Frozen Moments in Time

The Former Sally Ann Motel, Lake Tahoe

About 40 years ago (has it really been that long?), I took the wife, my little son, and my in-laws on a Christmas holiday to Lake Tahoe. What a memorable trip that was.

First of all, we almost missed our flight at Los Angeles International Airport, getting there just in time to check in, thanks to traffic. Then, as we approached Lake Tahoe Airport (which isn't operating any more), we had to circle for quite a while because the runways were packed with snow and we had to wait for them to be cleared.

I think every barf bag on the plane was used. Even I, who never gets airsick, was about five minutes away from flagging down the stewardess (I didn't have one in my seat pocket ... the wife, y'know).

Okay, so we finally get our car and drive to the motel pictured above. It was a nice little motel called "The Sally Ann" that I found in the AAA Trip Book. It was still mid-afternoon, so I decided we'd go to dinner in Reno, about a 45-minute drive down the mountain. No problem. We got there fine.

Then, on the way back, it started to snow. It snowed and snowed and snowed. And then it snowed and snowed some more. I joined a short line of cars that crept up the mountain, occasionally trading the lead-off spot, slowly making our way back to the motel. That 45-minute Tahoe-Reno drive turned out to be a two-hour return trip.

I thought we were going to die. And believe me, even though everybody was tired, nobody was falling asleep. We thought we were going to die.

I can't tell you how happy I was to see the lights of the town appear before us, and the motel sign glowing in the snowfall. We took a cab to dinner and boy, could that cabbie drive, just plowing through the snow wall in the middle of the road, controlled skids and all that.

That night, the shower never felt so good, and my spirits were up because we didn't die. So I did the only thing a young man who grew up in Hawaii might do. I went for a walk in the blizzard. Oh, about a hundred yards down the road and then a hundred yards up the road and back.

This man slept good that night. The next morning, Christmas Day, it was like a winter wonderland ... except I couldn't see our car. It was buried in snow, the result of what they were calling an 80-year storm. The car wouldn't free, no matter how much I tried. Finally, the motel owner showed up, returning prematurely from a visit to Sacramento; he fired up a little Bobcat and pulled my car free.

Poor guy, he got a good talking to from the mother-in-law. She laid into him: How dare he go to see his mother in Sacramento and not tell us there was a storm coming. I felt sorry for the guy, I mean, even the weather experts never expected so much snow; plus, it wasn't his fault. So I had a short talk with him afterwards and apologized for the way she'd acted.

I did miss the longest NFL playoff game in history because I was outside trying to put chains on the car tires. The rental agency had only provided one set, and it wasn't that easy to dig the car out and install the chains. My legs felt frozen and the only thing I could think of was amputation below the knees ... "Operating room, here I come."

The snowfall had stopped and everything looked so white and pristine as we went to breakfast at Harold's Club. Oh, how beautiful the lake looked from 'way atop the hotel. Certainly worth all the trouble we'd gone through.

Heck, we even got a partial refund from Hertz because of the tire chain situation. I don't know what made me think of this adventure this morning. But I did. So there you are.