Worst Garage Sale Ever

Today is my Grandma Obie's Birthday. Here's a story about her in here honor.

My Grandparents, Cass and Obie, lived out side of Wetumka about 2 miles in a house locally called "Goldie's House". It was on a dirt road.

Every year, my Grandma would have a big garage sale. All the kids would come over to help and it was something we looked forward to every year.

In 1981, I was 9. My Aunt Marsha was there with her son Sean, who was 6. My Mom was there with me and my little sister, JoLynn, who was also 6. My Aunt Kim was also there. Her little boy, Philip, was about 1 1/2. She was also heavily pregnant with her second child.

That year there had been alot of rain and the old dirt road was rutted, so my Grandma had called to have it Graded.

I was outside with the little kids, and the adults were inside. I had just picked up Philip so that he could get a good view of the Road Grader. JoLynn and Sean were playing nearby. I raised my finger to point and at that same instant the Road Grader hit a partially buried Natural Gasline.

The sound was deafening, and a huge brown funnel of natural gas spiraled up hunderds of feet in the air. The Road Grader was tipped vertically as we watched. It hung there a few seconds and then bounced back to the ground. The guy on the Grader (Kenny McDaniels, I think) wasn't injured. He started running to the house, and the adults flew outside.

Sean was a big strong kid. It scared him so badly that he started running around and around the smokehouse. The sound was so loud that you could hardly hear anyone speak, so he couldn't hear us yelling to him. We almost had to tackle him to stop him.

The gas funnel was blocking the only road out, so we called the gas company and then headed out to the fields. At first my Grandma told us to go to so-and-so's house. We were almost there when she remembered that they had big mean dogs, so went in another direction. We had to march through the fields and help the pregnant Kim through barbed wire fences lugging Philip with us.

When we got far enough away that we thought we were pretty safe, we stopped. My Aunt Marsha was so nervous that she tried to light a cigarette without thinking about it. My Mom grabbed it and yelled at her not to light it because she might blow us all up. Marsha needed the cigarette so badly that she started chewing it up!

It seems like we stood out in that field forever, but eventually they got the line shut down. We were SO lucky that the Grader didn't spark the gasline when it hit. If that had happened, we could have easily have been blown to bits.

Then later that day, after everything had settle down some, I was catching frogs and had found a glass mason jar to keep them in. I went to the house to punch holes in the lid. About the fourth punch, I missed the jar and the knife went between my thumb and first finger. All the way in and out on the palm. Sean had had a REALLY bad day. He was the only one with me when I did it. He went running outside to the adults and told them I had cut my thumb off. That's what it must have looked like to him!! Since it was a puncture wound, there was nothing to stitch, so they just bandaged it up.

That was the WORST garage sale ever.