THE GREAT PUMPKIN AND THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

Yesterday, TLW (The Little Woman) and I decided to pick-up my daughter Ellen from her group home, and then swing on down to Ridge, NY to attend a dedication of a new “Individual Residential Alternative” (IRA) home that was just built for retarded people. The home was being dedicated to a fellow chairperson for Guardianship, my good friend, Claudia Nemias.

Being how I have never been to the location of the new home, I took my GPS to help me get there. I attached the unit to the windshield, and ran the wire over the steering column to plug it into an electrical socket. I drove off to the LIE service road to get on the expressway, and as I made a right hand turn onto the road, the car felt like someone had taken over the steering wheel, and forced us off the road! Fortunately, no one was on my right as the car veered off and I had to jam on the brakes and fight the steering wheel.

The wire had slipped into the small groove the separates the steering wheel from the column, and being the wire is rubber, stopped the steering wheel from returning to it’s original position. Scared the hell out of both TLW and me.

To top off the day, we pick up my daughter, drive to the IRA, and discover that a farm is offering free pumpkin picking, hay rides and pony rides for all of Long Island, Connecticut, and as far north as Canada, south as far as Florida, and west as far as the Hawaiian Islands, or so it seemed. When we hit the road where the IRA is, the traffic was unbelievable, bumper-to-bumper, for about a mile!

Being how my luck is so good, when I finally arrive at the house, there is no place to park, the traffic is still heavy, and the farm that was making the mess was right next-door! I finally found a space across the street in an abandoned lot, next to a rifle range. With the sound of: “pop-pop” in my ears, heavy traffic going both ways and my daughter being very unsteady, a nervous TLW and myself tried to negotiate traffic, while holding up and steadying my daughter while we crossed the busy highway! We get into the crowded house, only to discover my daughter didn’t want to stay, so back across the road again, under the same conditions.