The Many Near Deaths of John Huizinga

a case of mistaken identity in the sugarcane fields of eastern Mexico leads to a night time walk into the unknown at machete point.

We join my father and his brother, George, on their travels through 1963 Mexico.  In a time before google maps, expedia, air bnb and so on, they had a vague plan to get to Mexico City eventually, an open ended time frame in which to do so  (in the end the trip was about 6 months) and a volkswagon bug they had driven down from Canada to take them there.  This is the first of many adventures that took place along the way.  

The episode we meet one of my father's early loves, the motorcycle.  In my father's words, "the combination of big powerful motorcycles and youthful bravado and testosterone just spells trouble."  

Because of this story I have always had a plan floating in my mind for what to do if both headlights were to go out on a car I was driving somewhere with no street lights.  I have this plan because my father always told this story with an addendum of what he would have done differently:  turn on the left turn signal!  Having experimented I can say that this does indeed give enough light to see and follow the yellow line in case of emergency.

Audio Engineering by Matt Tibbs

This episode and the next are looping back in time to pick up a few stories that we missed earlier. We join my father and his older brother, Melle, in an episode from their Southern Ontario Dutch Immigrant farm kid lives.  This story happens in 1951, three years after the entire family had immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands to make a fresh start post world war two.

Audio Engineering by Matt Tibbs

This episode is a collection of stories from my father's teenage life in Southern Ontario.  We visit stories about cars, bikes, cigarettes and guns.  One note:  the original idea was to light the cigarette by hitting the very tip with a bullet.  For a variety of reasons that did not work, so option two is the idea you hear in this podcast.

Audio Engineering by Matt Tibbs

Episode two is one of the most epic car related near deaths that my father has experienced.  The pure chance of where his body landed is enough to make me a believer in my father's beleaguered guardian angel, but the uncanny unfolding does not stop there.

Audio Engineering by Matt Tibbs

John Huizinga, my father, has almost died many times in a variety of ways.  This is the story of the very first time he almost died.  It was in 1946 Holland (in Friesland), just after WWII had ended.  Two years later, the entire family of nine children would immigrate to Canada.  It is the first of many car related near death experiences.

Audio Engineering by Matt Tibbs