Blue Road Incident
Charles Francis

At the end of World War II there were more Kentuckians in Detroit, where they had come to work in defense plants, than there were back home in Kentucky. Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit but there sure were a lot of hillbillies working in Michigan back then. My family ran a boarding house in "The Motor City, Arsenal of Democracy," where we provided a home-away-from-home for 25-30 of these transplanted Appalachians--most of whom were related to us in some way. As a teenager, I contributed my labor, which allowed our family's enterprise to be profitable. But all during my childhood, while on summer vacation, I usually visited with my grandparents. They had a small subsistence farm, located up a hollow in the mountains east of Hazard, Kentucky.

As summer arrived, I arranged a ride to my grandparents' place with an uncle who was going home for a spell. For reasons I can't recall, he decided to take a seldom-used alternate route south through Ohio, a narrow back road running down the center of the state. There were few vehicles on the roads during the war because of rationing of gasoline and tires. As a result, there were few operating gas stations. My uncle had forgotten to top off his fuel tank before we departed and so he soon needed some gas. We passed a couple of closed stations and he was beginning to worry. Finally, in the middle of nowhere, we saw a small, dilapidated general store with a covered gravel driveway. But, hallelujah, it had a couple of antique gasoline pumps in front of the place.

The store had evidently once been painted white but not much of its original coat remained on the weathered exterior. I had never seen anything like those pumps. They had to be 8-feet tall and were topped by a tall glass cylinder, with a graduated volume gauge running up the side. The darn things were operated manually by means of a long lever at the base, which one pumped back and forth to slowly fill the glass cylinder. When you had the desired amount of gas up in the cylinder, which took 20-30 minutes of steady effort, you placed the hose into the gas filler pipe, opened a valve, and gravity drained the gas into your car's tank.

It was a hot day, so I asked my uncle for some coins and went inside the store to buy us cold sodas. There were dry goods, tools and groceries stacked chaotically everywhere and it was very dark in the musty, unlit interior. I could see nobody about, so I let the screen door slam... still nobody. I called, "hello." I heard a scuffling and the squeaking of wheels from the back of the store. I strained to see into the darkness. Gradually, I made out a grotesque figure lurching, crab-like, toward me. Sitting in a wheeled swivel chair was a teen-age girl who was afflicted with cerebral palsy. She was propelling herself by digging her heels spastically into the floor. Her limbs writhed uncontrollably and her face was contorted. Her tongue lolled and her head twisted with each effort. I stared at her in shock, horrified, and unable hide my dismay. She spoke. It was the strangest sound I ever heard a human make.

"What did you say?" I stammered.

She repeated the sounds. This time I discerned her words but it took a moment for their meaning to register. When I finally understood, I collapsed in helpless laughter. She grinned mischievously, for what she had quipped, I realized, was:

"What were you expecting, Hedy Lamarr?"