Two Occasions When I Might Have Died in Modoc County Yes, my young life flashed in front of me on at least two occasions up north. I don’t know if people will think these stories are important, since I didn’t really die either time. Nevertheless, both of these events haunt me to this day. The first was in the summer of 1957, when a group of us folks from Modoc County took an outing to Hayden Hill, a ghost town where gold had been mined decades earlier, actually in Lassen County on the south. The terrain was hilly and rocky, with sagebrush, juniper, and stunted ponderosa pines growing any place they could. I was exploring on my own when I stumbled across a grade that descended gradually toward a mine adit that I could see about 200 feet ahead. I had to pick my way around boulders that had fallen off the “road cut.” Within 20 feet of the dark adit (it looked like a cave), I climbed over the last obstacle in my path. There in front of me was a clean, white sheep carcass, a little bloody in the area of the head, lying no more than three feet in front of the darkness of the “cave.” I froze on the spot! I turned around and walked back the same way I had come, with purpose but not in a panic, looking over my shoulder every few seconds to see if “it” was following me. “It” would be the mountain lion that must have lived in that abandoned mine. It was clearly a fresh kill, and the lion must have figured the sheep would be a better meal than me. I may have startled the lion, causing it to hustle into the cover of its den, leaving the carcass out front. But it might have become very unhappy with me if I had approached closer to the sheep or to any possible kittens. The left photo shows a (different) mountain lion den, with a lion sitting there. That’s about what I saw, but the lion was out of sight, and the sheep carcass was right in front of the opening. A second close call was in 1958, when a local farmer wanted some cheap day labor, and asked my brother Gary and me if we wanted to work for him for a few days. We didn’t (EVER!) have any kind of allowance, and so this was an opportunity to get some spending money. Our job, for $5.00 a day each (about 62 cents an hour), was to walk through a wheat field, pulling up the stray sprigs of rye that was contaminating his crop. Rye and wheat don’t mix, at least if you expect to be able to sell your wheat crop! The right photo shows a field having way too much rye. It belongs to my neighbor, and shows what we had to do. A little after lunch on the first day, we were on the side of a hill facing the Pit River, about 300 yards away. The river was bordered on both sides by a continuous thicket of trees and brush. We were doing our work when we heard a strange, metallic “ping/zing.” It sounded like someone had plunked a very taught wire, like a bare wire strung between two utility poles. Then there was a sound like someone had hit the side of a barn with a board. I asked, “What was that?” We looked around and confirmed there were no utility posts or anything else nearby. “Is someone shooting?” That question caused both of us to pause. Then came a second “ping/zing” and the same whack on the side of a barn. I never knew that bullets whizzing by really did “whiz.” In perfect unison we both ducked down, hiding under the canopy of wheat, and clumsily running back up the hill as fast as we could while in that crouched position. When we topped the hill we had the protection of topography. I needed air (just try running that way!), but we began running upright much faster than before, in case the sniper was serious about killing us and was in pursuit. We got back to the farmer’s house, and told him what happened. He sort of pooh-poohed it, gave us a whole day’s pay (generous!), and never asked us back.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 01:13:11 +0000
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