The Architect, Pt 1

It was January of 1976, and I was barely 18. I had just received my acceptance letter, the one I’d been hoping and praying so desperately for over the last two months. I’d won some contests for my drawings and sculptures, just local things with the school, and around the area, the county fair, nothing big. But I saw my creations with their gleaming blue ribbons, and I felt so proud of myself in those moments.

My creations were all just visions of the future. It was my obsession. I couldn’t stop thinking about the world of tomorrow. I envisioned a future of flying cars and jetpacks. If that was truly what the future would hold, it would eliminate the need for roads. Roads dictated the layout of all things collectively human. How, I wondered, the ways in which flying cars, and no more need for roads, would change how we designed and built cities. What wonders could come that nobody could even yet fathom? In such a world, cities could be built ever higher, and ever more complex. and the layout and design of buildings of the future, in 3 dimensions, well, that was my ultimate passion.

I imagined so many ways it could be done, and I expressed those visions on paper with pencils, or with popsicle sticks and glue, and whatever else I could find or make. My 5th grade teacher is the one who informed me that what I was doing was called architecture, and she told me I was very good at it. I hoped she was right, but with this acceptance letter now in my hand, I knew she was. 

Architecture wasn’t really a big deal there in Wyoming, like it was in other parts of the country. I had never even been to a real city, or even seen a high-rise building in my entire life. I’d only ever seen them in movies and read about them in books. Throughout middle school, I exhausted my local library’s entire collection of books on architecture, design, and planning. The only place left to go to see more was my own imagination. As I unloaded hay bales from my father’s truck, my mind would start to wander. As I threw those bales up to my brother in the loft of the barn, I just imagined what it would be like to fly like that myself. To hop into my car, and ascend into a layer of mist, with buildings stretching high up, through and past that layer. 

All my high school teachers urged me to apply for college. My parents thought that idea was crazy. Neither of them had graduated high school. In fact, very few people in my entire extended family made it past the 5th grade. I did have the best grades and test scores in my entire school, but there were only about 300 of us. I had enough awareness to know I was just a big fish in a small pond, and so I had my doubts about whether or not I could even get in. But here I was, finally making that dream a reality.

As I walked home from school, the rhythm of my footsteps got my imagination going again. I was lost in my thoughts as the sky grew dark and the wind picked up. As the sharp, cold air cut through my layers, I was torn back to reality, the occasional snowflake whirring past my face. I could sense a big storm was brewing. I would need to pick up my pace if I was going to get back to the farm before the blizzard really kicked up. When I got home to the farm, my brothers were working to get the cattle penned up in the barn before the storm really hit. I threw my books on the front porch and ran over to offer my assistance in any way I could. We corralled the last few stragglers into the barn and headed into the house ourselves.

Later that evening, with the storm well underway, we heard a knock at the door. My brother went to answer it. It was our neighbor, Jeb, who lived a ways down the road. Our father invited him in, as sheets of snow pushed their way in with him. The blizzard outside was so intense, you could barely even see 20 feet ahead of you. I invited Jeb to warm up by the fire.

Expressing his gratitude at the momentary relief, he informed us of his true reason for coming over. “As I was driving home, I lost track of the road in my truck. I ended up going into the ditch over yonder and I can’t seem to get it unstuck.”

My mother proposed: “You should stay here until the storm passes. It’s not safe out there.” She was right. 

“I’d love to, but my wife and kids will be worried sick if I don’t come home. The thought of them waiting for me in this storm tears at my heart.”

Even though we had a phone, we knew he did not. Once, when his wife was in labor, and she was experiencing complications, He ran over to our house to call for an ambulance. We knew the option of calling his family to tell them he was okay didn’t exist. My mother recognized this. She looked at my father and gave a nod of her head. 

“Alright boys. Better gear up.” said my father, as he began donning his winter clothes himself. We followed suit. 

We followed Jeb out to his truck. It was really stuck. The five of us began pushing. I was on the right-most side of his rear tailgate, my brothers and father all pushing at other points. It wasn’t easy, but we got it moving. With the wind howling in our ears, we could barely hear Jeb in the driver’s seat of his truck as he loudly expressed profound gratitude for our help. As we were getting his truck back on the road, as he waved goodbye, and was about to take off, in a flash came a moment I will never forget.

The lights of another truck permeated through the blizzard from behind me. As I turned to look, I didn’t have time to get out of the way, before the left side of its front bumper collided with the right side of the rear bumper of Jeb’s truck. Like Newton’s cradle, the kinetic energy transferred from the truck behind me, into my legs, and finally, into Jeb’s truck, pushing it forward, that little bit more.

              As I fell to the ground, the most intense agony I could ever imagine howled deafeningly from both of my legs. This agony drowned out everything else: the cold, the headlights, the howling wind, my brother, my father, Jeb, and the driver of the other truck. I don’t think I can remember anything but the pain.

The next thing I remember was the sensation of movement and an increase to what I had thought was the worst pain it was possible to experience. I opened my eyes, and screamed through gritted teeth, as I squeezed my eyes shut again, as tears began to squeeze through their tightly sealed edges.

Jeb, my father, and my two oldest brothers were carrying me inside. My father directed my youngest brother, Bill, to go in ahead of us, and call for an ambulance. He ran as fast as he could through the ever piling-up snow. A moment after he went through the door. My mother came running outside in her socks. Her screams at the sight of me permeated through the fierce winds. She urged my brothers, Jeb and my father to hurry.

I was grunting and breathing heavily and as I tried to see anything through the pain. I searched so desperately to find one of my beautiful cities in my mind. All I could find was a blurry, mostly translucent, and partially formed version of my favorite one. My mother ran back inside.

We reached the front porch, and I was carried up the steps into the house. They laid me down slowly and gently on a carpet in the middle of the floor. The flickering firelight creaking through the vision of my closed eyes. I could barely find anything, so I left and opened my eyes again. I saw my mother crying on the phone, as the pain consumed me. She spoke to the 911 operator, I could hear her describing my legs, which I had not even looked at yet. My flexed knees and a bend in the opposite direction above them formed an unnatural S shape in both of my legs, obvious enough to be visible through my winter coveralls. I tried to sit up to look, but any shifting or movement would only intensify the pain. As I laid my head down, groaning gave way to moaning, and I was able to find a semblance of a familiar place in my mind to escape to.

I spent the next 5 hours oscillating between paradise and hell, as we waited for the ambulance to make it from the nearest hospital, an hour and a half away in perfect conditions, out to our farm in the country, in the worst snow storm of the year.