The Accident

   I was visiting a boy in about 1945 at the Dotson place, I remember Paul Dotson took us down to a barn across across the road to the east and showed us his prize sheep.  I remember Paul Dotson had a deformed hand and was a school teacher who suffered with epileptic seizures.

    I remember the boy lived with relatives and the man was in poor health, perhaps had a stroke or something and also may have had a cane. There was a woman there who had a small baby. The boy and I were playing near the front porch when the baby fell off and hit his head, the baby was unconscious and the woman was near hysterics. There was no one there who could drive a car except me, and I was only 12 years old with no license.  There was, I believe, a 1939 black Ford sedan in the front of the house.

    The woman asked if I could rush her and the baby to Mt. Vernon to the hospital. I told her I could, so the woman with the baby, the boy and me, the twelve year-old driver, took off like a bat out of hell to Mt. Vernon. I remeber looking down at the speedometer and it was about 70 MPH, boy, that was fast!  We came through Mt. Vernon still doing about 70 with the horn honking. We arrived at the old hospital that was on old Hwy 67 on the left just past the Ruthurford Drug store (Crutcher Hospital). The woman took the baby in to the doctor and after a bit she came out and said the baby was OK but had a large bump on its head.

    Could this boy be Tommy Minter? If you are the person in the story, you may remember taking a wild ride to Mt. Vernon that day with John J. DeBusk.

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John J. DeBusk, who was born in 1933 (?), spent his early years in Saltillo and attended school there. The family lived on xxxx. Later, they moved about halfway between Saltillo and Sulphur Bluff, and the children went to school at Sulphur Bluff.  He now lives just east of Mt. Vernon on old Highway 67.

Note: I am the boy John refers to, and all his facts are correct, but I do not remember the incident. You would think one would remember something as out of the ordinary as this. I left Saltillo in 1945, probably after school was out, to live with my mother in Oklahoma City. This probably happened after I left. There was another boy on the Dotson farm about my age, who was the tenant farmer's son. They lived just south of the Dotson house where the road made a curve. Perhaps he was the boy. Thomas J. "Tommy" Minter