Be Safe

"Everything is a once in a lifetime experience."

Kobi Yamada

One of the most heard phrases of my childhood was, “Be safe, and don’t do anything dangerous.” My mom always said that as I was heading up with my grandmother to my aunt and uncle’s cabin, a few weeks before my mom, dad, and sister would join.

The cabin was my favorite place on Earth, seven miles up the mountain from Lake Tahoe, with nothing around it but what God put there — pine trees, mountains, lakes and streams, and granite cliffs as tall as skyscrapers.

My aunt and uncle were adventurers of the first order, living year-round in a beautiful log cabin at 8,450 feet. Often there was so much snow in the winter that the only things visible were the roof eaves and the chimney. During such times, they took their kids to school in a Sno-Cat.

As I look at the above summer photo, taken by Aunt Janice, I realize that my mom actually had good reason to worry for my safety. We often did wildly dangerous things, though they didn’t seem so at the time. Upon closer look, there’s not much danger to us in our pajamas in the foreground, though you might say there is for my cousin Mike in the background. Mike seems to be holding a Roman candle that was likely intended to be in a stand. I recall that Mike lit off more than a few fireworks that night, with the national forest behind him and the grownups somewhere in the living room with the rest of us.

Of course, Mike was older, about fourteen in this picture, so he was allowed to do quite a bit more than the rest of us, such as driving the 1929 Model A pickup truck on the dirt roads all around the cabin, with ten of us kids in the back.

We spent many summer days out on the lake, fishing in rowboats with no life jackets, or in the winter, jumping off the roof into the snow banks.

We often went “stump hunting,” which was our term for gathering firewood along the old highway. Uncle Gordon had a box of dynamite and would place a stick of it under an old tree stump, adding the blasting cap and long fuse. We hid behind trees a hundred yards away and knew the fuse was lit when he came running for cover.

BANG!

We ran out and gathered the pieces, strewn about in a thirty-to-forty-foot radius, often clear on the other side of the tall trees from where they originated.

We rode our mini-bikes wherever we could find a path, or not, no helmet required back then. Heck, there were no seatbelts in most cars either.

Then, there was the mountain behind the cabin that provided us with local skiing. Uncle Gordon built his own rope tow up the mountain, so there were often ten or fewer of us skiing over the untracked snow. Sometimes, in big winters, there was so much snow that there was danger of an avalanche. No problem; Uncle Gordon had learned how to “shoot the avalanche” with small rockets. Yes, they were actual rockets, about two feet long, with little wings on the tail and a pointy front. They made quite a boom as they hit the top of the mountain a mile or so away, where the avalanche began its roll.

Then, there was the time we were snowed in for two weeks. When it finally stopped snowing, the highway was closed, and remained so for more than a month. We couldn’t all ride in the Sno-Cat, so we had to walk out eleven miles. It took us hours into the night, because there was no road to be seen. After quite a few of those hours, my sister, Mary Ellen, who was about eleven at the time, asked, “Uncle Gordon, are we lost?” When we at last arrived at the Glovers’ house, about half-way down the mountain, we were nearly frozen. We spent an hour or so tightly packed in front of the fireplace, thawing out with cups of steaming hot chocolate clasped in our hands.

It was all wonderful to me. Somehow, we survived our joyful, if sometimes dangerous, adventures up at the cabin. I owe many of my once-in-a-lifetime experiences to Aunt Janice and Uncle Gordon.

So, happy holidays to you and yours. Be safe, and don’t do anything dangerous.

-Hank

"Be Safe," from The Saturday Morning Post, at hankfrazee.com

Photo credit: Janice MacLean