As
primitive as it was, one Friday night in 1978, my kids and I made the
trip to camp to spend a weekend with my parents who had already been
vacationing there for a week or more. We left our house in Oakmont
after I got home from work and headed north, with my 15-year old son,
Mack, in the front and Joy, my 10-year old daughter., in the back seat.
It was close to a four-hour drive, and it was around 10 p.m.
by the time we got near our destination. It had rained for the entire
trip, and the downpour continued as our car climbed up the road on the
side of the mountain. The heavy clay was wet and slippery, and the ruts
were dug deeper than normal. As we reached the top of the mountain, I
soon realized that in order to navigate my low-slung 1976 two-tone brown
Chevy Nova down this single-lane road, I would have to balance that
little car’s left wheels on the center of the hump with the right wheels
precariously clinging to the sloped and greasy side. At ten miles an
hour, I struggled to maintain my position as I inched my way over the
soggy, rutted path. Suddenly, I felt the car slide to the left. I gave
it gas as I tried to steer it back up that sloping wall of clay on the
right, but the car waffled and wobbled and whipped and then came to rest
with a final “whomp.” I didn’t have to get out to check. I knew its
undercarriage was firmly planted on the raised middle hump with its
wheels dangling and spinning uselessly in the air above the bottom of
those ruts.
If I had
gotten out, I couldn’t have seen anything anyway. There were no
streetlights in that desolate place, and there was no moonlight either.
That kind of dark doesn’t exist in Oakmont, but I didn’t panic yet. I
searched through the glove compartment and came up with a flashlight. I
felt relief, but when I switched it on, the beam that filtered dimly
through the smudged glass wasn’t going to do much in this kind of
blackness.
I
bravely, but unconvincingly, told the kids, “I’m going to walk into
camp to get Pap.” From the time I was a child, I had always been afraid
of the dark, but this was beyond any dark I had ever feared. We were
about a half mile from our destination, but with the rain and the
moonless night it seemed farther. I knew we couldn’t stay where we
were, but it didn’t seem safe to take the kids with me.
While
I was trying to decide the best way to travel, my son bravely said,
“Mom, you’re not going. You stay with Joy. I’ll go.”
“You can’t go. What if you get lost?”
“I’m
not going to get lost. I know where I am. I’ll get Pap.” He grabbed
the flashlight from my hand and climbed out of the car. I was frozen in
place as he slipped in the mud outside the car door, got his footing,
and took off through the weeds at the side of the road. I kept my
lights on for a while to give him some illumination to travel by, and
for a few minutes I could see his tall, thin body trudging through the
rain. When my headlights no longer picked up his shadowy figure and I
could no longer see the beam of that almost useless flashlight as he cut
through the field and trees, I became convinced he had tripped over a
bear, had then been attacked, and was now grappling in the woods trying
to save his life. I should have gone. Why didn’t I stop him?
Joy
and I waited tensely for 20 or 30 minutes, but it seemed longer. We
remained quiet as we sat in the dark and the rain. Joy said, “Mommy,
I’m scared,” and I confessed I was, too. I finally heard the grind of a
Jeep engine and saw the glow of oncoming headlights. I flashed my
lights briefly to show my location, and I was relieved to see Mack’s
silhouette in the seat beside my father.
They
stopped just short of our car with our front bumpers about four feet
apart. Dad climbed out and attached the chain hook to the underside of
his Jeep. His black high-buckled galoshes maintained traction as he
walked the rut to my side of the car and motioned for me to roll down my
window. As he adjusted his hat and leaned on the window jamb, he
looked into the front seat. He smiled as he calmly remarked, “You look
like a turtle stuck on a rock.”
“Just
get me off this thing,” I told him. I was tired and more than a little
cranky and didn’t feel like any nonsense, but I tried to stay calm. My
father loved to find where my goat was tied and then keep poking it
with a stick, but, for once, he must have figured this was not the time
to tease. He walked to the front of the car and hooked the other end of
the chain to the underside of the Nova’s carriage. He made his way
back through the mud and climbed into the blue and white hardtop Jeep
and threw it into reverse. He backed up slowly as the chain was pulled
taut. The Jeep dragged the two-toned Nova off that hump–with the
undercarriage scraping and groaning every inch of the way. As soon as
he saw that I had reached a point to gain my wheels, he stopped the Jeep
and got out and unhooked us and got back into his vehicle. He backed
up until he could turn around, and he and Mack high-tailed it back to
camp.
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