It was pre-springtime in the Klamath Basin, 1973. Cabin fever was making us more than a bit antsy, even a little crazy, after a long winter that seemed to go on without end. Opening day of trout season was still at least a couple of months away and we had to get out of the house. Truth be told, I think my mom sent us away as we were beginning to drive her crazy too.
If you don’t like long, cold, snowy winters, don’t live in Klamath Falls, Oregon. At an elevation of over 4,000 feet above sea level, this is the kind of place that most retired folks quickly move from and go to Arizona for the winter. I remember my brother and I walking to school on some very frigid days, our big Alaska-style parkas zipped all the way up, with faux fur lined hoods cinched up tight around our faces. We usually had couple of snow days every winter where they closed the schools. Those were good days.
My dad and my uncle Jim had been debating about a good place to take a road trip on that blustery Saturday morning. We couldn’t go too high up in the mountains since there was still way too much snow and most of the roads were either closed or impassable. They agreed on Silver Lake, about 100 miles from Klamath Falls. I was a bit disappointed that there was no place to go fishing. But it was good to get out of town and see some new country.
We were hoping the sun would come out and the temperature would rise a bit. But it drizzled sleet and stayed cold. So we packed some salami and crackers and cold drinks and hit the road in my Uncle Jim’s old light blue GMC pickup. The only things we were armed with were my dad’s Bushnell 7x35 binoculars and a camera. We drove alongside Klamath Lake heading north on highway 97 until we passed the small tribal town of Chiloquin, eventually leaving the main highway at Silver Lake Road, entering Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. We never quite made it all the way to Silver Lake, but we drove until there were no more trees nearby and soon there was only scrub grass and the occasional small sage brush.
We didn’t see another human being all day out there, but there was abundant wildlife. I stopped counting at 200 mule deer. They were everywhere, making their spring migration. My dad always told me I had the eyes of an eagle since I was usually able to spot deer in the distance before he did. I appreciated any praise my dad gave me, as it didn’t happen often. More often than not I was in the dog house for my bad grades.
Along with the mule deer, we saw antelope, bald eagles, and several sandhill cranes. If you have never heard the sound a sandhill crane makes, you must do so. Their sound is beautiful, captivating, almost haunting, difficult to describe. Southern Oregon is part of their regular migration path. And they nest there every year.
After spending hours exploring the area and counting all the various critters, the snow flurries were beginning to pick up. Our salami and crackers were long gone and we were getting hungry. Dad said we should probably start heading back. I think we had gone maybe five or ten miles when my Uncle Jim’s truck died. Dead as a doornail. He couldn’t start the thing. He popped the hood and he and my dad climbed up and started investigating what the problem was. They soon located a small hole in the fuel pump about the diameter of a pencil. How the heck that hole suddenly appeared in the fuel pump is a mystery that was never solved. My dad and uncle had to find a way to plug the hole in the fuel pump to get the truck started again. Problem was, we had nothing in the truck to plug the hole with.
In my dad’s truck, he always carried a roll of duct tape and some bailing wire, not to mention a tool kit, a shovel, and a few other necessities. However on this particular day, my uncle did not have anything in the truck that we could use. So dad said we needed to start looking for some small twigs to use to plug the hole with. Problem was, there wasn’t a tree in sight. We were probably fifty miles from any gas station or repair shop. And there were only a few sparse sagebrush scattered along the road. So we found a suitable twig from what brush we could find, and finally got the hole plugged and miraculously, the engine started. They had to pour some gas into the fuel pump to prime it. But we were finally on our way.
A mile or so down the road, the engine died again. They got out and looked at the fuel pump and the dang twig had popped out. So we had to find another twig to plug the hole with. But most of them were too thin. But this time we collected a couple of extras just in case it popped out again. Sure enough, the new twig eventually popped out again too. But we had spares, and after several more times of engine dying, put new twig in, prime pump, we eventually made our way back to the Highway 97 junction where there was a gas station and a café. I was starving!
We dragged ourselves into the café and found a seat. When the waitress took our order dad and I got a cheese burger, fries and a coke, and my uncle Jim said in his slow, smooth-as-can-be southern drawl, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee and a piece of coconut cream pie.” I’ve never forgotten how smooth he was placing that order. My wife and I still laugh about it today.
(Uncle Jim)
What amazes me most about this memory is I was beginning to get worried we were going to be stuck all night in the middle of nowhere when the truck would not start. In the same situation I’m not sure I would have had the wherewithal to locate the problem in that fuel pump much less figure out how to fix it. But my dad and Uncle Jim were both calm and made the best of a bad situation. My uncle Jim was always cracking jokes and was a very funny guy. Lesser men might have lost their cool and started swearing around a kid, adding to my fears. But these men were a class act, and set a great example, and I felt totally safe in their care, as always. And it turned out to be among my many memorable grand adventures while growing up in southern Oregon.
(Dad)
In the many trips I’ve taken over the years, the destinations have been incredible. Great scenery. Amazing fishing. Big trout. But what made these trips all truly great were the people I was with. They made an impact in my life. The camaraderie. The friendship. The family relationships. The precious people that will be forever etched in my memory…
—At the End of My Line
