Jaci Dawn

This is a tale about two great big men (who looked like thugs) who invaded our home one Christmas many years ago. I will probably get some of the facts wrong and my brother will correct them in the comments. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is also a tale on my mother whom I miss dearly. Because what happened was entirely my mom’s fault. I take no responsibility at all for the words that were spoken…

It must have been Christmas 1973. Terry was living in Reno and going to school and I was still living at home.

In fact, we were waiting for Terry to show up. He was driving solo across Highway 5o from Reno to Ely and the weather conditions were dicey. Roads were dicier. My parents were hiding a lot of anxiety over the travels of my brother and the fact that he was hours late.

Three things:

1) My family did not yet know that “hours late” was normal for Terry. In subsequent years, no one got excited when he was hours late. We’d just shrug and say, “It’s Terry. He’ll be here when he gets here. He got tied up leaving town probably or stopped on the road to help someone.”

2) There were no cell phones in 1973. True. There were these things called “pay phones” that cost ten cents to use or you could use a telephone that attached to a wire that came through the wall. Ma Bell was a monopoly and there were no other choices for telephone service. Telephones were analog so you had to dial.

3) There’s a whole lot of “empty” and long stretches of very lonely highway between Reno and Ely over several mountain passes. The only pay phones would have been available in Austin or Eureka but if a person got stranded in between… that person would be dependent on someone else coming along and offering a ride to town.

Night settled down on us and still there was no Terry. Denise went to bed. I stayed up with Mom and Dad and worried. The clocks ticked and chimed as time drew us into the darkness of another cold, treacherous winter night. And no Terry.

When he did show up – I’m thinking it was well after 10:00PM but that’s where my memory gets fuzzy – he was not alone. He had two great big Norwegian-looking giants with him. And their Siberian Husky. These guys seemed to tower over Terry, even: broad shouldered and long-haired and really, really tired-looking.

They were enroute to California somewhere when they lost something in their drive line between Austin and Eureka. Or maybe it was just out of Eureka. Another fuzzy detail. Maybe they lost their entire drive line. It was cold, there was a lot of snow on the ground and they just wanted to get home for Christmas. And no one stopped. At least, no one stopped until the kid in the Willys Jeep did. And that kid not only offered these guys a place to stay for the night (“Don’t worry, it will be perfectly fine with my folks”) but he assured them that their dog would be allowed in the house, too. And that he could get them the part on the following day, install it and send them down the road in time for Christmas.

What my brother didn’t tell them was that he couldn’t call anyone and forewarn them (this being a time before cell phones) and that my mother’s dog would strenuously object to the Husky. Or that my mother had a psychotic Standard Schnauzer that would probably object to the two men as well.

They arrived having already eaten dinner somewhere (as I recall. I don’t remember my mom making them dinner but I do remember her offering).

We put them up in my brother’s basement bedroom where there was a separate entrance so the Husky could be let into the house without the Schnauzer knowing. I don’t know where Terry went to sleep – probably in the basement in my mom’s sewing room. It wasn’t in the living room because that was where my mom & I sat up with a bottle of wine, drinking.

My dad went to bed.

It was just my mom and I and our own set of concerns.

“We know nothing about those men.”

“They could be axe murderers.”

“We could wake up bludgeoned to death.” My mom poured more wine.

“We could wake up bludgeoned to death,” I repeated. We toasted our eminent demise. “At least we will be asleep when it happens.”

“They’ll get Terry first.” She was optimistic.

We woke up the following morning. We were not bludgeoned to death. We were quite alive and unscathed. Terry and the big guys were already pulling it together to hunt down a part in remote Ely, Nevada. Even then, Terry knew people and pulled strings.

Then he drove the pair (and their dog) back to their stranded vehicle. He climbed under it and put it back together for them. He followed them into Ely to make sure everything worked right, then he saw them leave town on their long journey home.

When he came home that night, we told him about our fear that we would wake up bludgeoned to death.

He assured us that he knew self-defense and we had been perfectly safe while those strangers were in the house with their very large dog.

I think Terry kept in touch with them for a while.

I’m pretty sure that when they got to their respective homes in California, their parents were thankful that they did not spend the night in the icy Nevada wilderness and that they were sheltered in a nice house where they were in no danger of waking up bludgeoned to death.

My brother has always had a keen sense of the Christmas Spirit.

Merry Christmas!