It was the middle of July at Crater Lake, high in the mountains of Oregon. They stopped there for just one night, on their way to someplace else. The first thing Dad did was walk with his father, Ancel, to find the “acky-tack.” Ancel always liked to know where and under what conditions he would be relieving himself. After all the outhouses, bushes and dirt holes they had used on wilder trips, the heated, lighted cinderblock restroom was a palace of comfort.
His mom Ruth, meantime, was back at the campsite, standing at a picnic table with her curly hair and wide, round hips. Maybe she was smiling. She could have been humming. She made some simple sandwiches, then locked the big block of commissary butter in the metal cooler.
After dinner the air turned cold and the family climbed into their snug Apache tent trailer, where a gas lantern hissed and glowed. Wrapped in a sleeping bag with a Hardy Boys novel, my dad was happy. I mean, so safe and happy and whole.
Sometime in the middle of the night— in the middle of July—it began to snow. The hush of the falling flakes gave a dreamy kind of softness to the scraping, clattering noise just outside. A bear had come through the trees. She tried in vain to reach the sweet butter Ruth had locked away. Ancel woke, stuck his top half out of the trailer and banged a spoon against an iron skillet to scare the bear away. That butter must have smelled so sweet, though, because the bear wouldn't give up. Finally, in the early half-light, Ancel climbed out, trudged through the now deep snow, opened the scratched, dented, ruined cooler, tossed the butter into the woods, and went back to bed.
When the sun had risen, Ancel and dad walked their route to the acky-tack. There they found a motorcycle that hadn’t been there before. It was half buried in snow and parked crooked with the front tire butted up against the cinderblock wall. Inside a man dressed in leather lay curled on the bathroom floor, sound asleep. He woke when he heard them moving around and explained how he had come to be there.
Seems that just the night before, the summer sky and cool air had lured him out for a ride. He was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t even think of turning back. He climbed higher and higher, and got farther and farther away from cities and towns when the air grew suddenly colder and the snow started falling hard and fast. The roads were buried almost instantly and he could hardly get his bike to move at all. It was difficult for him to differentiate between the road and the white expanse on either side. He became disoriented and afraid, wondering if he would freeze to death, when he saw a light shining through the trees. He didn’t know where the light was coming from and didn’t care. He steered his motorcycle toward it, and went skidding and sliding along until he bumped into the building. He went inside and lay down, grateful for the simple pleasures of shelter and warmth.
This is a story my dad told me, and I’m recalling it from memory. I'm sure some of it is wrong. I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you exactly how life was for my dad when he was a boy. I can tell you that his childhood memories glow like that gas lantern. They are golden with rubies. They levitate. They hum.
