Love Songs and Glass

“Just an old-fashioned love song,
Comin’ down in three-part harmony.
Just on old-fashioned love song,
One I’m sure they wrote for you and me.”

For most people, that Paul Williams pop tune from 1971 is little more than elevator music. For me, however, it still hatches butterflies in my stomach.

The year was 1971, I was sixteen and spending the weekend before Christmas at Tahoe with my older brother, John, and one of his college friends. In between drinking and skiing, their job was to ferry me back and forth each morning and afternoon to Squaw Valley for ski racing practice. It had taken us forever to get up to Tahoe the previous night because a huge snowstorm had hit the area and we were driving in my mother’s 1968 Camaro, whose light rear-end made it notably squirrely on any kind of snowy surface.

The following morning, I was dropped off at Red Dog and boarded the lift, unable to see farther than the next chair. The falling snow was heavy and wet, what we used to call “Sierra Cement.” We packed down the snow between the gates and began "running gates," but the visibility was deteriorating. The only way to survive was to stay on course, no matter what. Skiing off into the foot-deep “crud” was not an option.

After a couple hours of this craziness, our coaches sent us home for the day. John and his buddy had also given up and we climbed into the Camaro for the short ride back to our cabin in Lake Forest. I was in the passenger seat and still had on my ski boots. “Old-Fashioned Love Song” was “playing on the radio” courtesy of station KTHO. We turned south onto the two-lane road that leads from Truckee to Tahoe City and drove slowly along. The wet snow had piled up along the sides of the road and in between the tire tracks, but the pavement was still visible. It was one of those tricky situations where chains didn't improve traction that much.

Somewhere near the Pffeifer House restaurant, we hit a small patch of slushy snow, where the roadway banks slightly. The car swerved a bit and John corrected the skid, which made me realize that I had forgotten to put on my seat belt. I quickly buckled in and looked up just as we suddenly slid sideways down the incline and into the opposite lane.

John struggled with the steering wheel, but the snow was deeper on this side of the road and the Camaro’s light rear-end had lost all traction. I went numb. Another car came around the corner and, seemingly in slow motion, plowed head-on into ours.

A car crash is a remarkable thing. The obscene sounds of breaking glass and loudly crumpling metal are almost instantly followed by relative calm. The radio continued to play “Love Song,” the windshield wipers kept up their now-useless beat, and steam hissed loudly from the broken radiator.

Unfortunately, my seatbelt had not been drawn tight and the slack had allowed me to lurch forward far enough to smash my forehead into the windshield. I was dazed, but not bleeding.

We forced open the doors and got out. The driver of the other car had hurt her leg and was quickly taken to Truckee Hospital. A policeman wrote my brother a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road (well, duh). And the tow truck driver gave us a ride to the home of another of John’s friends, where we called our parents to tell them we were okay. I really don’t remember the rest of the weekend, or how we got back to Mill Valley; I was still pretty much in shock.

Back home, as I watched T.V. on Christmas morning, I ran my hand through my hair and felt something that shouldn’t be there. To my surprise, I pulled an inch-long needle of glass out of my forehead, just below the skin at the hairline. The crash came back to me in a flash and I shuddered at how close I had come to being launched through the windshield, had I not put my seat belt on at just the right moment.

I grimly wondered: Is this how we pass through life? Is there really a plan? Or are we simply dodging bullets until we finally screw up our timing and a stray shot takes us down? Then I recognized the sliver of glass for what it was – a little reminder of what didn’t happen in Tahoe. It was my favorite gift that year.