The Day I Broke My Arms

 

I actually started this group Facebook to refresh and extend the happy, funny, delightful, surprising, and other memories we share from our years of growing up on Colby Avenue and the surrounding locations.  For instance, who could forget 31 Flavors at Colonial Corners?

Things change in our lives, our families and over time, but looking back can be sweet and enriching.

So, I am going to start by sharing the story of when I broke both my arms, compound fractures, from falling off the swing  set in our back yard.

Events were set in motion because of a cautionary conversation Dad felt obligated to have with me about my habit of climbing the house.  I clearly remember looking up and wondering if it was possible to get there.  At the time I was about 18 months to 2 years of age. 

Mom, I mention her real name, Mary Alice Reasoner, her mother’s maiden name McReynolds,  as she did not generally use it, I learned later in life.  If you heard her called by a first name that was probably Pam, which is a nickname for Pamela.  But Dad began calling her PAM, MAP after they were married because she hated her first name. 

Mother was in the house when the question of climbing the side of the house occurred to me.  Roses had been growing on a lattice Dad had installed and I realized this was a possible avenue to my goal. 

Sometime later, this could have been several weeks, I began exploring this route and discovered it worked well.  Mom did not catch me for some time.  But when she did, she was very upset, and I refused to come down knowing she would then persuade Dad to eliminate this access. 

So, Dad was called to come home from the University to fetch me down.  I cooperated fully.  Dad knew I was likely to do it again, but the thick layer of roses persuaded him that could not be the way up, so instead tried to impress on me how dangerous this kind of adventure was. 

My response was, “Really, Daddy?”  Thereafter, I was more cautious about climbing and no misadventure ever took place regarding House Climbing.

But, on one of our journeys to Sears (Dad made a practice of taking each of us out alone so he could share interesting stories and time with us away from home. This also included going on trips with him to interesting locations around the state as he was consulting with various people on issues related to his work. 

He must have realized I was either still climbing the house when I was about 4 or other ways to get up higher.  So, one occasion, the one when we went to get paint for the house again. (Mom was always looking for ‘the right shade’ of green (Celedon), which had previously evaded Dad.)

Dad told me a story about his own terrible fear of heights, which came over him in the wake of his parents Dr. Ernest Sargent Pillsbury and Sylvia Florance Ball Pillsbury, dying in an auto crash on September 3, 1911. The road had washed out.  Dad, then 5, and his siblings Grace and Ernest Jr. were in the open back seat of their Auburn Six when they came around a curve going over the pass through the mountains to Santa Barbara, Casitas Pass Road.  They lived in Hollywood before there was a film industry, though Frank Baum’s home, Ozcot was across their back fence.

Dad and his siblings, after a real kerfuffle, were adopted six weeks later by Arthur Clarence Pillsbury, Dr. Ernest’s younger brother and relocated to Oakland. 

Dad’s new father was an inventor and very adventurous, but that is another story.

Anyway, Dad told me heights could be very dangerous and again cautioned me about climbing the house. Therefore, it is ironic that I broke my arms climbing down from the swings.  All I did was walk across the top of them, not as far off the ground as the roof at all. 

Anyway, I landed on my arms and felt them crack.  No one was in the back yard, so I carefully and slowly got up and walked to the backdoor.  I don’t know if your backdoor into the kitchen was glass, but ours was.  And there was a doorbell.  Seeing Mom giving Stevie, recently home from the hospital, where he was born, I rang the doorbell with my nose. 

Mom glanced at me over her shoulder and told me to open the door.  I responded with, “Can’t Mommy.”  She looked at Stevie and turned toward me, taking one or two steps.  Then she could see my arms, which were bleeding.  I held them up for this purpose. 

Mommy fainted.  I looked at Stevie sinking into the sink and suds.

Then, at exactly the right moment, my older sister, Anne, walked in.  Anne was then a student at UCLA majoring in Math (Computer Science), and grabbed Stevie, wrapped him in the towel on the counter, and stepped neatly over Mommy and opened the door for me, shepherding me to the couch where I was instructed to hold my arms up while she got supplies.  There were a couple of pillows and more towels. 

Dad was called and came home to take me to the doctor, who set my arms.  Because I did not cry, he bought me two double comics on the way home. 

So, this is my first story, which I will link from my blog, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster