Welcome to Montana

Judy and I were married in November 1977, and moved to our new place in Gallatin Canyon, Montana a month later. Our first Christmas was pretty raw. Judy got frost bite in a toe while we were out killing our first Christmas tree—an act that turned into a family tradition—the tree killing, not the frostbite. We barely had two nickels to rub together, having put everything we had into the down payment on the Gallatin property (this, of course, was back when you actually had to put real money down).

Following the frostbite thing, I decided a great Christmas gift for Judy would be a custom-made pair of gators to keep the snow out of her boots—what a romantic. The guy in Bozeman who made them promised to have them for me on Christmas Eve, but when I got to town to pick them up, his shop was closed, along with everything else in town. I handmade Judy a lame card that was no substitute for a gift.

Judy and I decorated the tree with paper chains and popcorn, and succeeded in burning half the popcorn and ruining one of our nice wedding present Revere Ware pots in the process. Needless to say, Christmas morning was a bit of a downer, especially for Judy—away from her folks for the first time in her life. I was determined to cheer her up and devised a plan to make this a day to remember.

As evening fell, the Big Sky was beginning to turn pink, and I predicted a fabulous sunset—if we could only get to a vantage point to see it. A Jeep ride up to the Spanish Peak overlook behind our place would be perfect. We bundled up and set off up Hell Roaring Creek Trail. About a mile into the trip, our way was blocked by a snow drift about 20 feet across. Judy was skeptical but I had pushed my way through plenty of snow drifts before. I got up a little momentum and we managed to churn our way about three quarters of the way through before bogging down. I shoved it in reverse and churned my way back out. I figured that on a second pass, I could easily punch through the last five or so feet now that I had “plowed” a track through most of the drift. But as I backed out of the drift I found I had no brakes. (It turned out that with all the churning snow, I had torn the brake line off of the brake master cylinder.) Having lost my brakes on a previous occasion (see Mineral Fork), I knew that turning the key off worked just as well as brakes when you’re in low range. So, with the sunset still beckoning, I insisted on pressing onward. On the second try, we successfully plowed through the drift and continued on our way—the sunset was going to be just what Judy needed!

The final run to the overlook was quite spectacular. The road climbed the ridge back for about a half mile, with Gallatin Canyon and the fiery, sunset-lit Storm Castle looming to our left, and through the trees to our right was Hell Roaring Canyon. Our final destination was the staging area for a horseback trail that stabbed back into the Spanish Peak Wilderness area. From the trailhead we would be able to look straight up Hell Roaring Canyon to watch the sun set over Spanish Peak, the highest point in the Gallatin Range.

Just below the trailhead, the road made a fairly steep 90 degree right turn. I was already visualizing a romantic panorama when I became aware that under a light dusting of new snow, the road had turned to shear ice. Earlier in the season, debris had plugged a little stream and diverted it down the road. Since it hadn’t been above 20 degrees for the last month, the road was frozen solid for a good fifty foot stretch. Despite my best efforts, I could not maintain forward progress. After about 40 feet I lost traction completely and began sliding back down the road. Unfortunately, the ice flow didn’t make the 90 degree turn at the bottom of the slope. Instead, it proceeded over a lodge pole pine-covered 100-foot embankment.

By turning the key on/and off without depressing the clutch while keeping it in first gear, I was able to maintain a semblance of control and slow our descent. I had a patch of dry ground in my sites, but poor Judy was coming unglued. She frantically yanked on the passenger door handle trying to get out of the truck. Fortunately (and I say fortunately because she was probably safer in the cab than trying to jump from a moving vehicle) the inside passenger handle didn’t work. I’m sure Judy thought she was in the middle of a nightmare; certainly not the romantic dream I had intended.

After some very tense maneuvering, I hit the dry patch with the left rear wheel, flipped the key off and we jerked to a stop. The only thing Judy wanted for Christmas now was OUT OF THE JEEP! I intended to jump out and open the passenger door for her, but when I went to step out of the cab on my side, I was so close to the embankment there was nothing but air beneath me. I scrambled over the side-mounted spare tire, onto the rear fender and across the bed in order to get to Judy. We spent a few minutes calming our nerves, but the sun was now down and it was getting even colder. Soon we both set to work lugging big rocks to put behind the rear wheels so we couldn’t slip back any further. I climbed back into the driver’s seat and carefully moved diagonally forward a foot at a time while Judy shoved rocks behind the rear wheels on the embankment side. A half hour of this repositioning and we were headed for home.

Needless to say, we missed the sunset, but the day certainly was memorable.

The Recovery

I don’t remember much immediately afterward. At some point we managed to climb out of the cab and hike back to the highway. From there we hitchhiked back to town to get Bruce’s car and then we drove to a wrecking service that specialized in off-road recovery.

The guy wanted $400 at first, then added a hundred bucks when I told him it was up Mineral Fork. I had only just paid $750 for the whole truck but I didn't have a lot of choices. I called my insurance agent and told them that I had lost my brakes and had rolled over an embankment. He said that my emergency road and towing service coverage would cover it if I was less than a half mile from a paved road. The tow truck driver pulled out is topographic map and determined that if we calculated the distance by the way the crow flies, we were right on. So off we went.

It was starting to get dark when we finally got back up there, got a hook on the Willys and began to winch him up the embankment. But the angle was such that instead of pulling the Willys up, the fancy recovery rig was sliding backward in the loose shale. The tow-truck diver had a brainstorm to run his cable way out and around a big fir tree. The plan was to yank me over sideways into the stream then snake me up and out 30-or-so feet upstream.

The solution worked like a charm and in no time the ‘ol Jeep was sitting back up on the road, with the Hurricane flat six purring away like nothing had happened. The only obvious damage was a busted tail light lense, though I later discovered that the rear driveline was badly bent (ultimately replaced by a cut-down Peterbilt driveline that's there today). The problem now was how to get back down the mountain. I have no brakes, not even an emergency brake (that was something else that was broken on the original). The tow truck diver hooked a 50-foot nylon tow cable from his front tow hook to my rear bumper and planned to be my brakes as we worked our way back down to the highway. We hadn’t gone 50 feet when he starts honkin’ his horn and wavin’ his arms. It turned out that my gears were so low that he simply couldn’t go as slow as I could. When he rode his brakes to keep tension on the tow line, he locked up his wheels and slid precariously toward the ravine. When we got stopped, he jumped out, unhooked me and says "You’re on your own, kid!" He tells me if I need to stop I should just turn off the key. Great! I’ve got to maneuver around four of the tightest, steepest switchbacks in the Wasatch Mountains, in the dark with no brakes! To be continued...

Mineral Fork

A few days later, Bruce Galloway, Ralph the Weimaraner and I took the Willys up Big Cottonwood Canyon with the ultimate target of Mineral Fork, a fantastic mining road that cut into the high Wasatch Mountains between Alta and Brighton ski resorts. Dad and I had been up there numerous times on motorcycles when I was a kid. The terminous was well above the tree line, and depending on your vehicle and snow conditions you could climb above 10,000 feet.

The trail starts out by cutting into a shale cliff with four very sharp and steep switch-backs climbing 500 feet nearly straight up off the highway. Each switch-back entailed multiple maneuvers to get around. Once I had negotiated those turns the trail followed the creek straight and steep back into the small canyon headed south for about a half mile through some beautiful aspen groves.


At the end of this first straight stretch is a series of small waterfalls as the little creek shoots down a steep granite slope. The trail takes a near 180 degree turn to the left at that point as it begins another switch back over and around the slope. This switchback is not nearly as tight as the initial turns and, in fact, the tracks made it appear I could make it in a single maneuver. Once into the turn however, I realized that the tracks were made by short-wheel-base CJs and my old truck didn’t have the turning radius to make it. No problem, I just straightened out the wheel, and drove straight into the embankment with the intention of reversing back around in a quick two point turn. At the apex of the turn we were nearly vertical, ready to shove it in reverse when things went seriously bad. In my attempt to make the turn in one motion, I had cranked the wheels as far as they would go. In doing so, I snapped a rotten old brake line. And that was all she wrote—no brakes! Instead of a nice controlled reverse turn, we shot straight back across the trail and flew over a nearly vertical 15 foot rock face onto the Willys' big old iron rear bumper in the middle the creek.


Time stopped as we balanced there for what seemed like an eternity. One alternative was to continue over backward. Another was to tip left over another 15-foot waterfall (you can actually see it as a little white streak on the satellite map). The third alternative was to settle gently back into the embankment we had just flown over. As the gods opted for the latter, time sped up again with no more than a couple of seconds passing. Bruce was laughing hysterically. Ralph was still in the bed but now he was standing on the inside of the tailgate. Gas was beginning to pour through the fire wall as the engine choked to a halt and we sat there like a couple of astronauts ready for take off.

The Fire Road

Like I said, I had been looking at this unbelievable stretch of road ever since I could remember. That is if you could even call it a road. It more likely started life as a dozer-carved fire break. I had always figured I was exagerating when I told people it was a 45% grade, but I just found it on Google maps and the topographic shows it climbs about 450 vertical feet in about 1,000 lineal feet. If my math is right, that's 45%--if not, it's still steep.

So Chuck and I decided to attempt it in my “new” Jeep. I figured that worse case we would just back down. It was unbelievable. The old Willys just chugged right up it like nothing—nice and slow, no spinning, "just like a Willys in 4-wheel drive" as the Grateful Dead put it. The view of the Salt Lake valley at sunset from that vantage was absolutely incredible. The ride back down was a little slippery and provided a good rush, but basically its was just a fun ride. I took Chuck home and interestingly, that was the last time I saw him--but that's another story.

I provide this as background for what happened next.

I Still Have My Old Truck

Back in the Spring of 1976 I bought my 1960 Willys Jeep pickup. It's been at the center of many fine adventures, though recently it’s pretty much been relegated to my garage, the occasional dump run, and providing inspiration to write and paint.

I first noticed it sitting out in the middle of a field south of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and tracked down (as it turned out) the owner's widow. She told me her husband had been out raking their 20 acre potato field two years prior by pulling an array of old bed springs behind the Jeep. When he got out to clear the springs at the edge of the field, his heart gave out. The widow agreed to sell it to me for $700, including an 8-foot Meyer snow plow. I paid her the cash, got the title and left it sitting there for another couple of months while I made arrangements to get it to Salt Lake City, where I was living at the time.

When I finally got back to it, the truck started right up and ran okay, though there were a number of things needing repair. The side windows had been shot out, for example, and the outside driver's side door handle was missing (I actually got a replacement for that on the return trip from Idaho to Salt Lake City when I spotted another old Willys abandoned outside an Ogden wrecking yard. I jumped out with my tool box and stripped as much stuff as I could before anyone noticed).

One major issue was a non-functional righthand locking hub, so I wouldn’t have 4-wheel drive until it was fixed. My good friend Jim Pissot had ordered brand new hubs for his Willys wagon and planned on giving me his old (but still good) Warn hubs. I was, though, champing at the bit to go 4-wheeling. As soon as the new hubs were on, another dear old friend, Dave Cochran and I took the Willys up into the foothills behind the Utah State Capital and romped around on some of the really steep stuff up there. It was very cool how the old guy was just unstoppable with that 488 gear set.

The next day I went out to see another friend, Chuck Thompson, another car guy. He immediately wanted to go 4-wheeling, so we drove out to my old neighborhood in the foothills south of the city. There was this fire road that cut straight up a ridgeback on the face of the mountain just north of the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. I had stared at that seemingly vertical road all my life. I had tried to climb it several times on various motorcycles but was never able to—it was just too steep. My Triumph Cub just didn't have the horses and I couldn't keep the front end down on my Hodaka Super Rat. I went ass-over-tea-kettle more than a few times before giving up. ---->

Born in East LA

My dad grew up in Los Angeles. I remember one of his Geezer Gleanings mentioned how much he enjoyed Cheech & Chong’s Born in East LA, because, he said, “That’s where I’m from.” In 1935 he hitchhiked to Berkeley to enroll at the University of California, where, in 1938, he met my mom at a student dance. He liked to say he hooked her with his Irish charm, though in one “Gleaning” he noted that she didn’t give him her phone number for nearly a year. Aside from several years during World War II, they were inseparable and as much in love on their 50th anniversary as their first. My mom is still going strong at 89, despite blowing out a knee in the ‘80s jitterbugging with my dad in the living room. Sadly, my dad passed away 15 years ago. He sure made my life fun and interesting. I miss him a lot.

You've Got to Start Somewhere

One of the most memorable (for me) of Dad’s original Geezer Gleanings was a Virgil Partch cartoon from 1963 that showed two prospectors trudging across the desert. One prospector, whose footprints trail off over the horizon, has a startled look on his face. The other prospector, trailed by only two footprints, is saying, “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

That’s where I am with this blog.

Inspiration

Back when I was in college in the early '70s, my dad, who had recently retired, would send me a newsy letter from home about once a week. He usually included things he would cut out of the newspaper — often cartoons, both humorous and political. I began compiling the cartoons in a scrap book, calling it (at Dad’s suggestion) Geezer Gleanings.

Now I'm about the same age as he was, and my daughter is away at school. I thought this would make a nice tribute to my dad, and something that my daughter might draw inspiration from.