Stopping in the woods on a snowy evening

DAVID SILVA

Like most native Southern Californians, I maintain what I consider to

be a healthy distrust of strangers. I’m certainly not as bad about

this as some. I will, for example, occasionally strike up a

conversation with the person standing in front of me at the checkout

line, and I feel an obligation to assist anyone asking for

directions.

But whenever an unfamiliar person comes near me in public, I am

immediately on my guard.

It’s a big-city thing. You learn the rules early and you stick to

them. Never open your door to strangers. Stay alert in unfamiliar

places. And never, ever pick up hitchhikers.

Having lived in the city all my life, I assumed for a long time

that everyone lived by these rules. But one winter night in 1985, I

discovered there were some in this world who had no problem putting

their trust in the hands of complete strangers.

I was with my then-girlfriend Angel that winter, spending

Christmas with her family in Prescott, Ariz. Prescott is about 5,400

feet above sea level and gets really cold in December, so the visit

involved a lot of sitting indoors and playing Trivial Pursuit with

Angel’s siblings.

After about four days of this, I was ready to slug the next person

who asked me to name the capital of anything. Then one evening,

Angel’s brother, Sal, announced he was leaving to visit some friends

in Walker, a nearby town even higher in elevation than Prescott.

“Hey, do you mind if I tag along?” I asked.

The trip to Walker is by way of a treacherous, winding mountain

road. The road is especially dangerous in winter, when you can easily

round a turn, hit a patch of black ice and slide soundlessly over a

cliff. As such, Sal crept his little beige Volvo along at 15-20 mph,

slowing it to under 10 at every turn.

I didn’t mind. It was wonderful to be out of the house, and I

couldn’t get enough of admiring the snowbanks along the sides of the

road. I had never really seen snow until this trip, and for the life

of me I couldn’t understand why Angel’s brothers and sisters

constantly complained about it. How could you hate something so

beautiful, I thought to myself. And just as I did, the Volvo’s

headlights caught the contorted face of a young man standing by the

side of the road, hopping up and down in what was apparently a losing

effort to stay warm. The man frantically waved his arms at us and

looked despondent as we drove past him.

“Boy, that guy’s in trouble,” I said. “No one’s going to stop for

him out in the middle of no --” I stopped talking because Sal was

pulling over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what am I am doing? We can’t leave that guy out

here,” Sal said, turning off the engine and opening his door.

“Hey!” he shouted to the stranger. “You need a lift?”

I sat frozen in my seat. Had Sal lost his mind? No one picks up

hitchhikers on dark mountain roads! Did the name Manson mean anything

to these people?

I got out of the car just as the stranger ran up and started

thanking us profusely. He looked like he couldn’t have been more than

20 and was wearing a dark brown hunter’s jacket and a wool cap pulled

down over his ears. I thought he couldn’t have looked more suspicious

if he’d been carrying an ax.

“The name’s Joe,” he said. “Aw, man, I thought I was dead for

sure! I came around that turn too fast and my truck slid down the

hill. Look, you can just see it!”

He walked up the snowbank and pointed downward. Sal and I walked

over and looked. All we could see was blackness.

“Hey, man, I know it’s asking a lot, but would you go down there

with me and help me get my truck out? Its rear tires are stuck in the

snow. I think if you pushed it from behind, I could probably drive it

out of there.” And with that, Joe stepped over the snowbank and

started climbing down the hill.

I snorted. “Yeah, right, buddy, I don’t think so.” I stopped

talking because Sal had stepped over the snowbank and was following

Joe down the hill.

“Sal! What are you doing?” I called. “Hey!”

Suddenly I was all alone on the dark mountain road.

“This is nuts,” I said aloud. No way was I going down there.

Then I started thinking about what I could possibly say to Angel

if I came back without her big brother. How could I tell her that I

had been too afraid to follow Sal into the woods and thus abandoned

him to the mercy of a wool cap-wearing mountain psycho? Was it

possible to spin that to make me come out looking good?

Of course it wasn’t, but I decided I’d head back anyway. Angel did

have two other brothers, after all. But then I realized that Sal had

taken the car keys with him. I shook my head, balled my hands into

tight fists, and climbed over the snowbank and into the woods.

It was dark, going down that hill. Dark and cold and scary. I

called to Sal, whose silhouette I could just make out in front of me.

Sal stopped. I was about to plead with him to come to his senses and

please, please either come back up the hill or at least give me the

car keys, when he whispered, “Um, maybe this isn’t such a hot idea.

Let’s get out of here before ... well, you know ...”

We were about to scramble back up the hill when Joe yelled, “Here

it is!”

We turned around, and there was Joe’s truck. He reached into the

cab and turned on the headlights. Its back wheels were visibly

wallowed in the snow.

“Man, I’d call for help, but my dad’s the sheriff, you know,” Joe

said. “He must have told me a million times not to be horsing around

out here. If he found out about this, he’d take my wheels away for

sure.”

Instantly, the tension lifted from my shoulders. Only a complete

idiot would tell a story like that, and complete idiots I could

handle.

Sal and I tried pushing that truck out of the snowdrift for about

an hour while Joe gunned and gunned the engine, but we just couldn’t

get traction.

Finally, Joe suggested hooking the cable from the motorized winch

on the front of his truck to the front of Sal’s Volvo, then Sal could

back up and lift the truck free.

Perhaps it was the general confusion of the moment that caused all

three of us to miss the obvious problem with that suggestion, which

was that Joe’s truck was easily about a ton heavier than Sal’s Volvo.

Nevertheless, we hooked up the cable and Joe started the winch, which

immediately pulled Sal’s Volvo right off the road and down the hill.

It came to rest about a foot from the truck’s front bumper.

Joe turned off the winch, and we stood in silence for a long

moment.

“Say, you guys didn’t bring any food with you, did you?” Joe

asked.

The next few hours saw the three of us on the side of the road,

frantically waving our arms to passing drivers while jumping up and

down to keep warm. To my continued amazement, someone actually picked

us up and drove us into town.

My experience that cold December night was a real eye-opener for

me.

I learned that there remain places in the world where no one locks

their doors and where strangers aren’t immediately viewed with a

general distrust. Places where an extended thumb might actually be

met with a helping hand.

And after almost two decades, I still think that’s just weird.

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019, or by e-mail at david.silva@latimes.com.