Hubcap From Hell

Remember when I asked for your scary stories?  This one comes from my husband, Doug, and although it's not scary it might make you hum the tune to "The Twilight Zone."  I think it was a the result of a little bit of ESP.  What do you think?    -Mary

I take the scientific approach.  The world is explainable.  Sure, like everyone else, at one time I entertained far out ideas about ghosts and extra-terrestrials.  But then I had a conversion to science.  Only what is observed and corroborated by independent parties who can replicate the same conditions can be considered to be true.  A proposition can never be proven true, only false.  If enough people bear the same witness that is backed by fact; real and documented observation, then the proposition might be true.

All “supernatural” occurrences have an explanation in the real world.  Most of what passes for ‘supernatural’ or ‘psychic’ phenomena can be explained in terms of subconscious or subliminal perception.  The subconscious mind is a fabulous computer and an idiot savant at calculating odds and constructing images.  Our lives run in grooves, in highly distinctive patterns, and our conscious minds are completely unaware of these patterns.  You are thinking about your long-lost friend, and suddenly the phone rings, and it’s your friend.  Freak out!  Supernatural! But your subconscious knew that this was the anniversary of some key moment you and your friend shared.  Your mind calculated the odds and knew that there was some chance you’d hear from the friend and it alerted you in advance.  All subconscious.  No supernatural.  No freak out.  No twilight zone.  

I was driving down the freeway one day in my rainforest green Pathfinder, which I’d named Chingachgook.  I’d just come off of the curving ramp between Interstate 5 south and US 50 and was heading east towards the mountains and home.  Traffic was heavy and slowing only slightly.  Suddenly into my mind appeared the image of a hubcap rolling down the road on its edge.  I didn’t think much about it, but I’d never seen a hubcap rolling down a highway on its edge.  I drove on.  A few minutes later (not right away), I saw a hubcap rolling down along the freeway on its edge.  Scientific me was for a moment baffled.  Then I had it—subliminal perception.  Out of the corner of my eye, my subconscious saw the hubcap on the car, wobbling a bit and about to come off.  Subconscious constructed a projection of what could happen, of what was about to happen to this hubcap.  It did so at this time because it knew that in this situation a wayward hubcap could present a danger and it wanted to alert the conscious automobile pilot, but not scare him to distraction.  It wanted to calculate the odds.  Right?  

-Doug 

Guilt And Limitations

It’s been a busy week here in Carmichael.  We are in the process of helping Doug’s 85-year-old dad move from his apartment nearby, to an assisted living facility.  After a few months of talking to him about this possibility he was able to migrate from an attitude of strong resistance to an acceptance that it was the right time to make such a move.  At first I think he didn’t understand the concept of “assisted living” and pictured a dreary dark nursing home where he would be “sent” to live out his days.   His memory continues to decline steadily and the daily tasks of his simple life are increasingly more difficult, so living alone was less and less feasible or reasonable.

There is a part of me that feels guilty that I couldn’t or wouldn’t offer to take him into our home.  Of course no one expected this of me or even asked, but I know that if I had offered, everyone involved would have been pleased with that option.  He especially, would have loved to have been “taken in “ and cared for in our home.  I think he’s feared this time of life since childhood.  “Who will take care of me when I am old and feeble?”  I suppose we all contemplate that question, in our quiet dark hours, when we aren’t pretending that some day we won’t die.  We fear that the final road we take toward death might be a long and bumpy one, despite our hopes that some day we just.... will not wake up….. and that will be that.  

All this brings to mind a story my mother often told about the time she agreed to take in an elderly relative who could no longer live alone.  My mother always referred to her as “Cousin Nettie”, and it was only about ten years ago that I figured out that “Cousin Nettie” was the wife of my Dad’s first cousin twice removed.  Obviously, Nettie was not a very “close relation” and I suspect that my mother had not had much prior contact with her.  As Mom told the story, she agreed to take Nettie into our home and care for this elderly widow who had no children or other close relations.  This must have been in the mid 1950’s and before I was born, but by then my mom would have had four young children.  I suppose my mother was quite the optimist, a generous spirit, or perhaps just a bit naive.  Apparently Nettie arrived and was soon discovered to be quite senile.  It didn’t take my mother long, perhaps even days, to figure out that taking care of Nettie would be far beyond her capabilities.  Of course the part of this story that we children remembered, is the most gruesome.  When my parents decided to take Nettie to live in a nursing home in nearby Lyndon, KY,  it was discovered by the staff that her hair was actually a wig that had grown to her head.  Nettie died in that nursing home in 1958, a year before I was born.  She was 87 years old.  I suppose my mother related this story for years to come, as a cautionary tale and warning about getting in over your head or biting off more than you could chew.  I’m sure that Mom didn’t regret her decision, to find another situation for Nettie, but I bet that she felt some guilt for not being able to be everything to everyone, all the time. 

So, that brings me back to my father in law.  I’m fairly certain that I would have been in over my head if I had tried to care for him here at home.  Maybe I’m just too much a part of the “me” generation to put aside my own comfort enough to think about caring for an elderly person 24/7.  Or, perhaps I just know my own personal and emotional limitations and am strong enough to adhere to them.  His new place is about 4 minutes from our house.  He’ll still be with us, as he has for years, for Sunday dinner each week.  And, I will continue to take him to his medical appointments and weekly errands. He’s grateful and each time asks me what he would do without my help.  Maybe it’s good to feel a bit guilty.  Perhaps it’s a sign of a healthy conscience.

-Mary
2007

Note: “Cousin Nettie” was Nettie L. Grout (1871-1958).  She married Guy Noyes in Trempealeau, Wisconsin in 1896.  Guy Noyes was the first cousin of my G Grandfather (Clarence Merriman).  By 1910 Guy and Nettie had moved to Louisville, Kentucky and Guy appears to have worked for Clarence Merriman’s various businesses including his cafeteria and furniture company.  A number of years ago I connected online with a distant cousin in this family.  She was able to help me place “Cousin Nettie” into our family tree and sent me some photos she had of Nettie and Guy when they were a young, attractive, newly married couple.  Guy Noyes died in 1934, leaving Nettie as a widow for 24 years until her death.  They had no children. 

More Than We Bargained For

This scary story comes from blog reader, friend and cousin, Bill Lattin.  Bill grew up in Owensboro Kentucky and in this story we find him as a high school kid out for a bit of teenage adventure.  I’m sure we have all been in situations like this, in which part of the fun was the anticipation of danger, but regret hits us like a baseball bat when we realize that we just might be in a position of being truly threatened.  -Mary

A neighbor kid down the street was a couple of years older than I. We got to be friends because we both built and flew model airplanes. This story is about us and another friend of his. I didn't like the friend who I thought was a jerk and usually avoided my neighbor when he was around. I was 16.

Panther Creek meanders through Daviess County south of Owensboro. Owensboro is like a bump on the Ohio River flood plane. In the '37 flood, the only way in or out of here was in a boat. It seems like Panther Creek is either overflowing its banks and flooding half of Daviess County or is practically empty. When Home Depot and Sam's Cub was built recently, they had to fill the cornfields with 6' of dirt to get the stores above the 100 year flood plane. The land near the creek is still mostly covered by thick woods. In places there were dirt firebreak roads and in one place there was a trail along the creek.

I don't remember now how or who heard about this, but somehow one of these guys heard a rumor that there would be a KKK gathering along the trail. We decided to go see if the KKK was really going to meet or if something else was going on. It would be an adventure.

We drove the gravel road out to the bridge over Panther Creek around 11. Something was going on. There were about 20 cars parked out there in the middle of nowhere. We still thought the KKK story was BS and headed down the trail. How about a HS beer bust and hot dog roast? Heck, everybody at OHS "knew" half the kids a OCHS were a bunch of drunks who seemed to have an unlimited supply of beer and liquor. The trail was only about a foot wide with tall weeds on both sides. We didn't need a light to stay on the trail. It was nearly pitch black under the trees.  A quarter mile down the trail we started to see light flickering through the woods from a fire. We kept going until we could see 25 or 30 guys in white sheets and hoods around a huge bond fire through the trees. There was a cross made out of saplings. As soon as we got there we heard the start of someone being whipped. JESUS CHRIST! Lets get the hell out of here right now! . SHIT! A dim kerosene lantern is coming toward us on the trail from the road. We slid down the steep 15' high creek bank on our stomachs and hoped the 3 guys in the sheets wouldn't see us or the weeds we flattened. They didn't and we got the hell out of there a lot faster than we went in. 

All three of us had the shakes and hardly said a word.  I just wanted to go home. My parents were half asleep when I got home. They weren't enthusiastic about calling the sheriff or KSP at all and told me to go to bed. I don't remember ever being that scared again.

This was one adventure we didn't share or brag about. I swore one friend to secrecy a couple of weeks later and told him. He didn't believe it. And he still didn't believe it after I took him out to the site and he saw the remains of the bonfire and cross.

25 years later I told this story to my wife's uncle when we were living on his farm in Ohio County.  I was shocked when he wasn't surprised. He said his father had been a member of the KKK. His story was that the KKK in Ohio County was like a vigilante police force and didn't have anything to do with suppression of blacks...probably because you'd be hard pressed to find a black man in Ohio County.  If you were a lazy drunk, beat your wife or didn't feed your family, some armed KKK members would arrive on horseback and warn you. If the warning didn't work, you'd get a beating you wouldn't soon forget.

- Bill

There are an estimated 6,000 – 8,000 Klan members today divided between over 100 local chapters.  Of course in the 1920s that number was estimated to be more like 5 million.  It’s frightening to me to think of all these people filled with so much hate for others! - Mary

Update- September 2012-- The author of this story, William J. Lattin Jr. passed away on September 15 2012, at the age of 74.  His friendship will be greatly missed.  -Mary 

Scary Stories- The Clock

It's October, so I'll start off with my "scary" story.  I've received another from one of my readers, which I will publish.  I'm expecting one from you, so I hope you have starting thinking about it.  Everyone has been a bit frightened at least once in their life.  Thanks!  

Emmy’s Clock

About 15 years ago my elderly grandmother decided to move from her home into an Episcopal church home for the elderly because she was getting too frail to live alone anymore.  She asked me what I might like to have from her home and I said that if I had to choose, I would like her old Seth Thomas pendulum clock that sat on a table in her living room and whose ticking sound had dominated my visits to her quiet house when I was a child.  I’d venture to bet that if you asked any of her 10 grandchildren what they remembered most about my grandmother’s home, that all would first mention that ticking clock.  So my grandmother packed up the clock and had it shipped to me.  

At first I had it in our living room and actually tried to keep up with winding it each day.  It was wound by a key---- the turning key raising the weights located on the sides of the pendulum.  On one side you inserted the key to raise a weight that powered the clock, on the other side you inserted the key to raise a separate weight that powered the chime.  My grandmother would wind the clock each day, often letting me help if I was over spending the night at her house.  She never wound the side with the chime because she  didn’t like the dull gonging sound that it would make each hour if wound.  When I received the clock, at first I wound both sides.   I was curious about the chime that I had never heard and also wanted to make sure it worked properly.   Soon, I grew tired of winding the clock at all. 

Eventually we put the clock on a dresser in our bedroom and for several years it sat there and was never wound.  How would we sleep with that ticking sound all night?  Next to the clock, I placed an old photograph of my grandmother and her sister as children.

A number of years later, in the summer of 1999 my grandmother passed away at the age of 92.   I went back to Kentucky for her funeral.  A couple of days after I returned home from that trip something strange happened.  I was walking out of my bedroom (where the clock resided on my dresser), when I heard the clock chime once.  “Gong”     I looked at my son who was nearby and said, “Did you hear that? , the clock chimed”.  He had heard it also.  I went to investigate.  Perhaps the chime weight had been in the raised position and something had made it drop a bit and chime.  No….. Both the clock and chime weights were completely in their spent/down position.  And …we hadn’t touched the clock in years.  Interesting!  I was convinced that it was some sort of message from my dead grandmother.  My husband took the scientific approach when I called him at work to tell him about the clock.  Perhaps the vibrations of opening the dresser drawers each day finally caused the clock to oddly chime, he suggested.  Yes, I had opened the dresser earlier that morning but hours before the clock had chimed.  And, it had sat there for several years without chiming unexpectedly despite the dresser drawers being opened each day.  I told this story to various people, and many had some type of reasonable, logical, scientific explanation for the occurrence, ranging from the idea of a small earthquake to the thought that perhaps I had just imagined that the clock had chimed.  

I must tell you that the clock has only chimed once more since the incident I have just described.  That occurred in mid-November several years after the first incident, and when I called my brother a few days afterward to report the clock’s latest antics he related to me that he had recently taken the old table the clock had sat on in our grandmother’s home out of storage.  He’d refinished the table and had placed it in his living room on the same day I was now saying that I had heard the clock give it’s second unexpected chime.  By now my husband was starting to agree that maybe there was no scientific explanation and he insisted I scan my family history files to see if there was anything of significance on that November date.  Well, the only thing I found was that it was the date of my grandmother’s parents anniversary.  Maybe just a coincidence.  

The clock still sits on my dresser and hasn’t made a peep since.  And, I am still…. somewhat…….almost…….vaguely……pretty certain that the chimes were a message from my grandmother.

-Mary