Near misses

A tree fell on my truck.

I was driving it at the time!

It was January of this year. Portland had just suffered one of our trademark ice storms - sustained wind, snow, a quick thaw, and then the refreeze. Our hilly roads turn into treacherous bobsled runs with ice that puts you on your ass. Even our dog Mabel - a Siberian Husky - said “Screw this. I ain’t going out there. That shit is dangerous.”

The combination of wind and ice plays hell with our trees. They were falling down everywhere - crashing through homes and knocking out power for tens of thousands. We lost power for two nights and had a pipe burst in our garage.

During the brief thaw, I was returning home from a quick supply run when a tree fell over and hit the back of my truck. I barely caught what was happening through the corner of my eye. It was a good sized tree - probably 40-50 feet tall and about a foot in diameter. The tree - overweighted with ice and snow - lost its hold on the saturated ground and crashed down the hill and across the road.

Luckily the damage was minimal, the tree mostly bounced off the back edge of my truck bed.

But here’s the thing…it could have hit the windshield or the cab. Had I been delayed one or two seconds or driving a little slower, that tree would have crashed right on my head.

And that would have been it. No more Jack.

The event hasn’t been my only close call. When I was 10 or 11, my brother and I were spending New Year’s Eve with our Grandparents in Texas. That evening also had an unusual ice storm which knocked out power to the house. To keep warm, we all slept in the front living room near the fireplace.

I remember being woken urgently by my Grandmother in the middle of the night, and as I opened my eyes I saw flames coming from the kitchen. My Grandparents hustled my brother and I out of the house and over to the neighbors. My memories are vivid - walking through the snow and ice in the yard, the cold, my Grandfather calling for their dogs still trapped in the house, and banging on the neighbor’s door trying to wake them up.

It turns out a structural defect in the fireplace allowed flames to seep into the kitchen pantry and ignite its contents, full of cardboard boxes and paper bags. A perfect kindling mix. My Grandparents saved the lives of my brother and I. The dogs didn’t make it.

But if it weren’t for the ice storm and the power outage - and the fact that we were sleeping in the living room close to the front door - who knows if we could have escaped? Or did the fact that we were using the fireplace in the first place pre-ordain the outcome? Did the power outage contribute to or help our survival prospects?

It seems so much up to chance. So random. Yes, my Grandparents played a primary role in the outcome…but it could have gone either way.

My father has a similar story. In 1953, when he was a boy, he was at church - at choir practice if you can believe it - when the deadliest tornado in Texas history ripped through downtown Waco. It killed 114 people, injured nearly 600, and decimated the commercial district. The church where my Dad took shelter was only a couple of blocks from the main path of destruction.

A slight change in air pressure, maybe a different nuance in wind direction - the tornado bends a little West, and my Dad might have been one of the casualties.

Both my Grandfathers served in World War II, one in the Navy and the other in the Army Air Corps. Both faced death and injury in countless ways, and through luck or fate or skill or who knows - they survived and came home to their wives. Had they not, I would not exist.

My great grandmother Daisy Thorne Gilbert was a survivor of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, still to this day the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. She and many others huddled in her bedroom on the ground floor of her apartment building which collapsed around them. Another building, another room, and no more Daisy.

It goes on and on. Think of all the flukes of nature, innocuous accidents, random events that determine contribute to our fates. How the peculiarities of wind patterns, the path of a bullet, the order in which we are picked for duty, or simple geographic happenstance all shuffle and reorder the probability of life.

We float upon the winds of chance, steer and try to control what we can. But ultimately we are simply blessed - alive and lucky.

We all have these near misses. Some we see and recognize, some we probably don’t know about - but it’s worth taking a moment to show gratitude and appreciate how random it is that we are here…that we survive. That the fleeting chaos of the universe has given us another day.

Parting Proclamation

Words, wit, and wisdom.

Farewell photo

A little slice of life, until next time…

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Disclaimer:

All content and opinions are solely those of the author (Jack), and not representative of my employer, former employers, clients, anyone in Congress, my family, former college roommates, Baptists, the good citizens of Oregon, or my dog Mabel.