The Lunch Box

Last Friday my brother and his wife joined me and some friends at a happy hour celebration near Golden, Colorado. The bar where we met has been around for years and is located near the Adolph Coors Company, where dad worked from 1970 until his retirement in 1982.

Dad started working for Coors at their ceramics factory, where he created unique porcelain containers that were used in medical research, among other things. Sometimes the ceramic items were flawed in design and he would bring home these crazy looking, rejected samples. Mom always found a way to incorporate those odd porcelain ditties into her everyday kitchenware.

During his early years at Coors, dad worked the swing shift from 3 pm until midnight. We had to remain silent in the mornings until dad awoke, usually not in a good mood. You see, dad was a confirmed morning person and this shift was not at all to his liking. But he did whatever was necessary to support the family.

One night, dad left work at midnight and started the long drive home. It was probably late summer, and he was riding in his beloved '63 Chevrolet pickup truck. This pretty white truck, dad's pride and joy, held a wonderful camper shell for our summer excursions, and in years past was outfitted with a stock rack in order to help my uncle transport cattle or the hay and feed for his barnyard animals in Castle Rock. Needless to say, dad loved that truck, almost as much as he loved us.

Unfortunately, on this night fate was not kind. A drunk driver, perhaps leaving the very same bar where we now enjoyed margaritas and beers in 2013, came around the corner and hit dad, sending that '63 Chevy careening over the side of a steep hill.

Dad was faithful about wearing his seatbelt so as the truck rolled, dad later recalled, he was held firmly in place and not in any danger of being ejected. He would have survived the crash relatively unscathed, were it not for the lunch box.

You know the kind. If you grew up in a blue-collar household in the sixties, I'm sure you would have seen your dad shuffle off to work in the mornings (or afternoons) with his trusty lunch box.

Sturdy and tough as nails, made of thick black metal, dad's lunch box came equipped with a thermos filled every day either with hot coffee or cold milk, a bologna sandwich, an apple and, if he was lucky, one of his favorite Hostess cherry pies and a baggie stuffed with cheap sandwich cookies mom bought at the day-old bakery.

The handsome white truck rolled at least one-and-a-half times, landing upside down on the railroad tracks below. Dad said his only memory was gripping the steering wheel and the "thud, thud, thud" of the metal lunch box as it flew around the cabin, slamming against his body and head. He came to, unable to see with one eye, his face covered with blood. Dad let loose the seat belt, then crawled out of the truck and up the hill, eventually flagging down a passing motorist. What a sight that must have been, a disheveled man emerging from the side of the road, one hand holding up a flap of bloody skin above his eye.

What happened next I'm not sure of, except that our backyard neighbor, Corky Snyder, collected dad from the hospital. I do remember standing at the front door, in the darkness just before dawn, watching mom and Corky help dad from the car. My father had a thick white turban wrapped about his head, which he wore for quite some time while his severe concussion and the 63 stitches--just enough to match the year of his beloved truck--healed.

Dad was bald for as long as I can remember. After the crash, he had a half-oval scar on the side of his head in the shape of a lunch box.

The sheriff's office located the drunk driver. He was a repeat offender, uninsured, and drove a cement truck for a local company. There was no chance of settling with him. Mom and dad would throw up their hands and say, "You can't get blood out of a turnip!" Dad couldn't shake the fact that despite surviving three long years in the South Pacific jungles during World War II, he could have lost his life to a drunk driver 25 years later, on an otherwise ordinary night.

When I was a young girl, every year I asked for a horse for Christmas; every year I got a plastic horse for my collection. After the accident, dad took a page from my book and asked Santa to bring him a new truck for Christmas. Sure enough, Santa came through, with a pretty little Matchbox truck that sat on the mantelpiece, year after year, as a reminder. Over time, it became one of our family's most cherished Christmas decorations.

My parents eventually purchased a used truck, blue, three on the column instead of four on the floor. It was never quite right and dad struggled to warm up to it. He still missed that pretty white truck and remained faithful to its memory.

Oh, and dad bought a new lunch box before he returned to work, one that gave him no grief the rest of his working years.

Another World

Ted feeding me in our kitchen at 95 Kearney Street (1957)

The place where I was born is so foreign to me, it may as well have been in another country. My parents left not long after I had completed my first year of life, packed our belongings and moved the family to Colorado.

In late spring of 1982, I ventured to the east coast to visit New Jersey for the first time. Well, not really the first time, but at least the first time that is part of my consciousness. One goal of the trip was to visit my New Jersey relatives in their native state. In the years since we moved away, many of the Thompsons had come to Colorado, one family at a time, to see how we were holding up in the Wild, Wild West. Oddly different from my parents, yet remarkably similar in many ways, they were a boisterous, busy, animated lot. Once I set foot in their home environment, those characteristics seemed even more amplified.

My cousin Sharon--who must have drawn the short straw and was consigned to serving as the living history tour guide for her innocent, naive, wide-eyed country cousin--took me to see where we lived, where I was born, the graves of recent ancestors, and places that I previously considered as nothing more than the subject of my father's embellished stories. The cemetery was beautiful and peaceful, even though it was situated near a busy highway. The Great Falls on the Passaic River were as majestic as I'd always heard, and dad's school (PS#5) was stately and shabby, all at once.

Image courtesy of PatersonHistory.com

I was disappointed to learn that the hospital where I was born, Paterson General, had been razed many years ago. As we whizzed by in her fast, sleek car, Sharon pointed out the hospital's former location to me. On the corner where this lovely old building once stood there was either a gas station or a fast food restaurant (I can't recall now).

Off we went to 95 Kearney Street. Mom would tell everyone that we didn't really live in Paterson, we lived in Totowa Borough, as if that meant anything to outsiders, yet somehow that made our living arrangements sound better to her. Mom hated New Jersey, loved her birthplace - Connecticut - and grew to love her adopted state of Colorado even more.

95 Kearney Street (1982)

The area where we lived had deteriorated since the days when my parents held residence on Kearney Street, where we occupied the top floor of Mr. and Mrs. McNab's home. Sharon pointed out the building, hoping that would be the end of our tour in this particular section of the old neighborhood. But I insisted on having photographic evidence of my visit.

Standing on the sidewalk across from this place--a previously mythical, unseen edifice about which so many stories had been told--I was mesmerized by the notion of ever having lived here. Wanting to capture it on film so mom and dad could see how it looked now, I shuffled to the left, then to the right, in a quest for the perfect angle.

My picture-taking adventure was taking a while and cousin Sharon, perhaps noticing some threat undetected by me, leaned over to the passenger window and issued a calm yet stern order: "Debbie, get in the car. Get...in...the car." I finished my last shot, climbed in the car and off we sped, down the street and 'round the corner to another part of this foreign land.

95 Kearney Street (2012)
Image courtesy of Google Maps: street view

People often ask if I'm a Colorado native. I feel as though I am, but always admit that I was born in New Jersey. Recently one person asked, what possessed me to make such a leap, in location, in altitude, in attitude, in culture? I told her that it happened long before I knew a single thing about where we lived.

How blessed I am for the choice my parents made long ago. Colorado is part of my soul; I never tire of its magnificence and grandeur. And as for New Jersey, I'm so happy to have seen all these places for myself. But to me it will always be another world...