Tit For Tat

 

This is the weekend for the DOGWOOD ART Festival.  We went in 1975.  That year parts of the festival were at Lenox Square and parts at Piedmont Park.  Anna was pregnant with Rocky at the time.  I remember at one booth I bought her an egg with a little human baby prying itself out of the crack in it.  It had a chain with it, it was meant to worn like a necklace.  It looked almost divinely inspired.  We were so impressed with it after the festival I tracked down the creator. Who worked at Tuxedo Pharmacy on Roswell Road in Atlanta and bought another one.  I forgot why, we did not need two, it must have been for a pregnant friend.

Also at the DOGWOOD ART Festival, at both places, the park and Lenox, I saw the same woman looking at me smiling a knowing smile or maybe an insane smile.  More about her later.

That same time period, I had my Honda CL350 motorcycle for sale by an ad in the paper.  A man came to looked at, he liked it and said he would pay my asking price without any haggling.  He wrote me a check and said I would have to wait until a week, his payday, to cash it, he said, “I’l be honest with you, I’m broke now.”  I waited to his payday to cash it.  I transacted the check at a driveup window at a  bank on Chattahoochee Blvd in Atlanta, ino my checking account .  Afterwards, I drove around front, parked and went into the lobby to draw out some spending money.  By the time I got inside the bank had already ran it and it bounced.  They recognized me and gave me the check back, still warm from bouncing.

I did some detective work.  I went to his children’s school (Park Street School) and to the post office and paid a fee to get his change of address.  He didn’t leave one.  But at Park Street School I leaned from his kid’s teacher that the family moved to Oklahoma, about the day after he took possession of my motorcycle.

At the time Buddy Darden was the county’s DA.  I went to his office and talked to an assistant DA Sam Huff.  Samd Huff told me once I accepted the check that I knew was bad at the moment I was accepting credit, thus no longer a criminal matter, but a civil matter.

Well, shit!

Sam Huff went on to be an exert BBQ Chef and has had a number of BBQ restaurants.    It appeared that the best BBQ restaurants owners in and around Marietta once apprenticed under Sam Huff.

Getting back to the radiant old hag with the vicious pretty smile:  During that year I often thought about her and Karma.  Was she there to serve a little Karma on us… kind of like a “tit for tat” So to speak?  I mean, I took a financial beating selling that motorcycle for nothing, so maybe something good was due.

I am not sure of time frame I am about to tell you about.  I am not sure if it was before or during the pregnancy.  I worked at the Atlanta Post Office through the night, getting off at 8:30am.  One morning on the way home crossing Bankhead Highway, I was going under the greenlight, when a man in a pickup truck ran the red light (same light) and t-boned me.  It hit me with such force it knocked me into a vacant lot next to a McDonald’s parking lot.  The man that hit me was thrown through his windshield and was killed instantly.  He was on his way to the drug store for a refill of whatever he needed and apparently passed out while driving.

I think my Gremlin was hit with such force it (and me) turned over at least one time, maybe more.  Oddly, my car radio was playing Bob Dylan’s “BLOOD ON THE TRACKS”, which was suitable because my face was covered in blood.  I  was upside down on the other side of the carf.  I did what I always did back then when something just happened to think about.  I lit up a Winston cigarette.  By this time a crowd ran outside from McDonald’s, probably to get a closer look of the blood.    Being hit in the side by a pickup truck knocked me to the other side and caved in the Gremlin’s side.  If I were wearing a seat belt I would have been crushed.  The other driver went through his windshield and was killed instantly.  He too, didn’t have a seatbelt on.  This one wreck was an argument for and against seatbelts. 

The next thing someone reached in and yanked the Winston out of my mouth.  It was one of the ambulance drivers.  They rushed me to Cobb General Hospital.  They called Anna at worked and she rushed there.  In the examination room doctors and nurses probed me.  My face was cut up from the shattered window glass.  No broken bones, but I did have a big headache that hung on for about 10 days.

After the medical people released me Anna called her mother to come and get me.  She was working on something timely important. 

They wheeled me to the waiting room to wait.  While sitting in the waiting room and aged lady came in sat down.  I told her I was waiting on someone.   Then a teenage boy came in and looked around.  The elderly lady asked him was he looking for someone and he said yes..  The old lady pointed at me and said, “Well, there he is!!”  I said, no I was waiting on my mother-in-law and the teenager said no, he was looking for somebody not me. 

The old lady explained why she made the mistake; I was waiting for someone and he was looking for someone and yetta yetta blab bla.

Then the teenager, tall and skinny, walked behind her and spread his arms out like a giant hawk and waved them back and forfth behind the lady.  She kept on talking and did not realize he was imitating a giant war eagle of some kind behind her making a show.

I cracked up giggling.  She looked started.  The pain medicine ER gave me did not help, as far as making me keep a straight face.

I lived!  That may be where the Karma I was owed kicked in.