Chapter Eighteen in “Decades with the Squad,” by my late father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr. This one came as a possible D.O.A. Upon our arrival at the scene we discovered a rather remarkable situation. It did indeed include a D.O.A. There was an 86-year-old female lying on the floor beside a table strewn with cards […]
Chapter Fourteen in “Decades with the Squad,” by my late father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr. Firemen frequently rescue cats from trees and dogs who have gotten their heads stuck somewhere. Rescue squads are not ordinarily involved with animal rescue. The major exception to this, in my experience, was when we rescued a herd of cattle. […]
Chapter Seven in “Decades with the Squad” by William Palmer Jervey, Jr. This occurred at dusk. That dangerous time when headlights do little good and all colors blend into an ever-deepening shade of gray. There were three horses being ridden and were clustered close together when a large truck plowed through. Two horses were killed […]
Recently I was getting ready for a trip from the sleek, modern metropolis of Craig, Alaska, to the wilds of central Virginia. My sister Laura always stops by my little cottage before I come to make sure no possums have moved in, and this time she said casually, “Oh, by the way, there is a […]
My father was always looking for ways to keep us kids active and entertained. He built a catapult out of a rat trap and a block of firewood so we could fire acorns and walnuts across the yard. He hung a long cable from a tree so we could swing back and forth across the […]
One Christmas my sisters and I got Sound of Music dolls. As the youngest, I got Gretel. When Gretel came out of the box, her hair was braided and coiled around her ears (think Princess Leia). My first order of business was to take her hair down to brush it—and that was the end of […]
While we’re on the subject of things my father used to like to say, here’s another: he was, to his estimation, “the littlest human” to graduate with his high school class. Five-foot-nothing and 93 pounds wringing wet. I will point out that he was sixteen at the time, and that later he grew to be […]
As my sister Laura mentioned, “Point it straight” was another thing our dad liked to say. He would pull out this old saw when one of us was heading out behind the wheel of a car (to my mind, that car was usually the Warthog (see an earlier post), in which case he had reason […]
Some months ago, in Ketchikan, a 92-year-old driver struck and killed a woman in a crosswalk. The state’s consequences for the driver were to rescind his driver’s license. What, I wonder, have been the extent of the natural consequences for him and his family? Somewhere, somebody is thinking, if only I had taken Dad’s keys […]