Remember?

Remember the Gatewood Curse? Mom used to say if there was going to be a car accident in this family, it would happen on a holiday.
Here are the ones I recall: the slide into the creek on Easter Sunday – I barely remember it because I was asleep when it started and remember getting thrown into a back seat window and seeing nothing but squashed blades of grass. In those days, back seats weren’t bolted down and when we came to rest, the car was upside down. Bob was standing and holding the back seat up so it wouldn’t fall on us. Mom later told me that she worried about it blowing up, so she whispered to Dad, “Is it going to explode?” And he said, “No, as long as the switch is turned off.”
One Father’s Day, Shirley put a car in the ditch west of Lyons. On another Father’s Day, she got broadsided by somebody in Omaha.
Christmas Eve when I was about 10 maybe? Dad and Mom and I had gone to do our Christmas shopping in Fremont (he and I had secretly bought Mom a pair of electric scissors). There was a ton of snow on the ground and in many places, tall drifts lined both sides of the highway. Just north of Oakland we had a head-on with another car when we were both trying to pass through a place where it was drifted on both sides, but not wide enough for two cars. We had slowed way down, so it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, but of course we weren’t wearing seat belts and Mom hit the windshield and got a big cut right on her forehead at the hairline. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget how scary it was to see her with blood streaming down her face. I started screaming, "Daddy - Mom's bleeding!!" Junior Swanson came along and took Mom and I to the Oakland hospital, where she got stitched up, I calmed down a little and we all went and spent the night at Sue’s, who fortunately lived right across the street from the hospital at that time.
That’s all I can think of right now – maybe some of you remember others?
At any rate – drive carefully wherever you go this weekend!
Love to all
Janell