(Another installment in the stories I tell June from my childhood and youth. This is a re-telling of one of her favorites – it’s also in LJ II along with the bike ride story.)

Little Johnny and the trestle

Once upon a time when Little Johnny was a teenager, he was driving his Daddy’s station wagon (that old 1956 black Ford) around in the countryside in North Carolina with some of his brothers and his sister and their friends when a scary thing happened.

They were just out “riding around” as they liked to do, but it was in the country around Lake Junaluska, and Johnny didn’t know much about the roads up there, since they were just visiting their friends during the summer. Bunny Anna, who had spend most of the summers of her life there, at least a few weeks every year, knew the area and she was helping Johnny know where to go on their ride.

One of the nicest drives around was old County Road, and they were just cruising along it when suddenly Bunny Anna said, “Oh look, here comes the trestle, speed up Johnny! It’ll be fun!”

So, of course, Johnny speeded up. Maybe a little more than Bunny expected! Because she started yelling, “No, no, slow down, I was just kidding!”

Well, Johnny tried to slow down, but it was a little too late, because he was going a little too fast and when they went under the trestle, he discovered why Bunny was yelling.

On the other end of the trestle, County Road made a pretty sharp right curve, following the mountain, as those mountain roads tend to do, and Johnny was going a bit too fast for that curve. He was wheeling the old station wagon around and putting on the brakes as hard as he could, but the car drifted right on across the left lane and onto the shoulder of the road! Johnny could hear the tires on his side of the car roaring in the gravel on the shoulder, and that’s when he looked out the side window. There was not much shoulder there, just a very steep bank down to the little river that the road followed, and lots of rocks and scary stuff.

Johnny was hanging onto the steering wheel and trying to keep the car from running off the road, and nobody was saying anything—they were all holding their breath and covering their faces to keep from screaming. It was lucky there were no cars coming the other way, and after a little while Johnny was able to slow down and get the car back onto the road.

He pulled over into a pullout on the cliff side of the road and stopped. Then everybody in the car started laughing and talking and being really happy that they didn’t just die, but Johnny’s sister, Linda, was so scared that she didn’t really like all that laughing. She was a very sweet, very good little girl, but it really upset her and she yelled out at everybody, “Y’all stop your damn laughing!”

Everybody got quiet all of a sudden, because they were all so shocked to hear Linda say that! You could hear some of them whispering, oh wow! Linda cussed! I never heard Linda cuss! and things like that. And then everybody started telling her how sorry they were for laughing and that she was right, they shouldn’t be laughing because they did almost just die!

After everybody calmed down, Little Johnny drove them all back to Junaluska, but he drove very slowly! After a while, they all kinda started talking again, but everybody was talking really quiet now, and finally Johnny told everybody how sorry he was that he scared them, and Bunny told everybody how sorry she was that she suggested for Johnny to speed up, and everybody kinda go over, but they never forgot it!