Riding Rockets Read Online Free Page A

them up. Cutting off my legs wouldn’t help me.”
    My face fell in crushing disappointment. I was certain I had stumbled on the secret to putting my father back on his feet. Dad hugged me and cried into my neck. I was so confused. I didn’t understand germs or nerves. I only understood what my eyes had told me, that it was possible to walk without real legs.
    “You go on and help your mom with the groceries.”
    I climbed from the car and walked backward a couple steps, staring at my dad. His head was resting on the steering wheel and he was sobbing.
    This was the last time he ever revealed to me or my siblings what must have been a titanic struggle to adapt to life without legs. But he did. Within a year he had returned to being the man I remembered before polio. His Washing Machine Charlie imitation got even better.
    After several months of recovery in Texas my parents were faced with the decision of where to settle the family. Wichita Falls was not an option. It was an oil and cattle town with limited employment opportunities for the handicapped. And there was no thought given to returning to my dad’s hometown, New York City. The vertical landscape there would make a wheelchair life difficult. So they picked Albuquerque, New Mexico, as their post-polio home. During our travels we had driven through the city a couple times and Mom and Dad had always liked it. There was a VA hospital, work opportunities, and a climate that made wheelchair life a little more tolerable.
    Albuquerque was my last childhood move and I thank God for it. We were permanently in the west. No longer did we have to drive for days to reach the deserts and mountains we had all come to love. Now we could satisfy our collective need to see over the next horizon on a weekly basis. The fact my dad could not walk was hardly an impediment to our adventures. He had five boys and we could carry him and his wheelchair anywhere. And we did. We hefted him over steep and rugged terrain to an isolated lake and put him in my brother’s canoe. We carried him across streams and along trails. We sat him in meadows to enjoy a sunset or the majesty of a distant thunderstorm.
    In addition to the wheelchair-bearer duties, my dad’s polio also turned us into bartenders and urine-dumpers. My dad was a 7-and-7 man and at the end of the day we would mix him a highball of Seagram’s Seven whiskey and 7-Up. He trained each of us to pour two fingers of the liquor, add ice and then the soft drink. He also trained us to empty containers of his urine on road trips.
    On one drink-making occasion, my little brother found an already opened bottle of 7-Up. He brought the drink to my dad, who tossed back a swallow. “Christ, Mark, how much whiskey did you put in this? It’s really strong.” My brother explained he had used a two-finger measurement, just like always. Only after Dad was down to slurping on the ice did the lightbulb come on. Earlier in the day, when nobody had been around, he had peed in an empty 7-Up bottle and left it on a table. He jerked the highball from his mouth and sniffed it like a dog at a hydrant. “Mark! Where did you find the 7-Up for my drink?”
    “There was a bottle of it on the table.”
    “Jesus Christ! I’ve been drinking a 7-and-piss.” Moments later, with a fresh drink in his hand, Dad philosophically mused, “I guess if you have to drink urine, it’s best you drink your own.”
    There was one item from my dad’s walking life that he adamantly refused to let polio take from him: his beloved toolbox. It came with us on every trip. In spite of past experience, Dad was convinced he would someday save us all from a serious car malfunction with his tools. He got his chance on a blistering day in June 1963. We were on a trip through a remote area of desert in northwest New Mexico. (The term remote will always be redundant in describing the venues of Mullane adventures.) The car began to surge. For a moment there would be acceleration, then