Sing it, Brother Acuff
A short memoir8 total reviews
Comment from janalma
This is well written and sad. I can imagine the heartbreak for all, including the speeding drunk's family. Very graphic descriptions of the carnage. Back then it seems that drinking and driving fast was the thing for young guys. I hope the trend doesn't come back, but given the hype on speed that they do on car ads these days, I wouldn't be surprised. Cohesive narrative and description in this memoir. Good one.
reply by the author on 22-Jul-2017
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This is well written and sad. I can imagine the heartbreak for all, including the speeding drunk's family. Very graphic descriptions of the carnage. Back then it seems that drinking and driving fast was the thing for young guys. I hope the trend doesn't come back, but given the hype on speed that they do on car ads these days, I wouldn't be surprised. Cohesive narrative and description in this memoir. Good one.
Comment Written 22-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 22-Jul-2017
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I think cars are too boring, accepted and expensive to be the toys they once were, and society will no longer accept 50,000 dead per year. Another thing, like the draft, that no one misses. Thanks very much for reading and reviewing.
Comment from Pearl Edwards
Good description Red, as you roared down the highway in your 57 Ford Fairlane. A very sobering thing for the young Red to see this scene of utter destruction of so many lives. Some things we always remember. Well done with this memoir Red, and a good finishing footnote.
cheers,
valda
reply by the author on 18-Jul-2017
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Good description Red, as you roared down the highway in your 57 Ford Fairlane. A very sobering thing for the young Red to see this scene of utter destruction of so many lives. Some things we always remember. Well done with this memoir Red, and a good finishing footnote.
cheers,
valda
Comment Written 18-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 18-Jul-2017
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Going home after months away, It's a wonder I didn't get a stack of speeding tickets. After this I thought twice before drinking and driving and lost interest in rubbernecking accident scenes. Thanks for reading and reviewing my mini-memoir.
Comment from Jay Squires
A grim story, Red. I dread the thought of being the first person coming upon a fresh accident like the one you described. I know I wouldn't be heroic. I'd be lucky to have a clear thought. I would have a quick and urgent talk with myself to keep from driving on, rationalizing that someone with more experience would come along soon. It's an interesting side thought that back in the 60's there were no cellphones. One had to drive on to get an ambulance. Back then, that might likely have been my rationalization. I hope not.
I could see a red and white Plymouth, one of the finny kind, sitting in the underbrush at the bottom of a ten foot embankment on the right side of the highway. [Red, I go through each of my posts for sentences beginning, "I could ..." Of course it was you who could see it." The sentence is so much more active to start with "A red and white Plymouth, one of the finny kind, SAT in the underbrush ... etc." Also "ten-foot" should be hyphenated.
The wreck was no longer than the four doors had been before the crash, [I don't understand this.]
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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A grim story, Red. I dread the thought of being the first person coming upon a fresh accident like the one you described. I know I wouldn't be heroic. I'd be lucky to have a clear thought. I would have a quick and urgent talk with myself to keep from driving on, rationalizing that someone with more experience would come along soon. It's an interesting side thought that back in the 60's there were no cellphones. One had to drive on to get an ambulance. Back then, that might likely have been my rationalization. I hope not.
I could see a red and white Plymouth, one of the finny kind, sitting in the underbrush at the bottom of a ten foot embankment on the right side of the highway. [Red, I go through each of my posts for sentences beginning, "I could ..." Of course it was you who could see it." The sentence is so much more active to start with "A red and white Plymouth, one of the finny kind, SAT in the underbrush ... etc." Also "ten-foot" should be hyphenated.
The wreck was no longer than the four doors had been before the crash, [I don't understand this.]
Comment Written 17-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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Agreed about the "I could" being unneeded. The four-door sedan was a squarish lump, the entire front and back rammed into the passenger compartment. What was left was no longer than that compartment between the pairs of doors. One who commutes any distance to work will see blood. But the numbers of road dead have been shrinking. A good sign. Thanks for reading and reviewing, Jay. I am working on a story in which Tommi uncovers a mob body dump.
Comment from RodG
You quickly grab our attention and keep it in this gristly account of a tragic accident.
GOOD: I love how you set the scene (especially the last sentence of your first paragraph) by taking us back to this era by describing the cars.
Superb description of the entire accident scene. You PUT US THERE.
WEAK: the ending. I want to be SHOWN the narrator's reaction, not told. May I suggest a short scene where he comes back and talks to his girl. What is her reaction? Let us see her trying to comfort him. I would omit the last two paragraphs.
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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You quickly grab our attention and keep it in this gristly account of a tragic accident.
GOOD: I love how you set the scene (especially the last sentence of your first paragraph) by taking us back to this era by describing the cars.
Superb description of the entire accident scene. You PUT US THERE.
WEAK: the ending. I want to be SHOWN the narrator's reaction, not told. May I suggest a short scene where he comes back and talks to his girl. What is her reaction? Let us see her trying to comfort him. I would omit the last two paragraphs.
Comment Written 17-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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As an entry to the challenge prompt, I stuck to the exact truth and flagged it as a memoir by added information that would not have been included in a short story, and left out things I never knew, so yes, your suggestions are very perceptive. Thank you for reading and reviewing.
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A very moving story I am still thinking about several hours after having read it. Rod
Comment from country ranch writer
A wreck like that will make one stop and think how like can be ended so suddenly by a drunk driver. Too many people end up dead because others don,t think they are drunk and get behind the wheel
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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A wreck like that will make one stop and think how like can be ended so suddenly by a drunk driver. Too many people end up dead because others don,t think they are drunk and get behind the wheel
Comment Written 17-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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The four dead people in the 1955 Ford had been grocery shopping in the county seat, a wife, her mom and her two children.
What can you say about such a thing? Made me think. Thanks very much for reading and reviewing.
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Lessons learned the hard way
Comment from Sandra du Plessis
A very well-written heartfelt and sad story. When we see first hand what can happen when we don't act responible behind the steering wheel of a car. It is a great eye opener. When I learned to drive my father told me. "You, are the only one on any road that knows his to drive a car. You must think for anyone else and at all times aware of what I'd going on around you." (His exact words)
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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A very well-written heartfelt and sad story. When we see first hand what can happen when we don't act responible behind the steering wheel of a car. It is a great eye opener. When I learned to drive my father told me. "You, are the only one on any road that knows his to drive a car. You must think for anyone else and at all times aware of what I'd going on around you." (His exact words)
Comment Written 17-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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Your father was correct, and even at that, it is not always enough. A sizable sedan at sixty miles per hour has 12,800,000 lbs/ft of merciless kinetic energy. Thank you very much for reading and reviewing.
Comment from frierajac
It is grim to be reading this in very hot weather because whenever there are
wrecks here the countryside goes up in flames. It is a description that you may
have written to get if off your mind if it haunts. In those days the allowable liquor in
Calif was high. Did you mean, 'drove it into the back end of a Plymouth following...
it outta town'?
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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It is grim to be reading this in very hot weather because whenever there are
wrecks here the countryside goes up in flames. It is a description that you may
have written to get if off your mind if it haunts. In those days the allowable liquor in
Calif was high. Did you mean, 'drove it into the back end of a Plymouth following...
it outta town'?
Comment Written 16-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 17-Jul-2017
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No, the 1962 car hit the 1955 car head-on and drove it backward until the 1958 Plymouth could not avoid rear-ending it. The 1955 was going quite slowly, and the Plymouth following it only a couple of car-lengths behind. The local paper said the convertible was traveling at a "high rate of speed." The young mother and her child in the Plymouth were "incredibly lucky" and sustained no serious injuries.
Comment from crich
There are those moments when our lives changed drastically, sometimes as witness and sometimes as victim and sometimes as instigator of an event. Lucky you were, to be the witness and to have learned from it. Great telling of the story. The vivid details are sobering. Great job!
reply by the author on 16-Jul-2017
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There are those moments when our lives changed drastically, sometimes as witness and sometimes as victim and sometimes as instigator of an event. Lucky you were, to be the witness and to have learned from it. Great telling of the story. The vivid details are sobering. Great job!
Comment Written 16-Jul-2017
reply by the author on 16-Jul-2017
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There but for the grace of God, the saying goes. Yes, I don't think I drove and drank after that at all. Thanks very much for reading my brief memoir...
