Urban Legends

Florence, OR, was too small in the 1950s to be called "urban," and too far from anyplace else to be called "suburban" or even "exurban."  It was just a village of 1500 or so people. Never the less, some chilling stories reached every school child there. 
     Our school playground wasn't finished with landscaping:  it was a natural sand hill.  "Don't throw sand," everybody warned.  "Once a boy got sand in his eye, and when one eye was injured, he went blind in both." Many years later, somebody pointed out a man. "That's Bobby Amack," they said. "He got sand in his eyes when he was a kid.  He started college in pharmacy, but he went blind."
     The next story was only slightly less personal. Every year, for the Rhododendron Festival in May, a carnival came to town.  Everybody knew that "Last year a girl got her hair caught in the gears of the Ferris wheel, and it broke her neck."  Every year the younger children were told "Last year...."
     Then there was the story of the hooked hand.  It seems a boy and a girl on a date, after the movie,  drove their car to Harbor Vista Park that overlooks the North Jette, to "watch for submarines."  The girl switched on the car radio, and they heard a news flash:  Everybody should watch out for a killer on the loose. You could recognize him because he had a hook for a hand.  The girl got scared, and insisted that they drive home at once.  As they drove away, they thought they hear a scream.  At her house, the boy got out of the car to open the girl's car door for her (that used to be required of mannerly men), and there, stuck in the car door handle, was a hook.
     Every responsible mother knows that there are certain lessons she must teach her teenaged sons, such as "No alcohol, no drugs, and no sex without protection," and "There are certain things that ladies and gentlemen don't talk about." But I could not tell Eric and Brook about the hooked hand with appropriate solemnity-- I was laughing too hard.