The Muddled Male

Christmas Angel.

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

 

        Ann and I were born and raised in Utah but moved to Seattle in 1956 when Ann was nineteen and I was twenty-one.  We had a brand new baby, a brand new job paying $1.735/hour, no money in the bank, no arrangements for a place to live, and a hazy future.  We did have one stability in our life.  We almost always drove to Utah at Christmas time to spend the holiday with Ann’s family at her parents’ home in Porterville here in Utah.  Over the fifty years that we lived in the Seattle area the roads we traveled between Seattle and Porterville at Christmas time varied from dry to wet to blizzards to solid ice.  Usually we drove over Snoqualmie Pass then down through Oregon and Idaho and on into Utah.  If the roads were particularly bad going over Snoqualmie, we would drive south to Portland and then through the Columbia River Gorge to Pendleton. 

        At Christmas time in 1967 it was snowing particularly hard over Snoqualmie and so we took the Portland route.  That seemed to be the better choice that year because the further south we drove the less it snowed until finally there was just a gentle rain.  It was about 3:30 AM on Christmas Eve morning when we started onto the sweeping overpass that stood above the small town of Arlington, Oregon.  Ann was driving, I was snoozing in the front seat with a baby in my lap, and our young daughter was asleep on the back seat.  It was the era before seat belts, so no one was buckled in. 

        Neither Ann nor I had heard of black ice before that moment when Mother Nature began driving our car.  The overpass, cooled both from above and below by the frigid air, was a solid sheet of ice slickened by falling rain.  Just as all four tires touched the ice we started to slide out of control, spinning around and around, hitting every fender multiple times on the sides of the overpass as we spun and careened back and forth toward the one car that was ahead of us.  We caught up to him going sideways and backwards, clipping his right front fender just before we crunched against the center divider and slid backwards on down the overpass.  Our new car with barely 6,000 miles on the odometer took a severe beating.  The young man we hit was on his way to show his dad his brand new car with only 300 miles on his odometer.  I checked to see if the young man and his girlfriend were okay and his response, as I recall, was, "I hope the (expletive deleted) you have insurance.” 

        My immediate worry was that other cars, unaware of the ice, would come onto the overpass and crash into the two of us sitting there in the middle of the road.  So I began to run back up the overpass waiving my flashlight as a warning.  But my waving light caused them to slam on their brakes and I watched as three other cars did exactly as we had done and come spinning down the ice toward us.  When I finally got onto the blacktop where oncoming cars could stop without sliding, there were five mangled cars on the span behind me.  While the wrecking crews cleaned up the mess we were all taken to the police station.  On our side of the room sat the guilty party, Ann and me with our two small children.  On the other side of the room sat the angry, glowering occupants of the other four vehicles.  When we were finally released to leave we found our car, filled with Christmas presents and all of our belongings, sitting unusable in the town’s wrecking yard.  There we were the day before Christmas, stranded in the wee hours of the morning, hundreds of miles from our destination, in a town where we knew no one, and with no way to get us and our belongings to “Grandma’s house” for Christmas. 

        Then came a Christmas Angel into our life in the form of the father of the young man we hit.  He had driven 125 miles in the middle of a rainy, cold night to help his son in case his car was damaged too badly to continue on.  When our Angel found that his son’s car could be driven, he sent them on ahead, unloaded our car into his and drove us to the bus station in Pendleton.  Then while I scraped together enough money to buy our tickets to continue our journey, our Christmas Angel scurried all over town gathering up boxes in which we could pack our belongings.  While we stood there still dazed, he packed our things and got us onto the bus with never an incriminating word.  We thanked him, but not nearly to an extent befitting the angel he was.  We didn't even get his name or phone number.  I am certain that he has long since passed away, but we will forever be grateful to that unknown angel who took time to be kind when others chose to be angry. 

        So on this Christmas in 2013 our wish for you is that your own Christmas Angel will come into your life just at the very moment of your need.  Merry Christmas.