Newspapers / Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper / Nov. 1, 1962, edition 1 / Page 5
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November, 1962 THE : R LITTLE DRINK IS HARMLESS The hills looked like vanilla cupcakes in the late snow. The cars cut black scars around them and, where the road dropped steeply to the river, the bridge looked like a child’s Erector set. On the far side was the town—a few churoh spires and some old-fashioned houses and two or three traffic lights, which were brlEhter in the gloom of a snowy day. Bob ordered one more. He was careful about his drink ing because Ymelda worried. It wasn’t that he was al coholic. She claimed that it affected his iudgment. Not mudh. A little. Liquor made him happier and more ebullient and more confident and less cautious. This made Bob smile. Women, he felt, never really un derstand their men. They are always afraid of something that never happens. Nervous Mel. he called her. He snap ped his shot glass up, tilted his head, and nodded fare well to the bartender. The car outside was his. It was old, but it was all his. He patted it and pulled his gloves on and sat behind the wheel and ran the engine a little. A sweet-sounding baby, that engine. It had a quiet roar of authority. Bob chewed on a mint as he swung the car around, watch ing in both directions for traffic, and on across the bridge and up into the hills. He thought of his happiness. He had so much of it. Not much money but a fortune in contentment. He had come home from the war safely and Ymelda had been wait ing for him as though sihe had not stirred since he kissed her goodbye. Bob had a job. It paid $118.50 with time-and-a-half. He cannabilized old cars in a iunkyard and he had a boss who trusted him all the way. Bob and Mel had bought a four-and-a-'half-room house—he called it a bungalow— for $7,250 and little Mickey had been born in it suddenly and unexpectedly eight months ago. Now there was another baby coming. A girl, ihe hoped. A real girl with a yellow pony tail and saucy mouth and laugh-squinted eyes and big. wet kisses for Daddy. Bob drove through the hills swelling with pride. He was richer than Rockefeller and he knew it. He looked at his watch. Mel should be almost through at the doctor’s office. He started back, around the bases of the hills. He was happy. Extraordinarily happy. He moved the car up a notch or two and spun it a little on the snowy turns. There was no traffic up here. Nothing to worry about. He had promised Mel that he wouldn’t take a drink. Bob reached into his pocket and popped tv/o more mints into his mouth. What a woman doesn’t know cannot !hurt her. He came to the brow of the hill leading down to town and he know, the instant he passed it, that he was going too fast. It is the knowledge that a good driver feels, with out looking at a speedometer. Bob knew, the moment he tapped the brakes lightly, that he would never make the bottom turn onto the steel bridge. A man full of liquor would be unintelligent in a situation like this. He would panic. But not Bob. He ihad thirty seconds left in which to think. So. he figured all the angles. He was glad Mel wasn’t with him. She’d scream. She’d complicate everything. The best thing, he knew, was not to try to turn the wheels. The car was going faster and faster down the icy road. He would stay in his lane —luckily there was nothing ahead—and, when he rearih- ed the river, he would permit the car to go through the handrail. Before it left the road, he would open the door on his left and .iam his foot in the door, so it would not close. . he would push the door way and strike out. Bob thanked God tlhat n who used his head. t L O T Page Five TRUE FRIENDSHIP There were two men in a hospital room. One !had a win dow beside his bed. The other had a blank wall. The one who had the window spent most of the day telling his friend what 'he saw. park again. Johnny,” he would say. She looks prettier in the morning than any dame I ever saw. She sits on the bench and she moves that baby carriage back and forth, back and forth. She knows that young cop will be along any minute, but she al ways acts surprised when he shows.” Day after day the man at the window saw the world and told his friend what he saw. His friend became lealous. One night, the man at the window had an at tack, and needed a heart pill. He begged Johnny to give him the pill. He whispered for a nurse. He tried to press a buzzer. He died. In the morning, the bed at the window was empty. Johnny demanded to be moved to it at once. The doctors were disgusted at his greed. But 'he was moveed to the window. And when he got to his bed, he couldn’t wait to look out at the world. All ihe saw outside the window was a blank wall. They held their breaths. Bob opened the door, lammed his loot in, and swung the wheel slightly so that the vehicle, instead of crashing into the steel girder, splin tered the wooden handrail, arched gracefully over the river, spashed in. He struck out and headed for shore, shivering in the icy current. He could hear the cheers as he staggered up the bank- 'Hien he remembered he had left litUe Mickey in LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS CS77
Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper
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Nov. 1, 1962, edition 1
5
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