Davy Crockett, a Memory

I was about nine years old. I was shaped like a basketball. I didn’t bounce as well.

It was the era of Disney’s t.v. series and movies about Davy Crockett. They were extremely popular. I sure loved the series.

I had a Davy Crockett style, coonskin cap. If I wore it I looked less like a basketball.

I was chasing a “possum” up a tree a la Davy in my vivid imagination seeking lunch. Given my unusual weight for a nine year old a branch broke and I landed on my back in proximity to my posterior diaphragm.

On landing I was completely breathless given the force of the fall. The only thing in my life more painful than that moment in the 50s was about 35 years later when I was held at gunpoint.

As Gump suggested a few years later, life is full of surprises.