01-Blood on the Floor

So it's about two thirty in the morning and I walk into this convenience store. I'm holding a blood soaked towel to my face and shards of glass are hanging from my clothes. Now, the only person in the place is this clerk, so I politely get his attention and ask if he could tell me where the band aids are. The clerk looks at me and turns white as a sheet and says, you want me to call an ambulance. No, no, no, I said, I need to go cover the shuttle launch. Just give me some band aids and I'll get out of here. Oh, I'm sorry, I think I got some blood on your floor. I'm Jim pulling. And this is my view from the middle. The year was nineteen eighty one. Before they were Honda Accords and Honda Civics, there were simply Honda cars. Honda at the time is primarily known for motorcycles, and when they're cars came out on the market, it's like they took a motorcycle engine and built a box around it. It was the quintessential basic car, if you will, four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel, not much else. I was working for radio station who in Orlando at the time, and this was the number one radio station in the city. But their station car was you guessed it, a Honda car, the Honda supercar, if you will, That's what I call it. That and an old rickety van were the only vehicles the station owned, although the print on the side of the car said Unit ten or some such nonsense to make people think that we had a fleet of the little buggers. It had the station call letters and logo all over it in bright orange colors. I put a lot of mileage on that thing in early nineteen eighty one, since I had to drive back and forth between Orlando and the Kennedy Space Center a lot you see. Upcoming in April of that year was the planned, made launch of America's first space shuttle, the Columbia. Now this was a big stinking deal. The KSC launched Complex thirty nine, a press site. I rubbed elbows with media from all over the world. It was not uncommon to see guys like Jay Barberree from NBC or Jules Bergman from ABC making their way through the press building or throwing out questions at news conferences. Both of them, by the way, were a bit stuck on themselves. Bergman especially, and weren't very popular among the common press corps. But I digress. I spent a good deal of time at that press site, reading through volumes of press materials on the Shuttle program, interviewing people covering the news conferences, and basically educating myself on everything Shuttle so that I could talk about it intelligently on the radio when the time came. As was typical in those early days of the Shuttle program, launches were constantly delayed, but finally NASA thought they were ready to go, so the morning of Sunday, April twelfth was set as the launch date. Now, if you've ever been to a launch in person, you have an idea of how big the crowds can be. These days, SpaceX and ULA are launching vehicles multiple times a month, But back in the Shuttle and before that the Apollo era, these things were monumental occurrences. This launch was on a Sunday, and so that meant the crowds would be even heavier. Now, being a member of the media was different. Once you got to the press site, it was crowded with media people, but it was nothing like the public viewing area that was a zoo. The biggest problem was getting to the press site. A drive from Orlando that normally took an hour could take four to six hours on a launch day, and I'm not kidding. So knowing this, I headed for Kennedy Space Center at around two AM. My co anchor Gary and I had arranged to meet up at the press site early in the morning to prep for the live radio coverage of the launch. So I saddled up the trustee Honda Supercar and headed east from our life at Old Dark thirty. Now beyond the fact that this Honda car was already just the basic car, this particular vehicle had a few added features that not many have. For instance, one of the disc jockeys at the station used it for a station event and somehow managed to break off the side view mirror on the driver's side. Not long before that, someone broke off the center rear view mirror, so the only way to see who it was behind you was to physically spin around and look, and then spin back again to look forward. Great car, huh should have used a motorcycle. Whoo was the number one station in the city at the time, and the station manager wore diamond rings and a gold watch and drove a fancy car, but keeping the station Honda car in a condition that was actually safe to drive on the roads was apparently beyond the reach of the budget. Anyway, I'm headed for the press site and I'm taking a backway to avoid trying. My route took me through the East Florida town of Port Saint John. I was on US Highway One, a four lane divided highway through the area. I'm driving in the right lane at two thirty ish in the morning when I come upon a slow moving vehicle. Speed limit was forty but this guy was doing about half that for some reason. So I needed to pass this guy, and so I did the perubials spin around to see what was behind me in the left lane. And when I did this little dance, I saw a car in the left lane several city blocks back. And if it had been traveling at the speed limit, and if the car I was driving didn't react like a cow with them physimo when you punch the gas pedal to the floor, I would have slid over and passed the guy with no trouble. But it didn't happen that way. A guy barreling up US one in the left lane that morning had to be doing ninety miles an hour, so the time it took me to spin around and back again, maneuver into the left lane, and punch the gas, which did very little accelerate the car, the guy was pretty much on top of me and had to slam on his brakes to keep from hitting me. Of course, he leaned on the horn the entire time, as if there was anything I could do about the situation at that point, So I kept flowing the gas on the Honda Supercar and praying that the hamsters running around the fan belt propelling the engine forward would give me some speed, but no such luck. I did get around the slow poke and get back into the right lane, but now without a lot of tires screeching and horn honking. So now the guy I had cut off was pissed so much so he decided he was going to do something about it, so he passed me, ducked into the right lane in front of me, and stopped dead. Meanwhile, the slow poke that I had just passed was confused as to what was going on, so he moved into the left lane, moved up even with the pissed off guy and stopped dead as well. Now I'm not sure what the heck he was doing. So now both lanes in front of me were blocked. There was a herb with telephone poles on my right and a median on the other side, so I was boxed in with nowhere to go. I look up to see that the pissed off guy had about five other guys in the car with him. All were obviously drunk and shaking their fists out the windows of the car and shouting obscenities in my general direction. I knew right away this was not a church youth group on their way to a retreat somewhere. I was good at picking up one stuff like that. The driver of this rolling beer garden gets out of the car and starts stomping his way back towards the Honda Supercar. Now I roll up my driver window as if that was going to do anything for me. He storms up to my driver window, makes a fist, cocks his arm back as far as it would go, and with a motion that was obviously intended to knock my block off, bashed his hand through my driver's side window, propelling shattered glass into my face and across the car. Now, I'm pretty sure, in a state of abreation, this guy had no idea the driver window was rolled up, but I don't think he cared or he even felt it. He was thinking through the window to my face. He screams, you do that again, you nice little fellow, and I'll kill you. Okay, so he didn't call me a nice little fellow, But what he did call me I don't want to repeat on a PG podcast. He turns around and stops back to his car, where his drunkest skunk buddies were shouting out various helpful, yet logistically challenging suggestions as to how I could have sexual relations with myself. That I will say the suggestions were helpful to me and the previously sleeping residents of Port Saint John. He hit the gas and took off into the night. I looked down at my lap and there were about a thousand pieces of safety glass, some covered in blood, all over the place. I'm sure it was a mixture of my blood and that of the dude who won all Rambo on my driver window. His hand had to be hamburger after that, and he was so drunk he probably didn't even feel it. My only satisfaction in this whole thing is realizing the pain the guy would be feeling the next morning when he woke up and wondered why his hand looked like he had stuck it in a food processor. The guy's fist never came in contact with my face, but the shattered glass did a real number on it. It was dark in the car, and I'm sure at this point you'll be surprised to know that the dome light in the car was also not working, so the only light I had to go by was a dim street light. I did manage to find a towel in the car that I used to blot the blood on my face. With no mirrors or working interior lights in the car, I couldn't really tell the extent of my injuries, but I could feel the blood running down my face. Oh and in case you're wondering, no, I don't know what happened to the slow poke dude. It was the initial cause of all this. At some point he left the scene, apparently having better things to do than to be sure I wasn't lynched by a bunch of drunken idiots. So I started driving a again. I pull into a twenty four hour convenience mart, holding the towel to my face, which is now soaked in blood, and shards of glass hanging from my clothes. I must have looked like I had just come out of a zombie apocalypse movie. I found the clerk, who is the only person in the convenience store, and very politely, I said, excuse me, can you tell me where I can find the band aids? Well, the clerk turns and looks at me and turns as white as a sheet. You want me to call an ambulance, he said, voice shaking. No, no, no, I said, I just need to go cover the Space Shuttle launch. Just give me some band aids and I'll get out of here. Oh sorry, I think I got some blood on your floor. So here I am in the middle again. On one side, I have this big important thing I have to do and havn't the time for any diversions. And on the other side, some drunken idiot who decides he was the one who needed to teach me a lesson by bashing his fist through my driver window. On one side, I'm about to cover live on the air, a major news event for Central Florida on the highest rated radio station in the market. But then I have to do it from a crappy little car that technically wasn't safe to be on the roadway. About an hour later, I showed up at the press site, face all bandaged up. Gary, my co anchor, takes one look at me and says, what the hell happened to you? Never mind, I said, let's just do this. We did. It was a spectacular launch. I'm Jimpolling and that's my View from the Middle. In the next episode, an evening spent at a bar with a famous baseball star doesn't mean much when all along you didn't know you were talking to a famous baseball star, A clueless brush with greatness. Next on My View from the Middle to Doug and SMI