Dorm life when you are only eighteen can be a challenge but if your roommate is easy going like Don Ringering was you become good friends. This was during my second year at Laurelwood so I was very pleased when he invited me to go home and celebrate Thanksgiving with him. His folks lived in the small town of Madras in eastern Oregon where it hardly ever rains and I believe his mom taught grade school.
Don’s folks like mine, did not have much money so to stretch his resources even further we hitchhiked to his home. We had it easy getting into Portland as the school always took a bus loaded with students into the downtown so the students could make various connections, usually a bus. Back then it was unusual if anyone flew because of the cost involved.
Our challenge now on this very cold day with a freezing November wind in our face was to see if anyone was traveling to Madras. Getting out of Portland was not the challenge but trying to catch a ride once we were on highway 26 heading toward Wapinitia Pass, was a different story as car after car went whizzing by and I new we were in for a rough night. What made things worse I did not have a very heavy jacket and the wind felt like ice.
The spot we were keeping warm on highway 26 was making me uncomfortable and I was getting quite anxious for a ride as we had more then a hundred miles to go and car after car kept roaring by without even slowing down to look.
About this time however an old Chevy panel truck screeched to a halt and Don immediately started to climb in. One look inside the car and I immediately decided this was not for me, and my concern bordered on terror as I realized Don was serious about catching a ride with them. Not wanting to be left behind, I reluctantly climbed in and sat beside him on a suitcase in the back, all hunched down.
As with most panel trucks made by GM, this one had only two bucket seats. In the back were several suitcases including our own and not much else. What made this scary was that the three men, who picked us up, sat in the two bucket seats. George the guy in the middle really sat on a wadded-up coat jammed between the seats, in a semiconscious state. Bill the driver was very friendly and after introducing himself and his two friends assured us that he had not tasted a drop of whiskey that day. Tom the guy on the right was the most talkative and every fifteen minutes or so would offer us whisky to drink. When we would refuse he would say, “God bless you my son, never take a drink I am so proud of you.” And this he did repeatedly for the duration of our ride.
As George was too drunk to hold the bottle himself, Tom kept pouring whisky into his sagging mouth until he was totally passed out.
And Bill repeatedly assured us that he had not been drinking as he was the driver and a driver should never drive while drinking. But as he was traveling the speed limit and didn’t seem to weave too much I felt we might still escape this adventure alive.
This was soon to change however as Bill finally caught up to a large Semi that was struggling to make the summit at Wapinitia Pass. I could see that Bill was beginning to get a little antsy and I knew at any minute he would pull out to pass. My worst fears were realized when he finally pulled out in a vain attempt to pass the Semi but he could no more then just keep pace with it. After what seemed like eternity, he finally made it half way up the length of what seemed to be the longest trailer that I had ever seen, when suddenly a big Semi shot around the corner coming straight at us. My heart was in my mouth, my knuckles were white and my breath completely stopped, but Bill was still holding to his course, the eternal optimist, with more faith then a saint, believed that he could still make it. The diminishing distance between the approaching truck and us was a thing of terror. I had at this point resigned my self to our impending doom, when Bill suddenly realized that his love for booze was worth staying alive for, dogged the brakes just in time to duck behind the Semi, and escape sudden destruction, as the Semi went roaring by.
What happened after that was so anticlimactic that I really don’t remember too much of the weekend. In Don’s home church there was a preacher putting on a revival, which leads me to believe that God is never to far from any of us, especially in times of potential calamity and He enjoys the many opportunities to intervene in our lives.
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