Okay… I’m sure even my town has an Elm Street…  But I used the quote in reference to another thing every town has….  in my town it’s called “Dead Man’s Curve” … As I am trying to reconcile some events in my life… it is quite a story if you can manage to look at the perspective of place rather than time….

…I am sure I am not alone in this being the spot I got my first kiss… or had my first sip of beer… and peed behind a truck… (Yeah, it happened more than once)… Not only did Relationships start with a kiss there (Not even my first kiss! Which as mentioned was also there) … but it ended there with my tearing apart my wedding veil into little pieces and tying them to rocks and throwing them over the edge while screaming obscenities…. I’ve vomited there… twice actually… Once when throwing the veil… again when finding a her body in  parked car there.

… I’ve attended a “life light” landing there two times… The first being when I was 18…  and everyone up on the mountain was detained up there while the helicopter landed… and then recruited to help pull the body out of the ravine from the car that had just rolled over the edge (it is named and known for a reason) … I remember standing with about 15 other people at the top of the ravine… pulling the rope that was attached to the board the rescuers had secured him on, He was alive when we brought him up, but died at the hospital later that night. .. The second time the helicopter came, it was to load said clinging to life body onto it… I had stayed up all night being kept posted on if they had found her yet or not…  I called into work and told them that I had to go help her family, get the kids to school, and then I needed to go find her… I dropped the kids off at school, and started the drive up the mountain, because really, how could they have missed her… where else would she go… everyone goes to Dead Man’s… I pulled around the bend and saw her car parked there… I had my cell phone pressed to my ear talking to a friend about it when I begged her not to hang up as I looked inside the car and saw her there, I started screaming “Call 911” into the phone… She did… it wasn’t long after I got the window broken and  pulled her out of the car that I heard the sirens coming… I had thought she was dead at first… I had placed a couple good kicks in her before I realized that even though I couldn’t feel a pulse, there was fresh drool… The paramedic told me I had probably saved her life with those kicks… I asked him what would happen if she died… His response? “I won’t tell anyone you kicked her if she doesn’t make it”… She made it …I still have nightmares about the helicopter… every time I hear one I cringe…

… When I was about 16 I hiked up to what is the bottom of that ravine to the car graveyard… my best friend at the time used to do it a lot, just to get away… and I remember being amazed at how many cars were down there… There are at least a few more now… I have attended promises and good intentions made there… I have attended more than one goodbye ceremony there

… I have sat in a couple different cars over the years and looked down over that ravine… taken the corner too sharp… behaved recklessly… And I have crept along that shoulder carefully… with precious cargo (The smalls) and shed a tear of gratitude that I never have been in any of the hundreds of accidents that have occurred there…

What is your Dead Man’s Curve? Elm Street?