Not Yet

By Freddie Snell

Almost everyone has had at least one or two close calls. You are about to meet a man who has had more than his share, many causing hospital time and serious recovery, always coming back as good as before or better! The stories are true, entertaining, funny, and sometimes inspiring.

 

You will get to know this farm boy from rural

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685159221

Book preview

Chapter 1

Yes, I Really Was Dropped on My

Head as a Young Child!

I

t was in either the spring or fall of 1959 when I had my first Not Yet experience. I was four years old. My mother was a Methodist organist and choir director, and my father was on the official board of the church. (I always thought that title was very impressive!) As such, we rarely missed an opportunity to attend church, and we almost always had two cars at church since Momma had to go turn on the organ, do any last-minute choir prep, and start playing the prelude. Daddy followed maybe ten minutes later. My sister, Jonelle, and I would get a ride with the one of them that made sense at the time.

On this particular occasion, Jonelle had ridden to church with Daddy (probably because she was late getting ready), and I had gone with Momma (probably because I was born ready). Church occurred with no remarkable incidents, and we headed for home! I wanted to ride with Daddy (I was four, it was a Jeep, any questions? I thought not). Jonelle rode with Momma. As a little kid, I got in on Daddy’s side and crawled across the stick shift to the passenger’s seat. Of course, in 1959 we had never heard of a seat belt, much less a car seat, so I was leaning against my door. Daddy proceeded to make a left-hand turn out of the parking lot, and I proceeded to tumble out of the Jeep onto the pavement, which I inspected for strength and hardness with my head. As luck would have it, the pavement proved both stronger and harder than my head!

Now at this point, I could claim that my sister was always out to get me and envied my position as the seven-year-younger baby of the family and my unquestioned position as the Favorite (and I could make a pretty good case for this possibility). However, she was only eleven, and the Jeep door was a cloth door with a very primitive latch, so I really don’t blame her!

I remember riding in my grandfather’s lap to the hospital. They x-rayed my head and found nothing wrong—well, nothing except for everything that was already wrong before Jonelle tried to kill me! I’m sure there was crying and fear (and that was just from Jonelle and Momma). But as most children do, I just bounced and was over it before we got home. So no, this wasn’t a really close call, but it could have gone terribly wrong if Daddy had been going a little faster and I had wound up under the Jeep, if another car had come along at the wrong time, or even if I had landed a little differently.

However, I do think that this could have been the first time that the Almighty said, "Wait, NOT YET!" At the very least, it was the first time that I remember being extremely lucky in a potentially bad situation! Needless to say, I am very thankful that this story had a happy ending!

Obviously THAT girl could have NEVER planned to off THAT little brother, right?

Chapter 2

Please Let Me Go with You,

PLEEEASE!

I

t was a beautiful early summer day in June 1964. This was the summer that Darrell (my cousin) and I would learn to water-ski! It was also the summer that my sister, Jonelle, would have a car wreck that would affect her life and our whole family’s lives in a profound way. Once again this was about to be a Not Yet event for me!

Jonelle had a Nash (a little convertible car) that she had been given. She was sixteen and a half and didn’t like driving. By all accounts she was never very good at driving and especially not at that tender age. This particular day Jonelle needed to go to town for some reason. Normally she would always let me go with her, but for some reason she said no when I asked to go that morning. Even stranger, I couldn’t even get Momma to make her take me! So I was at home and very unhappy.

Jonelle got into some loose gravel on the shoulder of the road, lost control, and rolled that little car three times before it came to a stop. The car had no seat belts, but Jonelle managed to stay inside the car until the very end of the rolling. The seat had come out of the car, and she’d held on to the steering wheel until the last, when she was ejected and found herself lying outside of the car with the car’s weight on both of her legs. Somehow she managed to free one leg, but the other leg was not coming out!

Once the ambulance arrived and she was freed, there was relief that she had no broken bones. However, the trapped leg had a crushed nerve, and she lost the feeling—and worse, the mobility—in her foot and lower leg. This led to three forty-five-minute-down and forty-five-minute-back trips a week to the Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville for the rest of the summer. She was having electric shock therapy to her leg and foot in an attempt to restore the feeling and movement. I watched every session, looking hard at that foot, hoping for and willing her foot to move. One day in July I saw her big toe jerk from the shock! I yelled, as no one else had noticed. They shocked her again, and we all saw her move! The doctor was elated and told us that she would be able to walk, although she would probably have a limp and have to wear a special shoe with a built-in brace that would go from the shoe to just below her knee for the rest of her life!

Jonelle had been in the marching band at Central High School in our hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They were called the Thundering Hundred and won numerous competitions. They even marched in the Cotton Bowl Parade in Dallas, Texas (I believe). Jonelle had a lot of friends in the band, and she really did not want to quit. She reluctantly went to the first day of practice to tell her director, Miss Betty Hampton, a.k.a. Miss Hamp, that she couldn’t march. In her customary no-nonsense way, Miss Hamp said, Why not? Jonelle showed her the brace and explained that she simply couldn’t do it. Again Mrs. Hamp said, Why not? Then she told Jonelle to get in line and start learning the routine. That she would be fine. She could march with the brace shoe. She simply refused to let Jonelle quit just because of a little difficulty.

Jonelle went on to march in the band, and no one ever knew by watching the band that one of the clarinet players had nearly died and was nearly crippled for life the previous summer! Not only that, but Jonelle got to ditch the brace within a year and never needed it again. Even more miraculous, Jonelle never had a limp! Now Jonelle worked really hard to recover. She had the best medical care available at the time, she had Miss Hamp pushing her hard to succeed, and she had a little Methodist church full of people praying for her.

So, you may be wondering what this has to do with my Not Yet story. You see, had Jonelle let me go with her or had Momma made Jonelle take me, the chance that I would have survived being ejected from that car would have been miniscule. Also I got a very good example of how personal determination, coupled with a good group of support people and the Almighty, will allow you to accomplish incredible miracles! Therefore, I believe that this event had a lot to do with me becoming the person that I am today. My beliefs, my experience, and my limited understanding of the way things worked were beginning to form in 1964. I am very happy that the answer was, Not yet, for Jonelle and for me back