HOM: ShortFall

The weeks I spent at EJS were interesting. I was assigned to Sharon Chase & followed her through the beginnings of the school year. Sharon, a great teacher, was mentioned in the book "Night Of The Grizzlies" by Jack Olson. She & husband Jerry were at Granite park Chalet that night. She still lives in Kalispell and stops in here once in a while. Little detail of those weeks lingers. I mostly remember Sharon & Jim Magnus discussing how one would take the advanced kids and the other the slowest kids, and summarizing it by saying "High, Sharon!", "Low, Jim", when they'd pass in the hall. I loved the inside-joke, bad-pun, salutations. Those months rushed by, though, and all too soon it was off to NNC again. I bought an older 18' travel trailer from Doug Lister (Doug's Trailer Sales, behind Snappy's), thinking that it would help in hauling and we could live in it when we got to Nampa. I mean, I was used to living out of a seabag or a locker and had done it for years, and Lyn was enthusiastic about it, so no problem, right? Wrong. Dan Harmon, an old friend from my first round at NNC, still lived in Nampa and arranged a space for the trailer for us up at the North edge of town. We packed it full of our stuff, loading it all in the back so we could get in and out of the trailer easily. I arranged for Robin Holmquist to drive down with us, with him in Big Red following Lyn and me in the Jeep pulling the trailer. The first ten miles or so went well. It was just past Lakeside that I got got my first lesson in proper trailer loading. After laboring up the hill, I kept my foot on the gas when I hit the downslope, getting a run at the next upgrade. I was probably doing seventy down the hill when the tail started wagging the dog and the trailer decided to pass the Jeep. All of a sudden I had my hands full of fish-tailing rig and was sliding broadside down the road. By the grace of God, a lot of wheel spinning, and the use of the whole highway from ditch to ditch I got it straightened out & slowed down. Way, way, down. Robin, behind me, had to stop - partly to catch his breath and partly to go up into the trees to recover my typewriter. He said the sight of that skidding trailer scared the crap out of him. I think my Guardian Angel needed to catch its breath too, and used the typewriter's escape as an excuse for a break. We'd whip-lashed so violently that the typewriter case, which had been stored under the bed, smashed through the little outside access panel to the space and merrily skipped like a flat stone off down the pavement, across the ditch and into the bushes. I never even noticed it in all the excitement. Robin told me about it when I pulled over at the next turn-out to redistribute the load in the trailer, but we left the typewriter in Red since the under-bad space wasn't safely usable anymore. Once most of the weighty stuff was moved to the front of the trailer it towed a lot more sedately! The awkward access was a good tradeoff for the improved stability and the rest of the trip was uneventful. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)