Mt. Baldy - How I Remember It

Mt. Baldy was in the news yesterday. Ed has heard of Mt. Baldy because it figures in a favorite story of mine. My memory might be wrong, because I was probably 7 when this happened, but this is what I remember.

When people say, "Why don't you love snow? Didn't you have snow growing up?" I refer to 2 memories. The first is my Mt. Baldy experience. Once a year, until I was 7, my parent would take a day to drive up to Mt. Baldy with me. We would ride the ski lift up, have lunch in the snow with the skiers and ride the ski-lift down.

Now, while this memory is nice, it was probably hell for my parents in some ways. You see, I was afraid of heights in general and mountain roads in particular. (Which is odd, because I love heights now and am not the least afraid.) I think maybe it was too many movies where a car is driven off a cliff and bursts into flames. - How did I cope with driving up or down a mountain road? In the charming manner you would expect. I lay on the floor in the back seat and screamed into a pillow until we were off the hill or had arrived. That cannot have been too pleasant.

And my parents bickered - although bickering doesn't nearly give you the full experience. My parents were funny bickers, usually. Witty and well versed in a variety of insults and jests. But you never knew when someone was going to cross the line. It was usually my father, after being on the lsoing end of a witty reparté. And then he got mean - his choice of insult - for some reason the slur "battle-axe" drove my mother nuts. Then the pleasant bickering would take a turn for the vicious.

It was on our last trip up Mt. Baldy as I was screaming and my father was lashing out that my mother finally said, "Turn the fucking car around, Jerry."

My father countered with"But Scott wants to see the snow!" (Note - I did want to see the snow, but it wasn't a huge deal.)

To which my mother said, "Scott can see the snow when he has a car and drives his own ass up here!"

And that was my last trip to Mt. Baldy.

Just as an aside... My other "memory" of the snow is from the movies where the plane crashes and someone gets eaten. Which is why I think of snow as the white death.