Gone With The - What?

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

                                                                        -Albert Einstein

"Everything you can imagine is real."

                                                                        -Pablo Picasso

            Real or imagined some stories just stay with you. Take this one, for example. It's a distant image I've hung on to for some reason, a faded snapshot in a box full of memories; in fact, the more time goes by the more it seems like it never really happened at all. But it did.

            I vaguely remember the time my father took mother and me to see Gone With The Wind. No, I'm not that old. I'm talking about a limited re-release of the 1939 film classic that occurred in 1966. Dad was something of an amateur historian and a bona fide Civil War buff, and from him I picked up a playful interest in the battles of that era; playing with toy Civil War soldiers, that type of thing. I was six years old at the time so I gladly tagged along when they told me it was a movie about the Civil War.

            What they didn't tell me was that it was a nearly four-hour marathon bore with too much talking, kissing and crying. Where were all the battle scenes? The cavalry charging and the cannons blazing? Neat stuff like that. As for the troubles of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, quite frankly I didn't give a…well, you know.

            However there was one scene that stuck in my mind that night. It takes place during the siege of Atlanta. A panoramic shot shows the streets literally covered with the dead and dying men of the Confederacy. Cut to a crowded hotel lobby serving as a makeshift hospital and operating room. Surrounded by the stretchers and the anguished cries of the injured, a lone white-haired doctor stands with sleeves rolled up and his shirt smeared with blood, helpless to stop the suffering. He says he hasn't been home to see his family in days. They're out of bandages, anesthetic, hope. When yet another young soldier is brought before him the doctor takes a weary look at the wound, sighs, and declares that the leg will have to come off.

            What? Sitting there in that dark theater my eyes grew wide.

            The soldier lets out a blood-curdling scream, followed by a plea for mercy. "No, not my leg. Don't take my leg." Two attendants hold him down while the doctor shakes his head, picks up a bone saw and pours some whiskey over the blade. He bends down and there's another long, horrible scream as the camera pulls up and the scene fades away.        

            Well…talk about horrified. To these young eyes that had never seen anything of the horrors of war, it was a new experience to say the least. Finally the ending credits rolled and the house lights came up. No doubt by then my butt was plenty stiff and sore from having sat through four hours of a love story.

            "Not enough action. Too boring."

            That would have been my terse review had anyone back in those days the foresight to let six-year-old kids review classic films.

            Okay, now fast forward to a warm and sunny spring day a few weeks later. I was goofing around with my next door neighbor in his front yard. For some reason or none at all we were climbing around the wrought iron hand railing near the front door and I happened to stick my skinny little leg between two of the bars. Putting my weight down my left leg sank in further. Then I decided to twist my foot back so that the toe would catch behind another bar. I wish I could say there was a logical reason for doing all this but whatever that might have been escaped me a long time ago.

            Anyway, I'm really wedged in there good when I decide it's time to untangle myself.

            Hey, wait a minute. Something's not – this doesn't feel right.

            The more I struggle the more the fear grows. I can't get any leverage to free my foot or my leg. I'm stuck!

            I start to whimper, then the eyes start to glisten with fear. My friend stares at me rather dumbfounded before he finally decides that he better go get his dad. So his dad comes outside, thinking who knows what? and sees me there, a skinny pig definitely stuck in a poke. He comes over and very gently tries to pry my limb loose but with no success. My breathing is raspy and the tears are rolling.      

            Not wanting to risk further damage the man decides this is a matter for my dad to deal with. He leaves to fetch him. An eerie minute or two passes. Meanwhile I'm wiggling my leg in a desperate attempt to free myself which is only making the situation worse because now my leg is starting to swell up. Finally the two fathers turn the corner. Dad sees me and shakes his head, no doubt thinking something along the lines of 'how the hell did the kid manage to do that?' He comes over to take a closer look, tries with more force to pry me out, but my tears dissuade him from going too far with that.

            Like surgeons the two men confer out of earshot. They quickly decide on a course of action. Dad tells me he'll be right back. He heads back over to our house and returns a minute later. Now there's something in his hand.

            Sweet Jesus he's got a saw!

            I'm wailing now. Wailing and blubbering at the same time so that none of my words are coming out as actual words. I'm trying to say, 'No, don't do it. Please don't do it.' But they don't hear anything but the crying and the blubbering. Dad comes over and tries to calm me down, but to no avail. He gently puts a hand on my thigh and brings up the blade. (And to think he's not even going to use any whiskey to sterilize the blade.)

            Finally it comes out, "No, not my leg!"

            And the two men start to laugh. I mean, bent-over, gut-busting laughter. I can't believe it. A young mind is pulsating with visions of torn flesh and naked bone, not to mention a lifetime spent hobbling around on a wooden leg, and they're laughing about it? This can't be happening. But yet at that very moment it was happening. Dad again put his hand on my leg and I closed my eyes in anticipation of the first searing jolt of pain.

            Of course the pain never came. (Come to think of it, wouldn't this be a bizarre story if I said that it did?) The next sound I heard was the scratching of metal on metal. I looked down and saw not a bloodbath but rather the hurried movement of a hacksaw cutting into the wrought iron railing. I suppose at that moment I should have been relieved, a little embarrassed maybe. But all I cared about was getting out of this steel trap and running away as fast as I could. And when the cutting was over that's exactly what I did. I ran like hell. Hopefully Dad at least offered to replace the railing – seems like the neighborly thing to do after having to saw off a part of someone else's house in order to retrieve your son.

            Dad's been gone for a long time now, so I don't really know what he was thinking throughout this whole episode. I would like to think that he took it for what it was: one of life's little absurdities, one of those comically unpredictable moments that, if and when remembered, only get better with time. And I guess that makes it real enough for me.

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