying to keep my balance as that first whack had really rattled me. After what seemed like a couple of minutes but was probably only a couple of seconds, Dad said "Go downstairs and get washed up for dinner, we'll talk about this later, Now Hurry Up!"
I went down the stairs as fast as I could and looked in the bathroom mirror, I Was a Mess! There was blood coming out of a big scab on the top of my head, my face was all scratched and it was covered in soot from my belly slide down the trail to the woods. I got washed up as best I could because I didn't dare let my Mom see me looking like this or I'd have to explain how this all happened and I wasn't about to do that. A quick sponge bath to my hands and face, plus a quick pass with a comb through my hair to hide the cut and I headed upstairs to the kitchen. Mom was just serving dinner and I quietly apologized for being late and sat down at my chair. I ate quickly and quietly, then I asked to be excused.
"You can go to your room" said my Dad and it was heaven to my ears because I was exhausted. I changed into my pjamas with the cowboys on them(go figure) and put an odd sock from my sock drawer over the cut on my head so I wouldn't bleed on my pillow and was fast asleep in seconds.
The next morning Dougy, John and Myself met up for the walk to school but today we took a detour back to Rock Hill to grab our sleds that we'd left behind. John said he'd seen the baby blue Cadillac driving up our street after dinner, so we were pretty nervous for the next few days whenever we saw a blue car, any blue car. For the rest of our friendship growing up we had a sacred rule 'Never Drop Snow Bombs From a Bridge'.
Cheers,
Eric
Where the nice round pile of the snowbomb impact should have been was black asphalt and all around it were the fragments of snow that had blown over the windshield of the car, We Were In DEEP Crap! I was the first to snap out of the shock and I ran across the tracks to see if the car had wrecked because of our screw up. I peered over the edge of the other steel railing and could just see the nose of the baby blue Cadillac where it was parked up tight against the curb, in the dark it looked like the front tire had buckled over.
"Oh Crap" I yelled "It's busted the front wheel off!" John and Dougy dashed over to take a look with me and as we stared down at the nose of the Caddy, the wheel slowly turned straight and the Caddy moved ahead accompanied by the blowing of horns as the traffic that had just been released by the lights came up to the bridge. The Caddy pulled smoothly up the road and then pulled out at the gas station about 30 yds away, the big blue door opened and a tall man in a baby blue suit with white cowboy piping and a white cowboy hat sidled out of the driver's side.(looked like one of those singers off of Hee Haw) He knelt down to inspect the big hood in the fading light and then he kicked the tire with his big cowboy boots, then he turned around and looked back at the railway bridge as if to see how something like this could have happened. What he saw was three eight year old boys staring wide eyed back to him and it didn't take much thinking to put two and two together and get three mischievious eight year old boys who'd just dropped a snow bomb onto the hood of his Cadillac.:veryangry:"You Little Bastards, I'm going to KILL YOU!"
the cowboy roared at us and he started up the hill towards us as fast he could manage in those big cowboy boots.I had been thinking that we would apologizes and pay for the damage out of our paper route money until then but when I saw that cowboy coming up the hill after us with murder in his eyes, that thought was quickly forgotten and replaced by the more urgent thought of 'RUN!!'
Run we did, across the railway bridge and down the tracks towards home as fast as our young legs would carry us, with the murderous cowboy hot on our heels. We had a pretty good head start but those long legs on that cowboy would be eating up the difference mighty fast. When we were about 50 yards down the tracks I looked over my shoulder to see if he was still chasing us and boy was he ever, the Cowboy had already made it up the hill and was halfway across the bridge. "He's still coming!" I yelled to Dougy and John "If he catches us before we get to the woods we're all dead!"
The woods was a stand of ancient oak trees at the bottom of the railway embankment and there was a path that lead down to them from the tracks. It was a narrow trail that was gooved into the side of the embankment and overgrown with blackberry canes on either side, if we could just make it to the woods we could hop fences all the way home and lose our pursuer. From behind us we could hear the enraged cowboy bellowing and cussing at us and it was still another 100 yards to the woods. Fear causes adrenallin and adrenallin gives your legs speed, we raced down the tracks for the trail down to the woods with renewed strength. John was having trouble keeping up and Dougy was close on my heels when we finally made it to the head of the trail that lead to the woods and I came to a screeching halt, I turned to look back the way we had come and could see that the cowboy was only 20 yards behind John. This was really bad because the snow had bent the blackberry bushes over the path down to the woods so that our escape route was blocked by a wall of thorns.
There was no way we were going to make it to the next path down from the railroad tracks with this long legged maniac after us and I looked around in a panic for some means of escape.
That's when I saw the hole under the bent over blackberry canes, it was about 2 feet high and the path was lined with snow. I dove into the hole and started scrambling forward on my belly and Dougy jumped in right behind me as we started to belly crawl down the path to the woods and safety. John must have dove in right behind us because Dougy pushed up hard behind me all of a sudden and shoved me forward so that I was now sliding on my belly instead of crawling. The path gets steeper after the first ten feet or so and I was quickly sliding out of control down the path, blackberry thorns slashing at me on all sides, I covered my face with my right arm to protect my eyes and picked up speed. The well trodden path was grooved like a bobsled run and I rocketed down the hill out of control, somehow I made it to the bottom and landed in a heap against the cattle fence that edged the woods. As I was getting to my feet, Dougy came shooting out of the blackberry tunnel and collided with me sending me back into the fence and then John shot out and landed on top of the both of us.As we all staggered to our feet at the base of the embankment we could see the Cowboy searching for us and yelling for us to come out and he wouldn't hurt us, then he saw us.
The Cowboy couldn't find a way down to us through the wall of thorns so he started cussing a blue streak again and then we saw him bend down and we thought he was going to belly slide down after us. He popped back in to view again right quick though and started firing the rocks from the railbed at us, these rocks are the size of a kid's fist and if they hit one us they'd brain us for sure, we hightailed it through the woods as fast as we could while rocks rained down around us as fast as the Cowboy could throw them.We hopped fences all the way to our street and then we split up for our seperate homes, there was enough light to see by now because the streetlights had come on! I slipped around to the back door of our house and opened the door as quietly as I could but there was no fooling my Dad. The inner door opened and he was staring at me with that hard stare that meant I was in trouble.:angry:
"Your Mother has been slaving over the stove to make you a good supper and you don't even have the common decency to come home on time!" he yelled.
Then he smacked me upside the head with his open hand and my snow hat flew off and down the back stairs to the basement.
Dad was going to give me a second smack when he saw the blood on his hand from where he'd hit the open gash on the top of my head and he stayed his hand. He looked at me hard again then said, "You've been fighting again, Eric". I just looked down at my feet and said nothing while trying to keep my balance as that first whack had really rattled me. After what seemed like a couple of minutes but was probably only a couple of seconds, Dad said "Go downstairs and get washed up for dinner, we'll talk about this later, Now Hurry Up!"I went down the stairs as fast as I could and looked in the bathroom mirror, I Was a Mess! There was blood coming out of a big scab on the top of my head, my face was all scratched and it was covered in soot from my belly slide down the trail to the woods. I got washed up as best I could because I didn't dare let my Mom see me looking like this or I'd have to explain how this all happened and I wasn't about to do that. A quick sponge bath to my hands and face, plus a quick pass with a comb through my hair to hide the cut and I headed upstairs to the kitchen. Mom was just serving dinner and I quietly apologized for being late and sat down at my chair. I ate quickly and quietly, then I asked to be excused.
"You can go to your room" said my Dad and it was heaven to my ears because I was exhausted. I changed into my pjamas with the cowboys on them(go figure) and put an odd sock from my sock drawer over the cut on my head so I wouldn't bleed on my pillow and was fast asleep in seconds.
The next morning Dougy, John and Myself met up for the walk to school but today we took a detour back to Rock Hill to grab our sleds that we'd left behind. John said he'd seen the baby blue Cadillac driving up our street after dinner, so we were pretty nervous for the next few days whenever we saw a blue car, any blue car.
For the rest of our friendship growing up we had a sacred rule 'Never Drop Snow Bombs From a Bridge'. Cheers,
Eric
I'm glad you enjoyed this story from my childhood and we're all looking forward to hearing yours. How long will we have to wait, Mate?
Good thing you fellers weren't buying it. You would have been toast. A most enjoyable story from start to finish Eric ! Great tale from a great writer !