Way back in ancient times when I was in high school, I
had a girlfriend. I lived in Eugene and she lived in a little community, about 10 miles
away. Being as we were teenagers, finding places to “make-out” was high on our
priorities. This was my first serious girlfriend and neither one of us were
very experienced at having a relationship. Just to be clear, our make-out
sessions did not advance to the ultimate step. But it was not easy to find a
place to have some privacy. Definitely not her parents’ house. Definitely not
my parents' house. We resorted on occasion to “parking” But even parking can
have its problems. The last thing we wanted was to be sitting in at Armitage Park
and having a cop investigate what that car was doing just sitting there at
night.
On one occasion, we decided to go to the pioneer
cemetery which was on the way to her house. The girl in question (let’s call
her “S”) had a rather strict father. I got along reasonably well with her
father, but he let it be known that there was no negotiation about what time
she was to be home. If he said she should be home by 11:00, that did not mean
11:01. If we got home at 30 seconds after Eleven, there would be trouble. I did
not want trouble.
The nice thing about parking in the cemetery to do our
necking was that it was only about five minutes from her house. So we did not
have to worry about traffic or other problems from keeping us from meeting our
deadline. That was my thinking on that night. My adult self recognizes that
making out in a cemetery is a rather disrespectful thing to do. But teenagers
seldom think of such things.
Undisturbed, we were. This was out in the middle of
nowhere. We pulled off the main road and took the gravel driveway to the
cemetery. No houses in sight. Even the main road was sparsely travelled. It was
pitch black. Spooky? Was it spooky? You don’t think about ghosts when you are
walking around a cemetery in daylight, but at night? Maybe, a bit. I think S
was feeling it more than me, but she shook it off. We had been kissing and
cuddling for a few minutes and then . . .
WHAM!
"Something" hit the roof of my car. Freaked out? Yes, I
think it is fair to say we were freaked about as far as possibly out as you can
get. Our heart rates shot through the roof. S said something on the order of
“what the hell was that!” I wasn’t staying to find out. I quickly started the
car and threw it into gear. We bounced down the driveway to the main road. When
we got to the road and headed for S’s house I noticed an apple sitting in the
windshield wiper well in front of me. It was obvious what had happened. One if
the trees we were parked under had been an apple tree. The apple fell off and
hit the roof of my car. It was a perfectly reasonable prosaic explanation. No
need to bring ghosts into it. But still . . . There was a part of me that
wondered if a ghost had encouraged that apple to fall at that precise moment to
show us we should have some respect for the dead.
S and I laughed about it once we had our breaths back.
I don’t really believe a ghost had knocked that apple off. But still . . .
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