By JEFF PEYTON
Class of 1961
As I recall, Cornflower Road passed by the Levittown Community Church to the east, thanks to a fairly long banana curve going north and intersecting with Periwinkle. At the south end, near
The
In the winter, walking to school was not always pleasant but it was a choice. What was a backpack? You carried your books to school. But this morning I was late and it had snowed. And so there I was “riding to school” with dad. The roads were slick with ice but clear of snow. As we approached
Immediately, dad’s driving teacher instincts kicked in. He slowed, being careful of course not to go into a skid. Mrs. Gaskins, however, was still turning. Time, yup, seemed to be standing still. She had entered “the mother of all skids”—a skid as long and as curved as Cornflower Road itself, a skid as simple as a forward pass line drawn on a play diagram. We could see it coming. Even though Mrs. Gaskins was clearly on the other side of the road, her vector was locking on.
My father, pathetically trying to mount a snow bank in a 1960 Comet, could not evade Mrs. Gaskins, now zeroing in, her face quizzically framed in her windshield. The sound of the impact crunched the air. Thus it happened that two cars kissed, steam rising, on
The walkers stopped, gathered, and looked. A scene out of a Little Lulu comic book. Wow. An accident. Mr. Peyton, the driver ed. teacher, in an accident. And me smiling wistfully at passers by, the crackle of snow under the feet, feeling more sorry for my dad than for myself.
