Crossing The Line | Not Avoiding

The way I met my friend Larry is a pretty interesting story.  My father owned a 1960 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck that I’m convinced could have and may still survive a nuclear blast.  Faded brown, inline six, three on the tree.  Fleetside longbed.  Weighed close to five thousand pounds.  Seat belts?  Hah.  Padded Dash?  Please.  Radio?  Surely you jest.  Air Conditioning?  Stop, you’re slaying me.  It looked similar to the one pictured here, only not quite as rough.

He picked me up in it from football practice one afternoon.  Spring practice to be exact, March of 1970, probably about 5:30 pm.  We pulled out of the school parking lot, through the intersection of Bouldercrest Road and Key Road, and down to Mary Lou Lane to take a left and head home.  A motorcycle was approaching in the oncoming lane.  A 1969 Honda Scrambler similar to the one pictured here.  A beautiful bike, pristine.  No match for a five thousand pound Fleetside.  We waited for him to pass before turning, and as he got closer, it became apparent the cyclist was looking down to his right and did not see us.  Unbeknownst to my father, his left front was slightly over the line, and the Honda struck the front end of the truck at about forty or forty-five m.p.h.  I can still vividly see the rider rolling across the hood of the truck right in front of me.  I actually think he was wearing a silver helmet.  We both jumped out of the truck to check on him, and he assured us he was okay.  The Scrambler, however, was not.  Mangled and bent, it lay in a heap in the middle of Bouldercrest Road.  The Fleetside, of course, suffered no damage whatsoever, and if it did, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  The main thing was that the young man riding the bike was unhurt.  He was about five years older than me, blonde and on his way to work at Kroger.  He told us his name was Larry Kagelmacher.  “Kagelmacher,” my father replied.  “Is your father’s name Herbert?”  Larry told him yes.  Of course his father’s name was Herbert.  There just weren’t that many Kagelmachers on the south side or anywhere in Atlanta, then or now.  It turned out my father and Herbert knew each other from East Atlanta, and were brothers in the Masons.

When the police arrived and assessed the situation, the officer asked Larry if he needed medical attention.  Larry said he did not.  I do remember at one point he asked my father what was the color of his truck.  “I don’t know, what would you call that… P-ss Brindle?” he replied.  The officer laughed, then wrote him a ticket for crossing the yellow line.  Then he proceeded to write Larry a ticket for “not avoiding an accident.”  Even my fourteen year old mind realized at the time that that was just wrong.  The poor guy just went head to head with a Chevrolet Apache on a three hundred pound motorbike.  A ticket for “not avoiding an accident” was adding insult to injury, even if the only injury was, thank goodness, to the bike.  

What happened next just shows what a different time and place in which this occurred.  After issuing the citations, the officer asked if he should call a wrecker.  “No, we can just load the bike up in the back and we’ll take him home,” said my father.  Larry said that was fine so the four of us lifted the remains of the Scrambler into the back of the truck.  Larry had told us earlier he lived on Bouldercrest Road in Cedar Grove.  “I’ll ride in the back,” said Larry, “when I bang on the top our house is the next one on the right.”  The officer left and we headed down Bouldercrest.  When we got to Cedar Grove, Larry banged on the top, and we pulled into the driveway.  His dad Herbert came out  and we told him what had happened.  Larry reiterated that he was not hurt, and we unloaded the Scrambler from the back of the truck.  Daddy and Herbert talked about East Atlanta and some of the goings-on at the Mason Lodge.  Larry went into the house to call work, and we climbed into the truck and headed back to Gresham Park.  In so many ways, due to “One Call That’s All” and the ones that are “For The People,” this simply could not have happened today.  First of all, the officer would not have just taken Larry at his word that he was okay.  An ambulance would have to have been dispatched to verify as such.  Secondly, a wrecker would have to have been called.  Today, an officer would not have even given us the choice, let alone help us load the bike in the back of the truck.  And finally, we never would have been allowed to take off with Larry in the back of the truck.  He would have to have ridden in the tow truck, strapped in safe and sound with a redneck road hog wrecker operator at the wheel, while we made our way home to Rollingwood Lane.

Fast forward forty years.  Larry married Jackie, I married Marie and we lived our lives.  Larry and Jackie divorced in the mid-nineties, but remained and still are very close friends.  Marie passed away in ’09.  Jackie and I had started dating in the spring of 2010.  Her mother had spent a week in the hospital, and I went out to visit Meme on the day she came home.  Larry came to visit as well, and we both came to the front door at the same time.  After Jackie got over the initial surprise (she was actually speechless, if you can believe that) of us walking in together, she introduced us.  Larry stuck out his hand and said, “Hey, Jim, Larry Kagelmacher.  Etheridge, Etheridge… that name sounds familiar.”  I shook his hand and said, “Hey, Larry, you and I actually met on Bouldercrest Road back in 1970.  I was in a brown Chevy Apache and you were on a Scrambler.”  He immediately started to laugh, looked down, shook his head and said, “Oh my Lord.”  “You do know that that wreck was entirely my father’s fault,” I said, “He was over the center line.”  “Yeah, and I got a ticket for Not Avoiding An Accident.  What was the deal with that?”  We both laughed and agreed that it is indeed a small world.  We hadn’t seen each other since that evening on Bouldercrest Road.  But there we were, standing in the living room of Jackie’s mom’s house… Still Cruisin’!  –J.