Chapter 23 - Most dangerous thing you've done & have you ever saved a life?

What is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?”

 

Lorraine: I walked out on a float of logs when I was 18. It was fun but very dangerous.

Arlie: Drag racing on the S-curve in Port Townsend

Denny: Haven’t done anything really dangerous. Flown quite a bit in commercial airlines and numerous times in private aircraft. Owned several motorcycles. Rode to Los Angeles several times. Driven across country several times. Did some boating in Puget Sound during storms. Worked in Seattle in the central district. Raised teenagers.

Joyce: Driving too fast.

Dale: I was fishing one Saturday with an older paper mill worker, Carl Dierich, off the east side of Point Marrowstone in dad’s 14-ft boat. I had seen the Princess liner from Seattle pass earlier on its way to Victoria BC and judged that it was about time to get away from the sand bars when the liner’s swells would begin breaking. I hadn’t noted the time of the tide change, however. We were nearly caught in a riptide. The water boiled furiously. I began to make some headway away from the point but the delay allowed the Princess liner’s swells to catch us with full force. It took ten minutes or more to get away from the angry, frothing waters out into the deeper waters of Admiralty Inlet. Afterwards, Carl confided that he had been through two typhoons on a little destroyer escort during his naval tenure but he had never been so scared as he was in that riptide. He told dad he would never go fishing with me again. Should you ever have the opportunity, look out east from Point Marrowstone during a tide change. Or, at Point Wilson, look northwest to the left of the buoy at a tide change. I had been caught in the riptide at Point Wilson twice. At 19 I was not overly fazed by these episodes, but a few years ago during a visit to Port Townsend, I happened to be at Point Wilson during a tide change and wondered aloud, “My Gawd! How did I ever live through that?”

Janie: Riding with Clarence

Jimmy: I took a 90-degree corner at 80 mph. One of the many stupid car things I did.

Marlee: I play it safe all the time. I don’t like being hurt. I do remember dune buggying with Jeff for the first time at Tillamook, Oregon. I thought we were going to flip over and die. I screamed and screamed till Jeff calmed me down enough so I could see we were just fine.

Cindy: One time while I was camping at Lake Chelan with a group of kids, we went up to an old mine. It was fenced off and the sign stated to stay out. I never would have went in but the thought of standing outside the fence alone was scarier than going in. I couldn’t climb a fence to save my life so the boys picked me up like a bean pole and slid me over. We walked all over in the mine and I was petrified the entire time.

Bill: I am not much of a risk taker. I suppose the most dangerous was when I was 16. I let my 12-year-old cousins drive my car to school. Not very responsible, I know.

Mary: In 1999 when I was 33, I was vacationing in Cabo San Lucas and decided to parasail off the back of a boat.

 

Have you ever saved anyone’s life or has anyone saved yours?

 Denny:  When my son, Sheldon, was young he got into trouble at the deep end of the pool at the park at Hoods Canal and I had to grab him.  I also had to grab Jennifer Ray when she was a little girl after she jumped into some rapids. When Tiffany was about 7 and swimming at Mill Creek in Salem, she got caught under low hanging bushes and trees and couldn’t get out but I managed to get to her in time. One time I was swimming at age 17 at a church camp at Green Lake, Wisc. A friend and I swam across the lake but halfway there, I realized I wasn’t as strong a swimmer as I thought. It was too far to turn around so I kept going. We finally climbed up onto the deck of the houses on the lake, skirted the windows and jumped off on their lawns and ran out to the road and back to the cars.

Joyce: When my daughter, Susan, was about 2 or 3, I snatched her out of the way within seconds of our neighbor slamming down his car trunk door on her head.

Dale: I have saved both my son’s and wife’s lives, for the same reason. At two years old, Brett had gotten food caught in his esophagus and stopped breathing. I performed the Heimlich maneuver and did it four times for my wife. Their muscular dystrophy contributes to ineffective swallowing.

Jimmy: I saved Holly from a bad marriage and she saved me from one too.

Cindy: I saved Mirinda’s life by getting her to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in a timely fashion when she had E coli at age two.

Bill: I saw a home on fire when I was driving. I banged on their door and woke them up. Another time my brother-in-law helped me by removing a piece of turkey that was stuck in my throat. I didn’t realize I was choking.