I’ve written before about the odd things that can trigger memory. I had another such experience last week.
I drove to a meeting on a foggy morning after a snowstorm past a grove of red cedar trees. They are called red cedars, but they are actually members of the juniper family. But whatever they are, they grow on many hillsides in Missouri, and they are often planted to retain soil along highways and add interest to the view.
As I rounded a curve on a highway near my home and came upon the cedars, there flashed into my memory a similar fog and evergreen trees along Highway 97 between Bend and Klamath Falls, Oregon. We were on our way to my grandparents’ home in Klamath Falls for Christmas. My dad was driving. It was winter, the sides of the highway were covered with snow, and the fields of snow along the roads were punctuated with evergreens—most likely pines.
The highways in the Pacific Northwest, both Oregon and Washington, are striking. Often the road seems part of a primeval forest. Trees loom above the road, and sky is visible only directly overhead. On other stretches along the highways, the hills roll away and the view opens up to reveal distant peaks and ridges on mountain ranges covered with evergreens.
The stretch of the road that came to my memory fell at neither extreme of these views. Highway 97 rolled in a straight path at that point, and slushy snow covered the shoulders. The pavement itself was wet from the falling snow and and gritty from the cinders the Oregon Department of Transportation had spread to provide traction.
We made this trip many times, from when I was an infant until my grandparents moved to Pacific Grove when I was six, then again after my grandmother remarried when I was eleven and she moved back to Klamath Falls until she left again in 1972 when I was sixteen. There were probably several trips we made along Highway 97 through the evergreen forests of southern Oregon on foggy winter days, days like the one where I passed the cedars in fog on the highway near my home.
Given the details I remember, I think this trip was during my grandmother’s last few years in Klamath Falls, sometime between 1967 and 1972. I know there was one Christmas we spent with her and my step-grandfather during these years. But I don’t remember which year that was.
On the trip to Oregon that I recalled last week, my dad got a flat tire. This was the only time ever I remember being in a car with him when a tire went flat. He kept his vehicles in tip-top shape, both mechanically and aesthetically. He replaced his tires when the tread started to get thin, and I grew up thinking that having a flat tire was a sign of slovenliness.
But Oregon used volcanic cinders to treat their roads, rather than salt or sand, and on this trip, as he drove along the cinder-covered highway, one sharp cinder pierced a tire. Dad pulled the car over onto the shoulder.
Because it was Christmas-time, we had a fully loaded trunk—not only our clothes for the holiday week, but also bags of presents. Dad unloaded the trunk to get to the spare tire, grumbling the entire time. He was younger by decades than I am now, but he did not deal well with interruptions to his schedule. He never did, but it was particularly true on occasions such as this when he had done everything in his power to keep his vehicle operating smoothly.
Dad put on the spare tire, while the rest of the family watched. Then we reloaded the trunk and headed to the nearest town to get the tire patched.
I don’t remember anything else about this trip. As I said, we made many journeys to Klamath Falls, and they run together in my mind. But this one incident I remember—my dad and the flat tire—and it came to mind last week, triggered by a foggy road and cedar trees.
What memories do you have of weather-caused problems from your childhood?
