Basketball and Basebvall Were Not Enough (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 3I was, therefore, not at all anxious to tackle Billy or to be tackled by him. But I knew I could not avoid that encounter forever. It just came sooner than I expected. One afternoon during our second week of practice, I found myself at the head of the line of those "to be tackled." And there in the front position of the other line--the tacklers--was Billy. His appearance was menacing, to say the least; and before the coach gave us both the signal to start, I pictured Billy as a mad bull snorting and pawing the ground before attacking the matador. At the sound of the whistle, we both started at full speed--not directly at each other but converging at an angle, I supposedly the ball carrier and he the tackler assigned to stop me.
Our paths soon crossed abruptly, Billy's head and shoulders hitting me full force just below the waist. I must have been carried through the air for several feet before crashing to the ground with all of his 180 pounds on top of me. I remember "seeing stars" for an instant and feeling a very sharp pain in my shoulder. And then total blackness and nothingness. My friends told me later I had been knocked unconscious.
While all this was happening on the football field, my mother was shopping with a friend at Bowling Green's Park Square, an open space surrounded by retail stores, located at the center of the town. She had just finished a full day of teaching and was purchasing a few things at one of these stores before going home to cook supper. As she came out of the store toward her friend's parked car, she saw and heard an ambulance rushing through the square and down State Street, its lights flashing and siren screaming.
My mother immediately asked her friend to drive her to the hospital. When asked why she wanted to go to the hospital, she said with no hesitation, "Chester has been hurt playing football, and that ambulance will take him to the hospital. We must get there before it arrives!" Later, this friend told me that my mother became irritated because others didn't seem to understand or agree with what she was saying.
"Oh, Nelle, you're just imagining all this," the friend told her. "What makes you think that ambulance was going after Chester?" Her words were lost on deaf ears.
"Before we leave, I must call Dr. Stone and have him meet us at the hospital," my mother said hurriedly as she ran in to the corner drug store to use the phone. (Dr. Eldon Stone was Bowling Green's leading surgeon at the time.) "Get your car started, and I'll be right back. We must waste no time." Such "requests" made by her were usually viewed as commands. Everyone who knew her sensed this, and since her plans and suggestions usually made good sense, few people refused her. She got lots of help in that way.
How and why she was so sure something had happened to me, I'll never know, but my mother, her friend, and Dr. Stone were all at the emergency room of the hospital when the ambulance delivered me--prostrate but no longer unconscious. The continuous screaming of the siren during the trip must have brought me back to my senses.
Dr. Stone was quick to begin his examination. "Let's see, Chester, what's wrong here," he said calmly as he felt along my right collar bone--"clavicle" he called it. Finding no break there, he then began to examine my shoulder blade.
"Oh my," I heard him whisper to my mother. "The damage is here. This right scapula is broken in several places, at least seven or eight fractures. A very bad injury. I don't know what we can do about it." And then he lowered his voice even more, but I could still hear him when he said, "I've never seen a break this bad before."
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