Look at the pretty horses

Optional title for this post: "spit it out! spit it out!

I can't remember what the exact year was when this incident occured, but I know it was in the '70's. I'm sure my mom will have a different opinion on what exactly happened but this is my blog and I get to tell it from the way I remember it!

It was a lazy summer day. Mom took me and Pam with her to the store that was owned by my parent's friends, Sherry and Lois Greer. (The store is now Roger's & Son's Sunoco.) We used to go to their store a lot when I was a kid. They had 3 children; Marty, Randy, and Dee Dee, and we all used to play together. We would ride bikes around the store and up and down their driveway while mom and dad talked to Sherry and Lois.

Sometimes mom would have enough money to let us pick out some candy. On this day we had done just that. I remember I had got my very favorite, Marathon Bar, and Pam got a $100,000 bar (now called the 100 Grand.) We bought our candy bars and piled in the car and headed back toward home. We lived on Maloneyville Rd. so we took Tazewell Pike towards Gibbs. We had just made it down the long hill in front of Atkins Baptist Church and were starting to go around the curves just past Atkins Rd. We were happily enjoying our candy bars, singing, and listening to the radio when Pam exclaimed, "look at the pretty horses!" Pam loved horses and was always on the lookout for them. Over to the right was a large field and sure enough there were several beautiful horses grazing in the lush green grass. My mother, turned to look out the passenger window and in that split second the right side wheels dropped off the side of the shoulder. Mom jerked the wheel, overcompensating to straigten the car back up. The car screeched across to the other side of the road and again mom jerked the wheel to the right. We were fish tailing almost out of control. After what seemed like hours, mom was somehow able to bring the car back under control.

The next thing I knew, mom was screaming and holding her hand behind her into the backseat and yelling, "spit it out! spit it out!" Pam and I leaned forward and spit what was left of our candy bars into the palm of my mother's hand. By then Pam was crying, mom was crying, and I almost started crying. I sat silently in the back seat wondering why in the world mom wanted me to spit my candy bar out. As we neared home I got brave enough to ask, "mom, why did you make us spit our candy bars out?" Still in tears mom said, "I was afraid you all would choke on them." I didn't quite grasp the concept back when I was a kid but now that I'm older, I completely understand it.

The memory of that day has always been there in my mind and I think about it nearly everytime I eat a candy bar. I told my kids about it a few months ago and just recently when we were on a family trip my youngest daughter Elizabeth yelled out from the backseat, "spit it out! spit it out!" We all broke down laughing. Ah those were some good times.