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(conclusion)
What John likes most about his house are the tall doors and the tall ceilings. Its all about the “openness and freedom” he would say, arms stretched out and red hat on backwards. John also has a knack for collecting antique machines—from the 1930s in fact. He said it all started when his wife became fascinated with antique toasters. He started to buy her these toasters on EBay and then the buying developed into thousand-dollar investments in antique arcade games and candy machines. The hallway entrance of the house and dining room area are lined with all these antique wooden machines: for candy, pinball, gumballs, and prize-catching. The family room is a hodge-podge of brown, basket-weave furnishings and ceiling fans, mixed with clean country white and contemporary black appliances. Slightly odd, and yet perfectly inviting at the same time. An antique table, given to the Boxes from John’s parents rests along the wall of the entrance hallway. Atop the table are a few pictures of John and Mary and then larger pictures of John and his yellow sandrail in the desert. John loves his monster sized, go-kart –like sandrail. Both John and Mary like going to a notorious desert spot called Glamis several times a year with friends. Mary says the pictures of John and his sandrail are to commemorate John’s various wrecks. John’s friends on the Glamis trips will give him a framed picture after the trip usually, but John and Mary agree that this last time maybe his friends tried to stop encouraging John from wrecking the sandrail by not giving him a picture. John lives for going to Glamis. Meeting new people and hanging out, helping them out and making friends—that’s what John loves about Glamis. John has damaged his sandrail three times already, maneuvering it and driving at alarming speeds. This last time, two months ago, John totaled his sandrail.
***
Going 80 miles an hour on a drag strip in his sandrail at Glamis, John broke the spindle on his right tire and went spinning over, out of control.
“This is how I’m going to die,” John thought.
“Honey, I love you.”
John started to hear noises in the distance, yells and shouts from his wife, friends, and observers of the crash. He realized he was alive. He was airlifted and ended up having no permanent injuries—nothing broken, nothing fractured, just agonizing, stiff pain. He was fortunate not to have had his arms broken again, or his aorta severed, or his lung punctured, or anything torn, broken or split.
John looks back at this event now, and Mary knows exactly what he’s thinking. If he were to die...
“That’d be the way I want to go out…in style.”
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