Introductions to life and death.

Having a dad who was a volunteer fireman, part-time ambulance driver and a deputy Game Warden in addition to his full time job as a guard at the Riverside Merck plant, allowed me to be aware - sometimes even a part of - a wide variety of some of the more exiting aspects of life in Danville during the 50s, 60s and early 70s.  I remember how as kids we would stop what we were doing to listen closely to the sound of the town fire alarm as it roared out the series of short blasts, the pattern of which would let you know in which of the wards the fire was located.  I knew that Dad, if he was not working, would be jumping into our family car and heading for the Washie’s Fire Company to roll out one of the red pump and ladder trucks that would rush to the scene.  As Danville is not that big, I would sometimes hop on my bicycle, pedal to where the fire was and watch him at work unrolling the long hoses, connecting up to the hydrant and watering down the flames. 

When he was wearing his deputy game warden hat – mostly on the weekends and especially during deer season, I would sometimes get to ride along as he went out to fill corn feeders during harsh winter months or pick up a roadkill deer off the side of a rural road to either dispose of it or, if it wasn’t too badly broken up and had not been lying too long, take it to the county poor house where it would be butchered and served up as a special Sunday venison treat.  I even, on occasion, got to ride along at night as he patrolled Bald Mountain to rout illegal spotlight hunters . 

So like I was saying, when you’re the son of one of those types of guy who just naturally volunteers for any task that comes along, you have ample opportunity to become involved in a great number of out-of-the-normal activities; rarely dull and always unpredictable - some less than pleasant. I have a very particular memory of one of these impacting experiences that evokes not only a series of sights and sounds related to my participation in it, but that of a particular smell as well – the heavy odor of oil-mixed gasoline and exhaust from small outboard motors. 

I don’t now remember the name of the victim:  he was known around town as a kind of rough and tough, hard drinking and partying type; the kind of young man that grew up in the 50s with greasy, slick-backed hair, homemade needle and ink tattoos on his arms and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of a tight fitting T-shirt.  He and a group of two or three other friends had gone out on the river in a flat-bottomed boat down near what was then the Danville Boat Club; south on 11/15 across from the Merck plant.  The story was that they were partying pretty heavily out on the boat and he had fallen overboard, disappearing into the current.  There were murmurs that there might have been foul play, but I don’t know if anything ever came of it.

When his body didn’t appear after a day or two, a call went out for anyone having a boat to come to the club to drag the river.  Although I couldn’t have been more than 14 years old, Dad decided to take me along.  Everyone in a boat was given a three pronged grappling hook attached to a long rope.  The boats were then spaced out across the river, from the bank to about the middle, and we began a float downstream, the hooks strung out behind us to bounce along the river bottom.  We were told to keep a slight tension on the rope, waiting to sense a change from the harder bump-bump-bump of the river bottom to a slightly softer hesitation or pull as in theory the hook would come into contact with a submerged body.

After several trips up and down a quarter-mile stretch of the river, motoring back to a point just above the Boat Club docks and beginning once again the downriver float, I felt something different vibrate from the hook up through the rope in my hands.  It was as if my hook had come upon a wad of clothing that reluctantly rolled and was set free from an entanglement of weeds.  I told my Dad, and a group of boats circled back and concentrated on the area.  A man in another boat finally hooked the body firmly and it was pulled to surface and into the bottom of one of the boats.  Word went out and the search was called off.  I remember getting out of our boat just as dark was beginning to fall and walking towards the shore on the wobbly dock, looking down on the pale, water- bloated and stiff body of the guy.  There was a clot of blood around his nose and mouth.  It was the first dead person I had ever seen.  The smell of the various outboard motors that had just been shut down luckily masked any other type of smell that may have been emanating from the body.  But to this day, I am unable to disassociate the smell of motor oil and gasoline with that image of death.