Our near death howard experience

Breck and I had brunch this morning with mom and dad and grandma. We had a nice time, and missed all of you. (BTW... I loved my presents from the Original WA Wards!) Mom made sweaters for my "kids" this year, and wow, do they look cute... as soon as I get my camera working again (it malfunctioned last weekend while snowshoeing) I'll post them. (Liberty and Emma will love the Chloe Matilda picture.) Which, while I'm on the subject... You're all welcomed to come visit Chihuahua-land anytime you're near zion. It's much cheaper than those "other" parks further down the 15... and much better than lego-land to be sure.

Anyway, with no photo to share I thought I'd post a story that we discussed today. It involves Idaho, ice, mom's driving and two innocent young men in the back seat minding there own business. I of course was one of the innocents, the other was our friend Howard Fullmer. On Christmas eve Mom shared a story from a book that Howard illustrated called the Chocolate Chip Parable which got us reminiscing Howard and this story.

The rest of this post is taken from my personal blog... you'll note a style change. Here's a photo of Howard from back in the day.


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Howard and I grew up in the same "neighborhood". I use that term loosely, because our homes were many miles apart, but more on that later... Mom (nor I could) remember all of the details of the 45 seconds in which our “near-death-experience” took place, but combined I'll offer the following explanation:

We lived in the foothills on the outskirts of Idaho Falls, a (then) smallish town in Southeastern Idaho. Our homes were small enclaves surrounded by large (multi-acre) open space farms of wheat or potato crops. Short muddy springs, warm green summers and cold, cold winters. Regardless, one thing was always certain, the wind.

The roads were good, but became treacherous in winter due to the constant wind and freezing temperatures. Weather reports gave two numbers, the temperature and the wind chill factor which indicated how cold it actually felt due to the wind. Because of the brisk wind the snow would drop nearly horizontally with the winds moving it along the ground into ice crust ultimately collecting into large drifts several feet deep. I remember one winter where the drifts were taller than the school buses windows taking us to elementary or junior high.

The incident in question happened on one of these cold windy winter days. I can't remember where we were going to (or from, or back to). I don't think I was yet driving... There are so many possible scenarios here as Howard and I were both involved in scouting, Cedar Badge, order of the arrow... oh, and I took piano from his neighbor. Regardless, Mom and I can’t remember exactly why Howard was with us on that particular day... my guess was it had something to do to an uncontrollable desire to be among us (we get that so often).

Howard and I were sitting unbuckled (as was then the custom) in the back seat Mom was driving our two-toned late model 4x4 Chevy suburban along Marbrisa Lane, heading south toward our house. The road dips, lifts and curves along the edge of the foothills. The suburban had been doing quite well up to this point on the icy roads, but just before our home is long steep decent with a slight left curve at the bottom of the hill which has a steep (10 or more foot) drop-off on one side. There were also large lava boulders surrounding a culvert at the bottom of the drop off which drained Marbrisa and nearby Skidmore Lane (which meets nearby).

Knowing the road well mom slowed down considerably before reaching the hill. Nearly instantly as we started down the hill she knew we were in trouble. The heavy vehicle started to slide off course. She made a correction and the vehicle began to fishtail. She continued to fishtail nearly leaving the road several times, all the while gaining momentum. The bottom of the hill, and the embankment loomed. As we got to the bottom of the hill the vehicle edged closer and closer to the side of the road. As we reached the curve we all could see were we were headed…although I don’t personally remember if I thought it was heaven or hell at the time, more likely the later (I was a teenager afterall). At the worst possible moment the vehicle slid off the road and went over the edge of what felt like a cliff… but also in that instant the vehicle did a final fishtail pushing the heavy engine and front of the vehicle over the edge first, followed by the passenger compartment. Because of this “lucky” event, the vehicle simply rolled on all four wheels down the bank, narrowly missing the large rocks, and finally came to a non-climatic stop in a small drift of snow at the bottom.

For what seemed like minutes we all sat there stunned. I don’t remember a word being spoken although, knowing my mother, I’m sure she quickly turned to make sure that Howard and I were still alive and well, which we were, other than perhaps an excess amount of adrenaline running through our veins.

A neighbor’s son (he was about 20 years old who lived a few hundred feet away from the bottom of the hill) came running to the scene. He’d seen the whole drama unfold except for the final few moments. Mom said he was as white as a sheet. He was as surprised as we were that we weren’t in a steaming crumbled up pile at the bottom.

After looking the occupants over, he inspected the vehicle and suggested that mom could simply drive the Suburban down the culvert, back up a smaller embankment, around a few homes and get back on the road. Which she did.

Howard’s dad was our insurance guy at the time… it was really good to have someone credible in the car at the time to collaborate our story.

In the end… there was no damage to the vehicle or the occupants, just a story to tell throughout life. The moral of the story is… of course; don’t drive on icy roads in Idaho unless you have the son of your insurance man sitting in the back seat.