Saving a Raccoon

When I was about eighteen or nineteen years old and still only about half-smart, on a warm summer night, my buddy Nicky and I, were cruising south down US 83 at about 80 MPH sometime after midnight. We had been to the dance at Garner State Park and now we were on our way to his home in Crystal City, Texas. We were in his brand new black Ford convertible, which he was very proud of, with the top down. We were listening on the radio to Phil Spetolmy, and his all-girl-orchestra, broadcasting live from the Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans. To all of us kids in rural West Texas, that Blue Room with its all-girl-orchestra, just seemed like the epitome of elegance.

About seven miles south of Uvalde, Texas, as we were crossing the new high arching bridge over the Nueces River canyon, I see for an instance, out of the corner of my eye, the head and shoulders of a raccoon hanging from the other side of the railing of the bridge. When I was painting the head and shoulders of the raccoon that is standing upright in this picture, I had a flash-back of that raccoon that I saw that night that was hanging onto the bridge railing. That brought back the memories of what happened when we tried to rescue that raccoon.

The Nueces River, with its head waters in the rocky hill country to the north, is famous for its sudden and surprisingly fierce floods. About the time I was born in 1934, the highway department had built a very high modern concrete bridge over the Nueces River at this river crossing. A year or so after the completion of the new bridge, it rained about twenty inches in one night. The next morning my dad and some other men went down to the new bridge to see how it was faring. At that time there was a railroad bridge upstream from the new bridge. He told me that the houses, trees, barns and dead livestock built up against the railroad bridge and formed sort of a dam. The railroad bridge collapsed and all the stuff came down against the new highway bridge and quickly formed another bigger dam. With a great roar, the new concrete highway bridge gave way, broke up and the whole mess went down the raging river. All of my growing up years, I played on the huge concrete pillars, beams and slabs lying every which way in the river. So the highway department thought about that disaster for fifteen years and then built another bridge. This time, they made it very high and very long.

I knew that if that raccoon could not get back up on the bridge, it would fall to its death.

I yelled over to Nicky, “There is a raccoon back up there hanging on the bridge railing and it can’t get back up. Let’s go back and help it”. Nicky said OK. So we turned around and went back up on the bridge to find the raccoon. We found him and got out of the convertible. The raccoon was snarling at his rescuers. As we were trying to figure out what to do, a large cattle truck came around the bend way up the road and headed toward the bridge. Nicky said: “Get in the car, we have to get off of this bridge before that truck gets here.” We got in and he started backing off the bridge, however the truck was gaining on us. So it became kind of a race with that big cattle truck roaring up on the bridge and us backing up faster and faster. It is very difficult to control a car when backing it up and there is less control the faster you go. Suddenly there was a slight swerve to the left, Nicky over compensated and then lost control of the car. We crashed into the railing and the rear end of the car went up over the railing. Nicky holding onto the steering wheel stayed in the convertible, however I flew back to land on the trunk lid that was now overhanging the bridge railing. Now I had the same problem as the raccoon, scratching and clawing on the trunk lid, trying not to fall down into the dark river canyon below.

The air brakes on the big cattle truck were loudly screeching as the truck driver tried to stop before crashing into us. It is difficult to quickly stop a truck loaded with livestock since the load is not tied down and can move. In addition to my predicament on the trunk lid, I was extremely worried that the truck would jackknife on the bridge, turn over and dump its load of cattle on us. I knew what that could look like.

When I was in high school in Uvalde, my first class in morning was the FFA (Future Farmers of America) course. One morning, the teacher Mr. Wisenhunt, said that he had heard that there was a big truck wreck, the night before, up on the Rocksprings highway where a double deck trailer truck load of Angora goats had jackknifed trying to keep from hitting a bull in the highway, and had broadsided a large oak tree. He declared an emergency field trip and we all went up there in the school bus to see the carnage. I won’t try to describe here what it looks like to see the various parts of a hundred goats hanging on a big oak tree, however just imagine a large unusual Christmas tree with some of the ornaments still alive.

The truck driver got the cattle truck stopped without jackknifing it just before hitting us. The truck driver and Nicky got me off of the trunk. The truck driver wanted to know how it came about that we were backing off that bridge at one o’clock in the morning. Our “Good Samaritan” story of our intention to rescue the raccoon did not impress him. With the cattle on the truck lowing in the background, he expressed his opinion of our lack of common sense in a rather colorful and descriptive language. I got the impression that he didn’t think we were even half-smart yet.

Nicky’s new convertible, with the now smashed rear end, would still go forward, although kind of at an angle, so we slowly zigzagged on to Crystal City. On the way, we didn’t talk much and we didn’t seem to be much interested anymore in that all-girl-orchestra. I guess we just had a lot to ponder.