On October 2, 1977, Duane Mulvaney was in an automobile accident that rendered him a quadriplegic. For the rest of his life, he would be paralyzed from the shoulders down and dependent upon others for even the smallest things. Against all odds, Duane survived his accident and continued to live a life quite different from what he had planned, yet fulfilling and even joyful.
Excerpt
Chapter One
It was May 1969, and I was ready to graduate from high school. I was working in a gas station, like a few other friends. We were all making minimum wage which I think was about a $1.50 an hour, but in 1969 that was the kind of money that everyone was being paid, and you didn’t complain about it. I was working full-time, and I was one of the few guys my age that worked at all.
I wanted to be just like my father. That is, I wanted to go to work, make a lot of money, buy a new car, and maybe even a motorcycle, and that’s exactly what I did. I started working at the paper mill where my father worked the day that I turned eighteen. My father was a foreman. I was a little nervous going in to work at first, being the boss’s son. Now I expected to go through some ribbing, and I was sure right about that part, at least for the first few weeks. I took ribbing from all directions, and at every machine I worked on. When the ribbing was over and I wasn’t new anymore I had a lot of new friends.
This job wasn’t the ordinary job that most eighteen-year-old guys wanted. I had to work seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. I agreed on my application that I would be available to work on the paper machines seven days a week. That’s where the money was and that’s what I was there for. After all, my father had worked there for over thirty years. I figured that if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
I remember all of the stories I would sit and listen to at the dinner table as I was growing up. I felt like I knew most of the guys before I even started working there; all I had to do now was put the names with the faces. Most of them were easy to figure out just by listening to them talk. I could not wait to get to work seven days a week with swing shifts every week. Most kids my age said that I must be crazy. I was able to ignore that, because I was a crazy boy with a wallet full of money. After two months I had my first brand-new hot rod car, and soon after that, one of the fastest motorcycles made in that era. I had the best, and I worked for every bit of it. Yes they all called me crazy, but I always had money in my pocket and a nice car to get to work in.
After I had worked there for a few years I was willing to keep it up all my life, if possible. I learned very fast and was stepping up the ladder a little at a time. It was paying off very well for me. I was promoted several times in just a few short years, and the next thing I knew it was 1973. I was a happy young man with everything I could possibly ask for. It was a dream I made come true, all by myself. My father was proud of me, although he didn’t say it to me a lot. He would tell my mother and others. That was quite all right with me, because I could see the pride in his eyes.
Dad and I would ride to work together every day if we were on the same shift. I’ll never forget how he used to complain about riding in my Camaro. He would always say, “Riding in this thing is like sitting on the road.” It was much lower than his car. We took turns driving, and I used to tell him not to complain because he was getting a free ride. He would get back at me by opening the window just enough to blow his cigarette smoke out. He knew that the cold air coming in was going right down my back. I tried not to complain, because I knew he was jokingly doing it on purpose. I suppose the fresh air was better than the cigarette smoke anyway.
Those were the good old days, when I was working side by side with my dad and knowing he was always there to give me a little hint if I needed it. At least he would some of the time. Deep down inside he knew that I could handle it on my own, and that I would figure it out one way or another. I guess he knew that I was just as stubborn and determined as he was. Yeah, those were the good old days.
It was 1973, and I had been working at the paper mill for four years already. Things surely were changing all around me, and time seemed like it was moving at a super-fast speed. My life was pretty much just the way I wanted it–I had no complaints about anything. When you work that much you do not realize how fast everything is changing with your surroundings, your friends, and yourself, for that matter. It seemed like everything was going too fast. I would always hear older people say that once you hit twenty-one, time just goes faster and faster. Wow, that was a statement that turned out to be one of the most honest things I have ever heard.
Working the hours that I worked, I would look forward to going out on a date or just going somewhere and hanging out with my friends. That all depended on my relief man. He was the guy who was supposed to come in after you worked your eight hours and relieve you so you could go home and do something that you had planned. But it didn’t exactly work out that way all of the time. If your relief man was not coming to work, you stayed for another eight-hour shift. He was supposed to call in and give a reason why he was not able to report for his shift. Brother, you talk about some wild stories. I once had a relief man who called in and said he wasn’t going to be able to come to work that day because he could not find his car in all of the snow on the ground. He said that he knew it was in his driveway, but it was completely covered with snow. Another guy called in saying he was not going to be able to make it to work that particular day because he forgot how to get there. Honestly, he had worked there for fifteen years.
So if your relief man did not come in, it was in your contract that you stayed. This seemed to happen mostly on the weekends. When we would hear the phone ringing inside the laboratory everyone would hold his breath, praying that it wasn’t his relief man calling in.
Read more about Legs for Wheels HERE.
Copyright 2007 Duane Mulvaney. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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