Silence
By Terry Sanville
Mom never liked mountains. The tall ones scared the living hell out of her. She came from Philadelphia, from a narrow brick row house in the Kensington District with no mountains in sight. But during the summer of 1954, she somehow tapped into the silent spirit of the Sierra Nevada and changed our family.
Dad brought Mom and my two-year-old sister west on the train right after World War II. They settled in Santa Barbara, on Calle Poniente, a dead-end street on the city’s West Side. Then I was born and the fun really began. As an ex-Marine, Dad wanted to show me all the manly things that boys should learn: how to shoot a rifle, pitch a tent, build a fire, throw a perfect strike, and cut loose with long belches after chugging a bottle of Frostie Root Beer.
Once the Korean Conflict had ended, people bought houses and cars, had babies, railed against the Commies, and stared transfixed at the flickering screens of their new rabbit-eared Zeniths. Dad, who always had a strange design sense, bought a ’51 Studebaker Starlight Coupe, a dove-gray car with a weird three-eyed front end and little curved windows in the back. I think Mom liked that two-door, because once my sister and I got shoved into the rear seat, we couldn’t get out and couldn’t play with the door handles. Although, window cranks stayed fair game.
During those Father Knows Best summers, our family took annual road trips in the Studebaker across Western America. Dad clamped a roof rack onto the car and tied on a mound of camping gear under a green canvas tarp. The Studebaker looked like a disfigured shark being humped by a huge sea turtle. In August 1954, we drove to Yosemite National Park—from Santa Barbara heading south, through the Coastal Range then over the Grapevine Grade, into the sweltering San Joaquin Valley.
We climbed the Grapevine in stages. When the Studebaker’s temperature gauge touched “H,” Dad pulled over and waited for the car to cool. Pieces of exploded tires from cars and semis littered the highway. Once over the summit, the Central Valley’s heat caused Mom’s temperature gauge to climb.
“I’m hot. Why’d we have to come this way? Harry, do something.”
She repeated this complaint in various forms every few minutes until Dad finally stopped the car along Highway 99 and retrieved a T-shirt from the trunk. He soaked it in water from the dripping canvas bag tied to a front bumper post.
“Here, put this on your forehead.”
“Gee, thanks. We shoulda brought extra ice . . . or maybe bought one of those window coolers.”
“You mean those streamlined swamp coolers? Those things don’t work.”
“It’d be better than this. My behind is welded to the seat.”
Dad stared out his side window, trying to cover his smile and smother a chuckle at that mental image. Mom looked indignant.
As we headed toward Bakersfield, our trip took a turn for the worse. We got stuck behind a manure truck—the gutless Studebaker couldn’t go fast enough to pass. My sister, Cindy, and I begged Dad to stop at one of the Giant Orange roadside stands and get something to drink. But Dad’s diabetes wouldn’t allow him to down that sugary stuff, and we had to settle for warm water from a battered canteen.
And then we had to pee. For Cindy and Mom, that meant a stop at a gas station. But for Dad and I, that meant standing on the highway’s shoulder with one’s back to traffic at the car’s rear right fender. With the passenger side door opened to block views from oncoming traffic, we’d cut loose, sometimes peeing into the wind, with Cindy giggling the whole time and Mom scolding her for looking.
All of us felt road weary by the time we reached Yosemite Valley and found a campsite within earshot of the Merced River. In the late afternoon, Dad and I hustled to erect our canvas tent, install everyone’s Sears and Roebuck sleeping bags and air mattresses, and set up the Coleman Stove. While we men made camp, the women scouted the area, looking for restrooms.
Wood fires scented the breeze that carried bits of conversation from surrounding campers and music from guitars. Tiny aluminum teardrop trailers and one or two rounded Shastas looked out of place among the rag-tag military and umbrella tents. Clotheslines strung between trees displayed bathing suits and undies. Some folks just hooked an awning onto the side of their car and slept on the ground.
Mom and my sister returned with wrinkled noses, holding their hands out in front of them.
Mom started in, “Harry, the outhouses are disgusting and there’s no running water. We couldn’t even wash our hands.”
Dad turned to me. “Grab the bucket from the trunk and get some water.”
I hustled away along the campground road. The shadows had grown long, and I remembered Dad warning us about bears coming out in the evening to scavenge the garbage cans. Failing to find a faucet, I headed for the Merced River. At its bank, I looked for a good spot to dunk my pail but couldn’t find one. I removed my sneakers and socks and waded in, fighting back a scream. The water felt like it had just melted from a nearby glacier. I found a clear spot, filled my bucket, and hustled back to shore. My feet had turned blue, and my nine-year-old back ached.
“Why were you gone so long?” Mom asked. “And why are your pants wet?”
“I couldn’t find water, so I got some from the river.”
“The water faucet’s right down there,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction from where I’d gone. “See, where those people are standing?”
“Ah, sorry. Be right back.” I wetted a pine tree with the river water and headed out.
Near my normal bedtime, we joined the other campers at an amphitheater in the middle of a moonlit meadow to watch the Firefall. Burning embers spilled from the top of Glacier Point and fell to the valley floor, thousands of feet below. It looked like a crazy flaming waterfall.
Among the oohs and aahs from the crowd, Mom murmured, “Won’t that set the trees on fire?”
“Don’t think so,” Dad said. “It falls mostly on rock.”
“I think it’s neat,” I chimed in.
“You think rabbit turds are neat,” Cindy said.
“Yeah, better watch your oatmeal. Those might not be raisins.”
“Hush, you two,” Dad said but chuckled anyway.
That night, lying in the dark tent, I felt Yosemite’s giant granite monoliths towering over us, standing silent guard, cold and inhuman. I dreamed about gliding off the edge of Glacier Point, high above the valley floor, and floating on the wind to land softly in a meadow filled with bears. Wait! Bears?
I woke to the sound of someone yelling, “Bears, bears!” and banging on something metal. Gray daylight streamed through the open tent flap and mosquito netting. Mom and my sister groaned and sat up. I pulled on my jeans then ducked out of the tent. Dad stood in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, banging the butt of his World War I bayonet against the bottom of a pot. A mama bear and two cubs perched on top of our car. The mama had peeled back the roof rack’s canvas cover and had found the loaf of bread. She opened the loaf and handed her cubs individual slices, like a mother serving breakfast.
“Come on, start yelling,” Dad hollered and waved his bayonet at me. That thing looked like a short sword and had razor-sharp edges. Dad kept it in the tent at night and shoved into the Studebaker’s armrest during the day. When gas station attendants saw the bayonet as he opened his car door, they gave him really good service.
Some of the neighboring campers joined us, yelling and beating on various pots and pans until the bears became bored and lumbered off toward the meadow.
We spent almost a week hiking trails that bordered the Merced River and extended into side canyons. But the minute a trail started to climb, with steep drops on one or both sides, Mom would stop and go no farther.
“I’m not killing myself just to see a waterfall. The river is pretty enough for me.”
Even as a kid, I knew something about what frightened her. Just looking up at Yosemite’s granite monoliths made me a little dizzy. And on narrow trails where one wrong step could send a hiker tumbling into the abyss, I moved carefully with trembling legs, my heart pounding. Dad and Cindy acted sure footed as mountain goats. Consequently, Mom and I spent afternoons on the rocky shore next to the river. She read and I rodean inner tube downstream then hiked back and did it over and over until I got so cold that I couldn’t feel my knees.
On our last day in Yosemite Valley, we broke camp right after breakfast. Dad and I hauled our collection of canteens to the water point. The family in the next campsite had also packed their car and the father stood filling grungy canvas bags at the faucet.
“So where are you folks headed?” the man asked.
Dad answered, “We were gonna go south to Kings Canyon. But I really wanna go east and see Mono Lake.”
The man grinned. “Yeah, that lake’s really somethin’ . . . kinda strange out there in the desert. But are ya going over Tioga Pass?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, at least the snow’s gone. Ya know it’s almost ten thousand feet high. Some cars get vapor lock. ”
“So . . . so what’s the road like?” Dad asked.
“Never been on it myself. But I hear they’re still building parts, and it’s really narrow in spots. Ya know, it was an old wagon road that served the silver mines.”
“I didn’t know that. And thanks for the warning.”
On our way back to the campsite, Dad gave me the look that meant, “Keep your trap shut and say nothing.” He checked the Studebaker’s water and oil levels, squeezed its hoses, and ran his hands over the surface of each skinny tire. We piled in, my sister and I ready for a new adventure.
“We’ve got plenty gas to make it to Lee Vining,” Dad assured Mom.
She gave him a quick glance and smiled. She seemed happy to be leaving the land of the granite giants.
The road out of the valley seemed reasonable enough, with two paved lanes. We climbed steadily, passed through an arched tunnel made of stone, and trekked into Yosemite’s high country of alpine meadows, lake-filled valleys, gray looming peaks, and stunted pine forests. The air stayed cool as we pushed upward. I peeked over the front seat at the Studebaker’s temperature gauge and watched it slowly sweep toward the dreaded “H.”
When it read “hot,” Dad pulled the car onto a turnout. We all piled out. The turnout had no guardrail and the near-vertical slope dropped away from the road to a far-distant canyon floor. I backed up from the edge and leaned against the car, waiting for the ground to stop swaying. Mom had a death grip on the door handle while Dad and my sister kept busy pointing out features of the distant landscape.
“Harry, did we have to stop here?” Mom complained.
“Sorry, but the car heats up faster the higher we go.”
“Maybe . . . maybe we shouldn’t . . . try this route.”
“Ah, honey, it’s only a few more miles. We’ll be out of the mountains in no time.”
In the thin air, we continued to climb. Trees disappeared. The sky burned a brilliant singing blue, the sunlight white and piercing. It felt like we drove closer to the scattered clouds.
“Harry, I’m not feeling good,” Mom complained. “I think it must be the altitude.”
“Just hang on, Elaine. We’ll be down soon.”
Just like our passage over the Grapevine, Mom fell into a pattern of complaints, her voice raspy, her breathing loud. At each stop to let the Studebaker cool, Mom rolled down her window and sucked in the cold mountain air, eyes closed, concentrating. But she wouldn’t leave the car. I felt I had to follow Dad and Cindy to the road’s edge and take in yet another impossible vista.
Along certain stretches, the road narrowed to a little more than one lane wide, and gravel replaced asphalt. We slowed along a twisting section with no guardrails that cut across the face of a mountain. The stench of boiling radiator water filled the car. Rounding an uphill curve, we came head-to-head with an idiot driving a Chevy pulling a boxy vacation trailer. Dad braked, yanked the Studebaker’s three-on-the-tree transmission into low gear, then turned off the engine. He pulled the emergency brake, tugging so hard on the handle that I thought it would snap off in his hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mom croaked.
“Just try and relax, Elaine,” Dad said in a soothing voice.
The Chevy had also stopped, and Dad and the other driver got out and stood in the middle of the road talking and gesturing. Fortunately, no other cars came by. A high mountain wind shook the Studebaker, and Mom let out a low moan. My sister and I stared at each other. This was not good!
Finally Dad returned, shaking his head. “Well, that fool shouldn’t be on this road to begin with. And the law says that uphill traffic has the right-of-way. So he should back up and find a turnout. But he’ll never back uphill with that stupid trailer.”
“So . . . so what are you gonna do?” Mom asked, her voice low and shaking.
“I’ll ease us down the mountain to that wide spot we passed.”
“Are you crazy?” Mom's voice rose in pitch. “You’re gonna kill us all . . . drive off the cliff and . . . and . . . ”
We were on the cliff side of the road and had to back up about a hundred yards to reach a slightly wider road section.
“Now, Elaine, I want you to tell me if I’m getting too close to the edge. Can you do that?”
Wide-eyed with trembling lips, Mom nodded. Dad started the engine, put his foot on the brake, and clutched and released the emergency. When he eased his foot off the squishy brake pedal, the Studebaker fell backward like an elevator out of control.
Mom screamed, “Stop, stop!” and pressed her feet to the floor so hard that I thought she’d punched a hole in it. Dad pumped the brakes and stopped the car.
“Take it easy, Elaine, take it easy. Now . . . how am I doin’?”
“I . . . I can’t see the road,” Mom said, her voice rising to panic levels.
I pushed Cindy aside and stared out the side window. Sure enough, the mountain dropped straight down into a deep valley. The Studebaker’s tires must have been inches from the edge.
Dad white-knuckled the steering wheel and stared into the tiny rearview mirror, eyes wide, lips compressed into a tight line.
“Harry, you’ve got to stop this,” Mom screeched. “You’re gonna kill—”
“SHUT UP, ELAINE!”
In an instant, the drama shifted from going over the cliff to the insult inside our Studebaker. Neither my sister nor I had ever heard Dad tell Mom to shut up. We kids were told never to use those words. If we lived through that mountain passage, there would be consequences, serious consequences. Mom had jumped when Dad yelled at her. She sat red faced and tight lipped, staring straight ahead, as if daring our father to finish us off.
Dad eased the car farther down the mountain. The smell of burning clutch added to the stink of hot radiator water and fading brakes. Finally, he steered onto a slightly wider stretch of road and pulled as far over as possible. If we had tried to get out of the right side of the car, we would have fallen to our deaths.
Dad leaned on the horn, and the Chevy pulling the trailer crept toward us, the driver pumping the brakes, jerking his rig along a few feet at a time. As he passed us, his side view mirror glanced off our mirror, and his right side mirror smashed against the mountainside with a tinkle of glass. The screech of the trailer’s sheet metal scraping against granite sounded like fingernails scratching a blackboard.
“Serves ’im right,” Dad muttered.
Mom said nothing.
We must have stayed there for a half hour, letting the car collect itself. Nobody talked. The only sound came from the buffeting mountain wind and the grind of engines from the occasional passing vehicle. We stayed quiet for the rest of the mountain passage, over Tioga Pass without incident, then toward Highway 395 and the Town of Lee Vining. Dad apologized to Mom several times but got no reply.
That night we stayed at a fleabag motel and ate dinner at a greasy spoon. Nobody talked. Cindy and I waited for Mom to explode, to pin Dad against the wall of guilt and poor decision-making. But it never happened. She stayed silent, rebuffing Dad’s attempts to make amends.
The next day we headed south, crossed the Sierra Foothills at Tehachapi, and dropped into Bakersfield on our way to Santa Barbara. We never explored Mono Lake. Mom stayed silent the whole way home and for some days after.
During the following years, Dad always went over the routes for our summer vacation with Mom. He would change directions at her discretion and avoid sketchy mountain passes in deference to flatter valleys and coastal plains. Although I sometimes missed the drama of the High Sierra and Rockies, I learned to recognize the power of silence. My wife and I use it on occasion—passive retribution being worse than direct confrontation.
And I’ve learned the importance of the phrase: “Silence is golden.”
Terry Sanville
10/10/21
Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 440 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing. Terry Sanville's new book of short stories, The Last Time You Were Here, can be ordered at: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/the-last-time-you-were-here-terry-sanville/.
