Short Stories and Essays
IT TAKES MORE THAN ONE BREATH FOR THIS JUMP
[I posted the following true story on Facebook on December 16, 2022. The story is about my unconventional friend Edwin Sanford who was a couple of years ahead of me in high school.]
I was in the company of my old buddy Edwin Sanford this week, along with some other contemporaries of a bygone era. I took the occasion to ask him something I have been wanting to ask him for a long time. I knew from other sources that he once jumped off the canal bridge located on Highway 111, the Holtville Road. I was grateful that he was willing to talk about it. So, I will set forth, without his permission, his report of the event. Please don’t tell him about this Facebook post.
The jump took place during daylight hours. He had parked his boat at the edge of the water adjacent to the expected entry point. He, with some degree of embarrassment, admitted to us in a lower voice that he was in a substantial degree of intoxication at the time. He was unmarried and probably in his mid-20’s age wise. (I will personally add that Edwin was an excellent swimmer. He had won lots of ribbons in swimming competitions at the city pool during our childhood and teenage years. He was also known to regularly inner tube the river rapids near the city park.)
Edwin said that he jumped feet first with toes pointed and kept his body alignment that way. That’s a good thing because he would have been knocked out and drowned had he hit flat. Edwin said that the first part of the experience, after departing the bridge, was wondering if he would ever hit the water. (I should have asked him how many times he took a deep breath and then had to exhale and take another one before hitting the water. There is some crucial timing involved in the breath-taking at that height.)
The second part of his experience, he said, was wondering if he would ever stop moving deeper and deeper and deeper after hitting the dark water. The third part of his experience was wondering if he was ever going to rise to the surface. (I think it was probably a very sobering experience for him by this time.)
Well, I am so happy to report the obvious—that my good friend Edwin Sanford successfully reentered the surface and swam to the side, not necessarily to the point where his boat was parked, but at least to the same side of the flowing canal. By the way, Edwin and I had worked together one summer, about a decade before his jump, to help build that canal. We placed dynamite sticks deep inside the ground where we had formed straight-line holes with a pressurized water pipe. Neither of us then imagined that Edwin would someday dive into the future canal from the top of a spanning bridge.
I would not want to even think about living in a world without Edwin Sanford. He has an unquenchable zest for life. He has always walked to the beat of his own drum, whether entering Mrs. Kathleen Johnson’s high school math class with a hearty “Alllll Right,” or taking in some arrogant Montgomery hotrod dragster—leaving him in the smokey wake of his Bondo-colored, antique model pickup truck on the straight-way of our unofficial dragstrip on Crenshaw Road (now Chapel Road). What did his wife Cathy’s parents think when she announced that she was going to marry Edwin Sanford?
P.S. If you have some pecans that need cracking, Edwin’s the man to do it. His business is located behind First Baptist Church where his house formerly stood before the tornado required its demolition.