Gooney and the Golf Cart

By Lisa Brackin
Midway Island, 1956 – 1957
Returned as an employee of MPC 1997 – 1998
By Born on Midway – Lisa Brackin

While riding in a golf cart early one evening I notice a gooney bird start running down the road towards us. Knowing that these crazy birds are not used to obstacles since they spend most of their life at sea, I tried to anticipate what was going to happen. In a split second my mind raced thru such questions as… Is he going to keep coming straight towards us? Is he planning on getting enough altitude to fly over us? Is he going to come straight into us leaving us with faces full of gooney bird feathers and who knows what else? As these thoughts hurried thru my mind the driver of the golf cart slammed on the brakes just as that large sea bird clipped the top of our cart and I became airborne. I land in the middle of that road unable to get up… hysterically laughing with the vision of that bird and the panic on its face just before hitting the cart. Looking down the road, I see that big bird tumble, get up and look around with an expression of, what was that? A little shake of the head, and he’s running down the road once again, trying to figure out how on earth he’s going to take off on land, and probably hoping that whatever just happened doesn’t happen again.

Lisa Bracklin
Midway Island, 1997 – 1998