Ouch!

It's always an adventure when I hang out with my dad.  This time, I wasn't actually with him when the adventure began, but I did go with him to get stitched up later.
My husband, Dad, Uncle Jimmy, Cousin JP, and a few of their friends had been up at Uncle Jimmy's hunting cabin for a couple nights when, in the early morning,  I got a text from my husband, Matt:
 "Do you have any Steristrips?"
My reply was:  "No but I can get some.  You or ?  Dad usually uses duct tape."
Matt called shortly thereafter telling me not to worry---it wasn't as bad as he thought.  What really happened is Dad discovered that I knew he had a cut and didn't want me to worry. 
Around eleven o’clock that morning, Mom, Aunt Carolyn, and I drove up the long, narrow, and winding road to the hunting cabin.  We arrived in the cool, crisp late morning, and all the guys were packing up and almost ready to head back to civilization.  Dad was standing with Mom telling her what happened.  I walked up in mid-conversation and caught "Jimmy and I just got it to stop bleeding," "peeling potatoes," and "in the dark."  His middle finger on his right hand was duct taped, so I didn’t ask to see it, but knew if it took hours to get it to stop bleeding, he probably needed stitches.  I was trying not to plague him with questions and concerns, though. 
Later, when we returned to Nannie's, Mom requested that Dad show us the cut.
He and mom pulled off the duct tape and two of the three band aids before I interrupted with "Ick!  Leave it alone!  It's starting to bleed again!"

Everyone agreed he needed stitches and someone pointed out that a cut like that could be taped up but would drive him crazy since it was on his right hand and he was always busy-busy-busy and it would take longer to heal without stitches. 
Mom put some fresh bandaids on, causing dad to break his silence with a pained chuckle, "Ouch!  Jimmy's gentler than you are!"  Dad and I re-wrapped his finger with the duct tape then he disappeared upstairs without a word. 
We sat around discussing Dad's need for stitches and his stubbornness.
He came downstairs after five minutes and said, "I don't need to take a shower before I go, do I?"
"No!" We chorused.  He had been at the cabin for a few days but had changed clothes so he no longer smelled of man-cave and fried food.
I asked if I could go with him to the hospital.  I was antsy and needed to get out of the house.

In the closet-sized waiting room, duct tape on finger

Dad and I drove the narrow road to the teeny, tiny hospital where he was seen quickly.

“So how did this happen?” The doctor asked after inspecting Dad’s finger.

“Well, I was getting ready to peel potatoes before everyone got up.  I was cleaning the knife, but I had it turned the wrong way…”

She gave him two shots at the base of his middle finger, a digital block.  “Now this is the only time you can flip me off,” she smiled at him and covered the rest of his hand with a blue cloth.  After a few minutes she started cleaning the cut.  Dad winced and jumped, then just gritted his teeth and got very still.  “Can you feel that?” I asked. 

“Yeah I can feel it,” he responded. 

I looked at the doctor who said, “Well, you will feel some pressure….”  To which Dad replied, “I can feel that stuff burning,” and gestured to the antiseptic.

Apparently the doctor figured it was nothing, because she continued to clean and swipe at the cut with the brown antiseptic-drenched gauze while dad made ouch faces, which consisted of him gritting his teeth and grimacing.

The doctor then got out her suture kit and poked the needle into his skin at the top and side of the cut.  “Now, I can definitely feel that,” Dad announced.  “In fact, the only part that’s numb is the bottom of my finger.” 

This made her pause.  “It’s just numb down there?"  She asked, pointing to the base of his finger.

“Yeah,” Dad replied.

“Well, in like, less than ten percent of patients the digital block doesn’t work.”

“It just feels like a bee sting, go ahead and finish.  I’ll be alright.” Dad directed.  “A white-faced hornet sting,” he amended.

“Soooo,” I asked, “How many stitches do you think he’ll need?”   

The doctor leaned over and inspected the cut again, her long wavy dark hair falling forward, and said, “Probably about ten.”

“So ten bee stings Dad.  That’s a lot of stings.”

The doc said, “No, it’s going to get worse as I go.  I’ll do a local anesthetic.”  She started gathering supplies during which time Dad could resist no more and pushed down the blue cloth so he could have a good look at his finger, which had been slowly looking worse the longer we were there. 

“Aaah!  That’s my sterile area!”  The doctor cried.  “Now I have to sterilize again.”  She plucked the blue cloth from Dad’s hand with forceps and threw it away, covered his hand with a paper sheet, the middle finger sticking out, and started slopping the antiseptic on with the gauze again.  She then injected inside the cut and area around it to numb it up.

Finally, Dad’s finger was numb and she stitched him up as they chatted about horses and deer.  Dad kept leaning over to see what she was doing.  He started to lift his left hand to move the paper down to get a better look.  I grabbed his hand and said, “No touching!”  The thoughtful nurse who was in and out pushed the paper down so he didn’t have to crane his neck to watch his finger get stitched.  

Dad ended up with eight stitches and stern instructions on how to care for it.

Two hours later, we were back at Nannie’s.

             

Beating the System

Johnny, Palm Springs 1965

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After breakfast at Silver Diner, Dad and I waited for Matt to get the car while Nana took Po to the bathroom. I don’t know how it came up, but as we sat on the bench in front of the restaurant he began a story…


“One year license plates would be black with white lettering, and the next they’d be white with black lettering.

Once, the state trooper came right to the house to take the tags off my car. Like the one in the garage at the beach…that one was ’63, but I painted ’64 right over it and it looked pretty good. I did such a good job, it fooled the police. They didn’t look too close though.

The ticket you got, when it was the one where you knew you would lose your license, that was when you went right to DMV, say you misplaced your license, and they’d give you a duplicate. After you went to court and they took your original license, you had the duplicate. They didn’t have computers back then.

Sonny [one of his friends] lost his license until he was 21 in Virginia, so he went to West Virginia and got one there and lost that. He was always racing and speeding.

My brother Frankie, he used to pull into the coffee shop all the cops used to go to [in Fairfax City] and he’d smoke his tires in the parking lot then race off.”

Frankie

Tommy, Dad's twin, in Japan.

Clever Lady

When I was a kid and Gramaw would take me to the mountains, I always enjoyed the trip up there almost as much as being there.  She would tell me stories of her childhood, about my dad and uncles, and my PawPaw (these such stories generally ended in PawPaw cussing somebody).  We would drive country roads to get there and avoid Route 66, though it was faster that way. 
One hot, sunny day I noticed Gramaw, who was wearing a t-shirt, also had a long shirt sleeve on her left arm, which was resting on the window well as she steered the car with her right hand. It was just the sleeve cut off another shirt.
"Gramaw, why do you have a sleeve on your arm?"
"To keep it from getting hot and sunburned," she replied. 

"Oh," I replied thoughtfully.  And thinking back, I can never remember her applying sunscreen or bug spray, instead, she had these little inventions to keep those pesky things away.

29 Diner

I just found a good picture of the diner and an accurate description of its history (I've put a link to the right).  Yay!
I am surprised that Gramaw didn't take any pictures of the diner when they were building the foundation and placing the diner.  I can't find a single pic in all of her albums.
She told me when they were building the foundation, her twin baby boys rode in the front seat of the dump truck she drove.
My gramaw kicked arse!

Copperheads!

Wow, it's been a while.  Dad has gotten all shy on me and wants me to wait "until he kicks off" to put his stories out there.  My clever husband has suggested I collect stories from other people in the meantime, which I think is an excellent idea.
If you want your story (or one that's not necessarily yours, but has been passed down or whatever) here, it must meet a few (very few) criteria:  It should be a story about something you probably couldn't get away with nowadays, and well, that's it.
Also, you can be anonymous.  I love making up aliases.
Anyway, that's it--oh, no, wait, also it can just be a story (or memory!) about old Virginia as my husband puts it.  Back in the day, as it were.  People love those, especially since so much has changed so quickly.
So there:  Something you couldn't get away with today and something about how it used to be around here (Fairfax, Chantilly, Reston, Herndon, Vienna, etc.).

So here is my story (more of a memory, really) of my Gramaw and the Copperhead War.  Okay, it wasn't a war but lots of skirmishes throughout her life.  This memory was brought about by the recent news of the rise in copperhead snakes in Fairfax County.

When she was alive, Gramaw spent a lot of time in the mountains (I expect she's there all the time now), and she stayed in an ancient house that she had decorated with the hundreds of greeting cards and postcards she'd received over the years, along with various clippings and bits that made her chuckle or reminded her of her loved ones.  She would stay in that big scary (at night) house all by herself, and mind you, this was a lady who was afraid of the dark.  She wasn't afraid of anything but the dark. 
And here I will get sidetracked a bit to tell you why she was afraid of the dark, because it wasn't something she was just born with, but something she learned.  Soon after Gramaw was born in 1912, her mother died, leaving her father with several kids (5 or 6).  After a few years, he found he couldn't care for the children, so he sent them off to foster homes.  In one of these foster homes that my Gramaw was in, the punishment of misbehavior was to be locked in a dark closet.  The other kids would scratch on the closet door and generally terrify her.  This was how she learned to be afraid of the dark.
She wouldn't let her fear of the dark keep her from doing things, she just armed herself with a big flashlight and an even bigger gun.  My Gramaw was a tough chick, but as sweet as the delicious chocolate fudge she made.

Back to the copperheads!  She once told me a story of how a copperhead bit her dog on the leg and the skin turned all black and sore.  The dog survived.
So whenever Gramaw would be out in the woods for a long time, she would take her big ol' pistol, her nitroglycerin tablets for her heart, and her snake bite kit.  I don't recall ever encountering snakes on our walks, but I do remember driving down the dirt road and seeing a snake in the middle.  Gramaw gunned the engine and ran that coppehead over.  Then she backed up and ran him over again.  Once more, just for good measure, she ran him over, then got out to check that he was dead.  This is the only time I'd ever seen her be ruthless.  Usually she was saving creatures, including black snakes.  She couldn't stand for animals to be hurt.
But copperheads (and water moccasins) were a threat to her family and her pets.
I miss her!

 Gramaw & Baby Po 2006




PS forgive any mistakes, Po is requiring my attention and I'm short on time.

Here's One from Tommy!

When they were around 11 or 12 years old, dad and Uncle Tommy were down in Caroline County during hunting season with their dad, my PawPaw.  Some of the boys’ friends were also with them when someone, but they didn’t know who, shot a deer on their property.  PawPaw told Tommy and his friends to go drag the deer back over to them.  Tommy said they were dragging the deer by its antlers back toward the road when these strange men came running up yelling, “Hey!  That’s our deer!”  Tommy and his friends dropped the deer and took off running toward the road.  Meanwhile, my dad came out of the woods on the other side of the road and saw Tommy come tearing out of the woods.  PawPaw drove up and threw open the car door and told Tommy to get in and lock the doors, which Tommy did.  PawPaw was standing by the car with the door open, holding his double barrel shotgun by his side.  The men ran up yelling that they were gonna drag that kid out of the car and beat his ass to teach him a lesson.  PawPaw said, “You’re not laying a hand on that boy,” as he raised his gun.  The men kept walking forward shouting threats.  Tommy stayed put in the back seat as his daddy had told him to do.  PawPaw said to the men in an ‘I dare you’ tone, “Take one more step forward,” when they did, PawPaw clicked the safety off the gun.  Tommy said that was the loudest noise he’d ever heard in his life, when his daddy clicked the safety off that gun.  "I’m half Indian," growled PawPaw, "and if you take one more step, I’ll shoot you dead where you stand."  The men stopped.  At this point, the Game Warden and several State Police had come rolling in from both ends of the highway.  Tommy didn’t hear this part, but dad says the State Policemen were saying, “Mr. Glascock, please put the gun down.”

Finally, PawPaw put the gun down and the men went off with a few cops while PawPaw talked to another cop.  “What would you have done if it was your son?” PawPaw asked the cop.  “Mr. Glascock,” he replied, “I would have done the same thing.”

PawPaw told his boys that if those men had taken another step, he would have ended up in prison.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's & his brother Tommy's birthday.  They of course could not care less, but we wish them a happy day anyway!

Johnny, 29 Palms

Tommy,  Japan

This Was All Dairy Farms/The Road Just Ended at Fairfax Circle

Amidst all the new homes, businesses, and roads, it's hard to believe that once upon a time it was all just fields and dairy farms around here.
I remember when the populated part of Fairfax seemed to end at Greenbriar Shopping Center:  there was a Gino's Chicken that stands out in my mind (along with a grocery store and such) and not much after that besides the neighborhood of Brookfield, which was where we lived when I was a kid (and wasn't there a Dart Drug in that shopping center?).
My dad and I were driving to Herndon the other day to have an early birthday breakfast with his twin brother Tommy and my cousin, Scotty (unbeknownst to both twins), and on the way there, as we drove along Fairfax County Parkway toward Herndon, Dad gestured around him from the passenger seat and said, "This all just used to be dairy farms."
What prompted him to say this was that I was presenting my argument as to why he should keep letting me put his stories here, and part of that argument was that many people are curious about what it used to be like and look like around here.  I mean, nowadays, could anyone get away with taking gas from an airport under construction without getting chucked in jail and fined, instead of just some clever soul switching signs on the tank to teach people a lesson?  (See "Free Gas!")  It's fun to hear about stuff he and his friends would get away with.  I enjoy hearing his stories, as do my husband and friends.  Dad is also a good storyteller.  Anyway, he got all shy on me and said to "wait until he kicked off" to put all his stories and pictures here ("You have a lot of pictures of me there ...why don't you put some of ... Peony?" he suggested).
Anyway, we'll see what happens.  At least he will still tell me stories.  I just may not be able to share them here for a long time!

DT "Bill" Glascock, Who Did Whatever He Damn Pleased

My PawPaw was the old guy in the 1980s who had the station wagon full of stuff and would frequent the Greenbriar McDonald's and Shell Station.  Once a girl told me they (students at Chantilly High) called him the dog man.  He did always have a dog with him.  My best friend Anita didn't believe me when, after stopping at the Shell or McD's after school, we passed him in his packed-full-of-stuff car and I said, that's my PawPaw!  I had to have my mom confirm for Anita that he was indeed my grandfather and even then she eyed me suspiciously.
My Gramaw said that PawPaw could be talking about the weather and sound like he was cussin' you.  I love it.  Because he did have a fondness for cussin', God bless him.  I have inherited this fondness but must repress it.  So sad.
When PawPaw was a young man in the 20s and 30s throughout the depression and prohibition, he would sell his moonshine to a few lucky customers.
This is how it worked:
You gave him the money at one location, perhaps one of his stores or gas stations, I'm not sure, then he told you where to find the moonshine, which was hidden in a creek just over his property line so he couldn't get busted.
He never liked being told what to do and he didn't like asking people for anything, so when he wanted to fly planes, he built himself an airfield.
He used to run a tavern in what is the old Stone House at Manassas, VA.
That's all I've got for now! Bed time!

Roadblock!

One night me, Ronnie Hall, an’ Wayne J. were riding around the back roads of Centreville. An’ I think Wayne wanted to go by and see this girl he liked. So we were out in front of her house and Ronnie tooted on the horn an’ of course she didn’t come out an’ then this Fairfax County Cruiser come up behind us. And Ronnie decided to take off. Ronnie took off an’ wouldn’t stop for the County Man. Ronnie got so far ahead you could look back across the fields an’ see the cruiser’s headlights. Ronnie said, “We’re too far ahead, we’re gonna have to stop an’ give him a chance to catch up to us.” He had the headlights turned off an’ we were going so fast on the back roads that the white fences just blurred by an’ that’s how Ronnie was following the road.

We took off again when the cruiser got close, an’ when we got to Route 50 we wanted to go West to get across the county line, but we were in a hurry because the police was catchin’ up an’ we got confused, an’ went East an’ they had the road blocked. A bunch of policemen opened our doors an’ had guns pointed at us. They took us to the Fairfax County Jail in the town of Fairfax an’ when they took us in Wayne walked right out the door an’ disappeared. Ronnie, they put him in a cell because he was driving, and me they put in a holding cell and my father came and got me.

Free Gas!

When Dulles Airport was being built in the late 50s and early 60s, my dad and his friends would watch people drag race at night on the runways (dad preferred to do his drag racing at Fairfax Circle).  After a while they realized that there was plenty of gas to be had in the 300-500 gallon tanks that were left there during construction.  Soon, everyone around Dulles was sneaking onto the budding airport to get some free gas.  According to my dad, “You could fill your tank up quicker than at a filling station.”


One night after his friend Ronnie filled his car, a black 1957 two-door hardtop Ford with a 312 engine, full of free Dulles gas, something went wrong.  The souped up Ford blew black smoke all the way from Dulles to the Sunoco Station at Fairfax Circle next to Tops Drive-in.

“They got wise to us an' switched the diesel an' gas labels on the tanks.”  Dad says, “Ronnie drained the tank an' filled it up with gasoline, but we still had to overhaul the engine.”

Old Man Pratt and the Cornfield

As told by Johnny Glascock...







One day me an' Ronnie Hall went deer hunting in Caroline County an’ when it got dark we decided to go to old man Pratt's farm an’ spotlight some deer.

So we're drivin’ through old man Pratt's cornfield an' some headlights come up behind us. We take off an’ get farther an' farther ahead an’ Ronnie says, "We'd better slow down and let this poor fella catch up!" So we slow down and see it’s Mister Pratt behind us. We take off again, then get too far ahead an’ Ronnie slows down again an’ lets old man Pratt get right up on his bumper, then takes off. Ronnie lets him catch up again an’ this time Mister Pratt pulls up behind us an’ gets out of the truck and starts to walk up to the car, an' Ronnie takes off again, laughing. Mister Pratt gets back in his truck an' comes after us again. Ronnie gets way ahead of him again an’ we do this for a while until we get bored then go back to the highway an’ take off back toward Fairfax.

Old man Pratt never did catch us.


(updated 3/22/10)

I Want to See Some ID

or Johnny's Adventures with the Secret Service

It is the beginning of the second round of big snow 2010 and dad and I are at Silver Diner enjoying breakfast. I am happy to sip the hot coffee as I watch the snow blowing around outside, then Dad grins and begins a story I haven't heard before...

After spending part of the day hunting in the mountains, my dad Johnny, and his friend who we'll call BH, decide to go to DC. They take all their guns from BH's car and put them in Johnny's trunk, then hop in BH's car and head for the big city.

Once they are in DC, they end up behind a cab that isn't going fast enough for them, so BH goes around the cab then locks up the brakes as the car fills with the sound of their mischievous laughter. They mean no harm, just having fun with the cabbie. They go back and forth playing with the cabbie a while, passing each other and honking their horns, but eventually Johnny and BH lose interest and go on farther into the city, find a place to park, and hop out of the car.

The next thing they know, two big guys are throwing them against a wall. The men say they are Secret Service and Johnny and BH are suspected of planning to kill the president.
"I want to see some ID," Johnny demands, and the men pull out their badges as more men arrive with angry German Shepards straining at their collars, snarling at Johnny and BH.
One of the cops says, "We'd like permission to search your car."
BH says, "I'm not giving you permission to search the car!"
The cop gives BH a smug smile and says, "We can search it now, or you can wait for a warrant..."
"Okay, search it!" BH says, handing over the keys.
One of the suited fellas searching the car looks up at Johnny and growls, "I'd love to find a rifle in this car." But he does not find a rifle, only the boxes from the guns Johnny and BH wisely left in Johnny's car in the mountains.

***

Dad takes a sip of his coffee and says to me, "I think that cabbie got mad and called us in, said we were threatening the president."

Photos from my Gramaw's Wallet

My Gramaw, Elvira "Curly" Glascock, died about 2 years ago.  These are the photos she carried with her in her wallet...

From top:  Lisa, GMU Nursing School; Angela, Senior; Scotty and George the Cat; Gramaw, Scotty, Tommy (my uncle--dad's twin); Gramaw & PawPaw at a wedding; Johnny (my dad) and Gramaw; Johnny; Tommy in Japan, Frankie (uncle); Johnny, Angela, Lisa, Faye, PawPaw; PawPaw; Petey, Sandy, puppy; Petey or Prissy; Swimmin' dogs (Sandy and Petey, perhaps); Misty; Old photo; poem about the Moon.  Gramaw loved the moon!