When I was about thirteen and my brother, Bill, six, we shared a room in my parents’ house. To save space in this average-sized room, so we each could have a desk/set of drawers for our stuff, they bought us a bunk bed. In the early ’60s, our simply constructed bunk bed had a wood frame, two mattresses, and a ladder. There were no guard rails, and the top bed sat right over the bottom bed, held up by two adjustable metal slats with double metal hooks on each end that embedded into the wooden frame.
My dad used to travel a lot in his civilian job as an aeronautical engineer at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB). He would fly out to the various plane manufacturers such as Boeing, McDonald Douglas, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman to work with them on the design and construction of military aircraft.
One night when he was out of town, I prepared for bed as usual, around 10 pm. My younger brother lay in the lower bunk already asleep; my mother in her room. I took off my glasses and turned off the light. Being all of 13 years old, I felt the ladder to the top bunk represented a “kid’s way” of getting into bed.
My method consisted of running across the room, springing off the bottom bunk, and launching myself into bed. What I did not know was my violent method had been driving those twin metal hooks deeper and deeper into the wood, effectively splitting the frame to the point of being unable to hold up the top bunk.
On this night, the frame gave way, the end slat swung down, like a pendulum, and the top bunk fell. Luckily, the metal slat holding up the left side of the upper bed held, saving my sleeping brother from being crushed. I walked across the floor to retrieve my glasses, turn on the light, and survey the damage. For some reason, my bare feet kept sticking to the wood floor.
With the light back on, I could see the top bunk bed resting on the bottom bed like the hypotenuse of a right angle, just beyond my brother’s feet. The crash had woken him, and I yelled at him to get out of bed quickly because the head of the top bunk could give away at any minute. He ran to my side near the bedroom door, also noticing the sticky floor.
I became aware of a throbbing in my right foot and the source of the stickiness at the same time. The metal slat holding up the foot of the top bunk with its two large steel hooks had made side-by-side parallel slices in the top of my foot, the deepest, cutting through an artery, so that every time my heart beat, blood would spurt from the wound. The floor of our room looked like the floor of a slaughterhouse.
My mother came to the doorway, saw all the blood, and almost fainted. I hopped into the bathroom, stuck my foot in the tub, and turned on the water. Feeling faint, I sat down on the edge of the tub and asked her to call Doctor Busch. We had no hospital in New Carlisle, Ohio, the closest one in Springfield, twenty miles away. In the early ’60s, there were no clinics, no walk-in urgent care facility; all we had was a family doctor.
Doctor Busch said to meet him in his office. Mother got me a bed sheet, I wrapped the wound as tight as I could, keeping up the direct pressure, and then the three of us in our bare feet and pajamas made it to the car and drove downtown. Busch had already opened up his office and waited for us at the entrance; it was now eleven o’clock at night. I had lost a lot of blood and continued to slip in and out of consciousness. The doctor helped me out of the car and into his exam room.
Doc removed the blood-soaked sheet, gave me a local, cleaned out the wound, and once I turned numb, sewed me up; it felt like someone tying my shoelaces. I do not know if he even charged us. This is how medical care used to be. God Bless Dr. Busch.
When my dad returned from his trip the next day, the first thing he did was un-bunk the beds, throw out those dangerous metal slats/hooks and replace them with several wooden slats (instead of only two) on each bed.
I still bear the scars and will never sleep in a bunk bed again.
I know. Non-stop television coverage of the latest plague to destroy mankind has dominated the conversation for the last several weeks and the last thing you need is another rant, but I’m going to write something anyway.
The Hardy Boys by author Franklin W. Dixon remains to this day one of my favorite young adult book series from The Tower Treasure (originally published 1927) to the last book #66. I could buy a hard copy for a dollar at Sears and my collection and love of the stories (each of which I read several times) was reinforced by a TV series starting in 1956 on the Mickey Mouse Club starring 
After a barrage of tears, shouting, hugs, finger-wagging, and admonishments, I was placed in a chair in a corner of the kitchen facing the wall and handed an alarm clock with instructions to stare at it for two hours so I could fully appreciate how long that space of time could be when you are waiting for news about a person you love and fearing the worse.
Pure Imagination 