Our Motor Cycle Days

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Left: Gene Carroll - Right: Esther Carroll
Taken in our front yard when we lived on Wild Horse Creek Rd., Chesterfield, Mo., 1969-1974

 

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Left: Gary Deutschman & you can barely see part of his wife Marsha. The guy with the long hair & beard with cigarette in his mouth - don't have a clue who he is, he just joined our group, rode around with us for a few hours then waved goodbye & left.  lol Red jacket & helmut is Janice Palesch; Karl Palesch is center with back to camera; black jacket & white helmut is yours truely, Esther Carroll (just over Karl's right shoulder); man & woman to the right were friends of Karl Palesch.   At Right:  same group of people with just a different camera angle.  Gene Carroll was the photographer.  Taken before 1974.


MOTORCYCLE WRECK - 1974 - During the summer of 1974 Gene & I had a motorcycle wreck when going around the curve & starting to go down the southbound ramp to get onto Hwy. 270 from Manchester Rd. in St. Louis County, Missouri.    It had sprinkled rain a few minutes before & we then hit a small oil slick.  I remember feeling a lurch & then Gene wasn't sitting in front of me anymore.  The motorcycle was going out from under me & I was being thrown to the side & down.  My left leg had not cleared the motorcycle yet & I remember thinking "Oh, my god - it's going to rip my leg off."   I must have instinctively thrown my arms up as when I hit the pavement I landed on my arms but my head still bounced off the pavement & my leg did clear the bike thankfully.  But when my head hit the pavement it bounced twice & my top teeth went through my bottom lip & I still have a scar there after all these years just underneath the lip line.  The fall also took all the skin off my elbows & knees.  I looked around somewhat dazed & saw Gene getting up off the concrete about 10 feet back down the road.  He started walking toward me so I knew he was alright & figured I better get up too.  I tried to get up but couldn't.  Don't know why as I had no broken bones but I kept trying to push myself up & just couldn't get up.  The next thing I know Gene was on one side of me & another person on the other side of me taking me by the arms & picking me up off of the pavement.  The couple we had been riding with, Karl & Janice Palesch, had turned their bike around & come back & Janice insisted I lay down on the concrete median & put my head on her lap until the ambulance got there which I did.   Someone driving by in a car gave them a clean handkerchief for me to put over my mouth as I was spitting blood all over the place.  And someone else had volunteered to call an ambulance.   It was soooooooo nice the way people were so helpful. 

It wasn't long till the ambulance arrived, put me on a stretcher & hauled me to the St. John's Hospital emergency room.  There some very nice nurses scrubbed & bandaged my wounds.  The doctor was not nice at all but I won't get into that right now.  Anyway our motorcycle ride was over with for that day.  Don't remember how I got home but I don't think it was on the bike.  It seems to me that our friends went home & got their car & came back to the hospital & then took me home.  I'll have to ask Gene when I think about it.

By the time I got home everything was really starting to swell & hurt.  My bottom lip swelled up to about the size of a small football (at least it seemed like it) & I couldn't chew & had to haphazardly suck soup broth through a straw & even that hurt like hell.  I couldn't bend my arms or legs without excruciating pain.   Hobbled around real stiff like Frankenstein for about a month.   I still have scars on my lower lip just underneath the lip line & scars on my knees.  Maybe my elbows too.  But the main thing is we survived the accident & didn't get crippled from it.

I've tried to ride a couple of times since then but it just scares the you-know-what out of me so had to give it up.  I really miss it too.  But I still like looking at motorcycles & listening to them go down the highway. vvvvaaaaarrrrrooooooommmmmmm!!!!  :-)

 

Motorcycles ~ This is hilarious!