Father was only tough on the outside

Chapter 62: 1950 • Sonora, California

Feb 1950 • Larry’s diary (age 16)

Feb 8  Went to scout meeting and signed up with air scouts. Baby Cathy is sick with cut finger.

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Mom’s ham and cheese sandwiches were our favorite lunch. She ground the ham with her metal meat grinder which she vise-locked onto the edge of the yellow Formica kitchen table. After filling the soft hot dog buns, she rolled them in waxed paper, twisted the ends, and then heated them on a cookie sheet in the oven.

She let me help this one time. I was a year-and-a-half old, perched on the chair between her legs, my hand just big enough to fit through the opening into the metal housing, my finger pushing the meat in. Now the way these contraptions are constructed, when something gets ground in and jammed, you have to turn the handle in reverse to unjam it.

Betty said I didn’t make a sound when it happened. My eyes grew huge, but I didn’t cry or move, I merely turned ashen. My right index finger was jammed in the gear piece with the metal blade cutting into the bone above the first joint. The handle wouldn’t budge in reverse. Mom and my sisters screamed in horror, watching the blood running out the front of the grinder into the bowl. The girls flew hysterically to the store for Dad who came home on a dead run. Unable to get me free, he unscrewed the grinder from the table, scooped me up, and sprinted to the Sonora Hospital. With my finger wedged in tight and wrapped in blood-soaked towels, he handed me and the grinder over to the doctor. The room began to spin, he broke out in a cold sweat, and then he keeled over.

He always fainted. He fainted when Carleen jumped off the back porch, running a nail clear through her foot. He fainted when she ran both arms through the wringer washing machine and her right arm broke and Mom had to hit the safety release to get her out. He fainted when she broke her left arm while bicycling with Larry. (Mike Symons had given his bike to Carleen, but he neglected to mention it had bad brakes. Coasting down Baretta and unable to stop, she fell and broke her arm. Larry was in shock and felt like he should’ve protected her.) 

He fainted again when she fell on her roller skates, breaking her right wrist while her arm was still in the cast. Dad always waited until he got us to the hospital, then he went down. The only living things he mortally harmed were the rooster that crowed at 4am and the dog he accidentally killed when he whacked it over the head with a shovel to stop it from killing the baby chicks; he fainted both those times, too. 

My father, able, strong, and upright, was only tough on the outside.

Catherine Sevenau is a writer, humorist, and storyteller living in Sonoma, California. The stories in this series are excerpts from her book, Through Any Given Door, a Family Memoir, available at Sevenau.com. She is a longtime Broker/Realtor at CENTURY 21 Epic Wine Country. Csevenau@earthlink.net