Books & Barbs

[The magazine editor who excerpted this piece from a longer essay called “Library Lady” was right about the piece needing a better sense of closure, so she added the last line. It’s really not the thought of barbed wire that makes me cringe, though; it’s the sound of barbed wire scraping metal that has this effect! ]

Ever since I first learned to drive—in a sluggish car with a manual transmission—I’ve had a love-hate relationship with cars, so I never would have dreamed that I one day would be a delivery person.

Yet on a hot, humid afternoon last summer, I found myself sweating through my library home-service route in Geauga County. Nearing the next-to-last stop, I turned into a gravel drive and sped to the crest of the hill. I hastily parked, hoisted the canvas book bag off the seat, and, leaving the door open, headed for the house.

Two preteen boys and their older sister, each wearing a puzzled expression, greeted me.

“Library delivery,” I started to say, holding out the bag.

“Ma’am,” one of the boys interrupted, “your car’s rolling down the hill.”

I dropped the bag and spun around.

My blue sedan was indeed rolling backward toward the barbed-wire fence that enclosed the horse pasture.

Impulsively, I ran to the car and grabbed the driver’s-side mirror, thinking stupidly that I could stop the car. As it dragged me along, I realized that if I held on, I would end up tangled in the barbed wire. I let go.

Grimacing, I watched the car hit the fence, screeching worse than fingernails on a blackboard. The mirror snapped off as it hit a wooden post, which fell over. My car finally came to rest with the back bumper against another fence post.

I surveyed the damage, wondering how to free my car from the strand of wire that ran underneath it and another that had left a web of scratches on the roof. First, I climbed in through the passenger door and put the car in park.

While the boys rummaged in the barn and found a wire cutter, I learned that the children were home alone, so there was to be no adult assistance.

Using the cutters, I snipped the top wire. Then I crawled under the car and snipped the other, carefully untangling it from the undercarriage. While I was doing this, the boys’ sister told me that I was at the wrong farm—they weren’t supposed to receive books.

To this day, I still cringe at the sight of barbed wire.

[This anecdote was first published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Magazine, June 12, 2005.]