STRAIGHT OUT OF A CLOUD

Feeling a little under the weather?

Day 11:   I have yet to understand what happened to me last week.  I think it was the sheer weight of the trauma attacking my conscious mind.  And, because of that I have little or no memories of the evening I spent in Amity Bridge, Oregon.  I had passed Ontario, and thought that I would be entering Idaho in less than thirty minutes.  That would have been less than forty miles distance, but I must have driven an hour or more on Interstate 84, and I should have been in Idaho, but the signs I was passing indicated that I was still in Oregon.  I passed under a bridge and the sign on the bridge indicated that I was passing under OR-127.   The next underpass bridge indicated that I was passing under OR-133.  So, I was definitely still in Oregon.  It was like there was a conspiracy against rational, logical thinking going on.  Maybe there was a fog or a haze that was full of some gaseous fumes that caused a break with reality.  I don’t know but whatever was going on didn’t affect the people who lived in the area or the people at the motel I stayed in that night.  I know that the locals weren’t being affected because they were out in their cars driving all over the place.  In fact, I could see that there was some kind of big event going on just off the interstate highway, close to the exit that Ginger was telling me to get off at to get to my motel.

Yet in my muddled thinking, I believed that the locals had something to do with it, and just maybe they were immune to the fumes, or maybe they were also responsible for the fumes being in the air especially where the fumes crossed the I-84.  Maybe the fumes were directed at just a certain type of individual with a certain set of genes.  Who knows what was going on, but it now seems likely that the locals, who were not affected, were using the fumes to bring tourists to the motel.  I think that the fumes got me to the motel but with a loss of critical thought process.  I was put into the room at the end of the motel closest to the big event that was going on out in the adjacent field.  But, what got me was that I got into my room and went to bed and to sleep in a matter of seconds.  Then, when the time came, I was forcibly removed from the room by the ‘Red Eyed’ people who were dressed up like aliens. 

It now seems to me, that with every passing day, that I remember just one more little detail.  I hope that I will remember it all in the near future.  By remembering, it is my hope that I will be less vulnerable to something like this incident happening again to me.  So, every time I remember something I feel better able to avoid a reoccurrence of just such an event as I experienced in Amity Bridge, Oregon.   

Two days later, as I was just going about my usual daily chores of life, when just completely and entirely out of the blue, I remembered something:  I had an incredibly bad migraine headache just after I got to my room that night because I have just remembered going to the trunk of the car and digging out a bottle of Tylenol.  I had not remembered that until I just went to that same bottle to get another pill for another really bad headache.  Then, just as I swallowed the Tylenol for this latest migraine something else occurred to me.  The Night Manager at that motel in Amity Bridge had ask me over the phone after I had been awakened from my ‘nightmare,’  “Sir,” he said, “have you seen the ‘Red Eyes’ yet?” 

When I asked him to repeat what he said, he had asked me something entirely different.  It is only now that I remembered his bizarre question.  I think he was trying to determine if I had seen the demons down there just outside my room.  If I had seen them, I would have been irretrievable, he would not have been able to help me get out of the room.  If I had said ‘yes’ he would have hung up and let the demons have their way with me.  Nothing he could do for me!

The problem was that I had told him ‘No” that I had not seen the Red Eyes thinking he was talking about a television program or a movie.  I was extremely groggy from the sleeping pill I had taken for lack of sleep.  Since I said “NO”, he called the sheriff’s office and called for immediate help to Room 102.  Of course, the Sheriff’s office knew all too well what a ‘NO’ answer meant.  It meant that I was still recoverable from the demons and the rest of the celebrants.  When the sheriff’s deputies arrived just three minutes later, the Red Eyes were gone and I was in a heap in the floor of what use to be Room 102.  A large portion of the lower wall was missing, and the entire room was a wreck.  The red and blue flashing lights had driven the ‘demons’ away, so it was easy for them to rescue me and get me away from that end of the motel.  For the Sheriff and the motel manager, that was their mistake and the locals would make them pay for it.  Every year, their celebrations require a gift to be given to the ‘White Eyes.’  That gift for this year’s celebration was to have been me, and because of the manager and the sheriff, that was not going to happen.  And, the celebrants would have no gift for the worshipped of their faith.  They knew in turn that they would now have to provide that gift to them from amongst their own numbers.

There was a conspiracy going on between the locals and most of the sheriff’s deputies, sheriff and the cabal that had formed in place of what use to be a local Octoberfest celebration.  Room 102 had been repaired more than a hundred times over the last few years.  More than one hundred unsuspecting traveling guests of the motel had disappeared over those years.  They had become the unwitting guests of the local celebrants of a group of people who had been brainwashed by about thirty indigenous aliens.  These aliens were not from another planet, but they were aliens because they were an unknown species of subterranean life that had big red eyes and heart shaped faces, or big white eyes and oval faces.  They were not exactly demons, because they were flesh and blood inhabitants of the unknown underground world surrounding Amity Bridge. 

The last thing I remembered was not the ‘red eyed demons,’ but the white eyed, nine foot tall, hairy humanoids creatures that had tried to carry me off to the ‘festival’ just on the other side of the adjacent field.  Well, that is what I thought that I remembered.  Surely, I was totally mistaken in my recollections.  Surely, I must be wrong about what broke through the wall and the door of Room 102.  Surely, that was a nightmare of epic proportions.  Surely, I am wrong about that.  Yet I ca……. can’t help but believe I am not just dreaming.  Yet I ca………. can’t help believe I was not hallucinating.  Yet I thi…….. think I need help with my remembrances, don’t I? 

What next?  I didn’t know, but I was about to find out.  It just had to rain for me to find out!

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As I crossed the state of Idaho, I would go through Boise, the capital city of the state.  A state with the nickname of Gem State (or Little Ida, or the Spud State, or even Potatonia), can’t be all that bad.  One thing was for sure, it had plenty of room, yes all the room that could ever possibly be needed for growing potatoes, and they did it really well up in Potatonia.

I was driving cross country and within a few hours I had driven into Montana, its capital of Helena was not a great city in its size, but it was a great part of what Montanans called ‘The Big Sky Country’ or the Treasure State.  I would drive across the state from Missoula, to Butte, to Bozeman, to Billings, and then past the ‘Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument before leaving the state and into Wyoming.  Driving across the state on the I-90 was awe inspiring, and I could easily understand why the state was referred to as ‘The Big Sky Country.’  It was magnetizing my mind with a desire to stay right there in the ‘Treasure State.’  I loved its wide open spaces.  Its beauty was beyond compare.   It is no wonder the state’s population had doubled in the last one hundred years.  Its population now in excess of 1,042,000.

When the sky was clear, and you can see from the eastern horizon to the western horizon, a visitor gets the sense of how the state came to be called ‘The Big Sky Country.’  During my drive across the state of Montana, I did not see many clouds in the sky.  In fact there was only one cloud in the sky the entire day.  I could not help but wonder how this lone cloud could have formed apparently over Idaho or even Canada and have drifted over the countryside pushed along by the winds aloft.  But, at this moment this huge behemoth the size of an aircraft carrier was floating along over Billings.  It wasn’t in any hurry, so it seemed, and it went it would pass over the I-90 just east of Billings.  It wasn’t uncommon for people to stop what they were doing to watch a cloud of that magnitude. 

The Cree Indian nation believed that such lonely, large clouds carried with it the knowledge of their fate of their people.  And, so when such a cloud passed over their village, they all stopped to watch.  Such lonely clouds almost never carried the potential for rainfall.  But, those that did would reveal certain characteristics, and since rainfall was a valuable commodity in Montana, it was not unusual for the people of Montana to stop what they were doing to assess its potential to deliver a much necessary deluge of moisture for the valley below. 

Clouds had certain characteristics that were revealing of their purpose, or even when their purpose might be revealed.  First, a cloud had to be large.  A dozen separate clouds with the same total volume, would amount to the same thing.  Second, it had to have enormous vertical development (at least ten thousand feet, some said fifteen thousand feet).  Third, it had to have a rounded shape and be billowy (it could not have a swept or elongated, or even a wispy horizontal development, no striations).  Fourth, it had to be very dark underneath its mass.  Fifth, the slower it was moving the more likely it was to deliver precipitation.  Sixth, it could not show any indication that it was in the process of dividing.  And, Seventh, a cloud’s most prominent vertical development must be trailing, not leading the cloud’s forward edges.    

In Big Sky Country, a lone, really slow moving, vertically developed cloud with an anvil at the top that trails the main body of the cloud is seriously dangerous and could deliver a gully washer to the area below it.  Such a cloud could deliver six to ten inches of rain in an hour or less.  It could cause flash floods and wash away things as large as a houses, barns and most certainly the family car. 

On this particular day, as I drove through the Big Sky State, I noticed this particular cloud.  It was the only cloud in the sky that I could see in any direction.  It was very dark underneath, meaning it had an enormously thick and dense construction above it.  It also meant that it covered an enormous area of the ground below it, and thus blocked out an enormous amount of sunlight to the ground around it; and it must have had vertical development of more than 30,000 feet.  It had an anvil shaped head that attached at the top rearward part of the cloud and which trailed back behind the main body of the cloud by more than a mile.  It was, in short, a monumental cloud with monumental potential for producing a record rain fall on the terrain below it.  And, although it was not visible on the outside of this cloud, it was entirely possible that the interior of the cloud was in turmoil and had up and down drafts of enormous speeds.  The up and down drafts can create an enormous amount of very large softball size hail stones that potentially could do considerable damage to property and to crops on the ground.  Any place that this storm released this potential was going to suffer a considerable amount of damage.  The community could lose its entire crop for the summer to such large hail.

After looking at the storm cloud for several minutes, I turned the radio on and began searching for a local radio station in the hopes I could find out what if anything was happening or might take place as the result of this lone, but enormous cloud.  After searching for a few minutes I found a local radio station.  The show’s host was interviewing a NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) meteorologist about such clouds.  The meteorologist began to talk about the nature of cloud formations and said, “This cloud is being continuously monitored by up to seven Doppler Radar units.  The results of these radar studies were showing that this cloud had the potential to drop sixteen to eighteen inches of rain over the area in two hours or less.  He recommend that residents pay particular attention to the cloud, and be prepared to seek higher ground if the cloud began to produce precipitate at a high rate.  Local flash flooding is possible within forty minutes to an hour following the beginning of the rain fall.”

The radio programs anchor then asked, “what type of cloud is this, and what could be going on with it?”

The meteorologist began, “This is what we call a Cumulonimbus Incus cloud.  That means that it has a base of around 6000 feet and extends up into the atmosphere up to 45,000 feet.  It means that the cloud has a large volume that not only extends outward at the bottom in every direction, and it also extends upward with great volume up to 45,000 feet above the ground.  The Incus is just another word for the fact that the cloud has an ‘anvil’ shaped top at either the front or the back side of the cloud that extends upward and backward in the direction from which the cloud had originated.  As for what is dangerous about this type of cloud, it is this:  It has the potential for enormous rainfall in a short period of time, and it has the potential for high vertical winds, up and down drafts, within its core that could produce very large, up to softball size hail stones that are capable of destroying structures, vehicles and crops.  It is an extremely dangerous weather formation.  And, as I said before it is capable of creating flash flooding that could come up very quickly.”

The anchor followed up by saying, “We had a cloud similar to this about eleven years ago that dropped 16 inches of rain in about 90 minutes time, and generated flash flooding that washed away 17 homes and 89 cars and trucks.  Fortunately, no one was injured, but first responders had to rescue 157 people from floating vehicles, and people stranded on roof tops and up in trees.”

Even as I listened intently to the meteorologist’s conversation with the local radio host, I knew that the best thing I could do was try to outrun it.  I had to get the Malibu going at the maximum allowable and see it I couldn’t get away from it before it could start pouring the rain.  Unfortunately, the front of the cloud was at least two miles from where I was.  I couldn’t turn around and go back the way I came because I could see in the rear view mirror that the clouds rear boundary was several miles in the rear.  As I looked back across the valley behind me it became obvious that it was raining back there.  It was then that the meteorologist made said, “If you are in the West Billings area, you must seek higher ground immediately.  Local rainfall is heavy and hail is very likely to begin in the next few minutes.  If you can get your car inside, this would be a great time to do so.  If you are in the Eastern Billings area, you have about eight to ten minutes to get your vehicles inside, or get to higher ground.  It is imperative that you do so now.  If you are in this area, the cloud is moving east-southeast at about twenty miles an hour, so if you are in the Hope, East End, Progress, DeLuca or Middleborough areas, you have about eight minutes before the rainfall, and / or hail storm arrives.  Please seek higher ground immediately.”

There was no way for me to get my new Malibu inside a garage, there were none available that I could see.  My only hope was to outrun the cloud.  The Meteorologist said it would be where I was in about eight minutes.  But, he also said that it was moving at about twenty miles an hour.  That was one-third of a mile per minute.  I could outrun it because I was driving at 72 miles an hour, or I was moving 1 and 1/5 miles per minute.  By the time it got to where I currently was, I would be nearly ten miles further east. 

There was a little bit of a problem with my calculations.  It was moving in a straight line, I was moving to the northeast.  In other words, I was not moving exactly in its direction.  I was moving at a right angle to its progress, so I wasn’t making progress on it.  It was making progress on me.  The angular difference had cut my easterly progress away from the storm by more than three-fourths, or 75%.  Instead of going 1 and 1/5 miles per minute to the east, as I had erroneously thought at the beginning, I was actually only moving to the East at a rate of three-tenths miles per minute.  That meant I would only be able to drive eastward 2.4 miles in that eight minutes the meteorologist had spoken about.  He said that the storm cloud was moving at twenty miles an hour, or 8.3 miles in twenty minutes, or 2.8 miles in eight minutes.  It was catching up to me by nearly one-half mile per minute. 

I couldn’t, at the time, understand what was going on, it was catching up to me (I still didn’t understand at that moment that I was not going southeast like it was, but I had been going consistently to the northeast.  I knew it was going to catch up to me, and I began to look for a place to get under, there was nothing.  I was on the freeway going 70 miles an hour, and even if I went up to 80 miles an hour, I could not outrun it anymore.  It was then that I saw a highway overpass just ahead of me about a mile ahead of me.  I sped up, going as fast as I could safely go.  The wind had picked up dramatically, and the wind was slamming into the side of the car and it was trying to push me off the side of the road.  Just as the rain picked up to a deluge, I slammed on my brakes as I entered under the overpass above me.  I no sooner got underneath it than hail the size of tennis balls began to hit just feet behind the rear bumper of the car, and just feet in front of the front bumper.  The hail lasted for more than ten minutes, and it had piled up everywhere in front of the car.  I didn’t know if I could even drive out from under the overpass above me.  The rain continued for almost forty minutes.  I could only hope that there would be no flash flooding in the area I was now marooned at.  I was stuck under the bridge.  And, I could only hope that I would be able to get out of the area before the flooding occurred.

Well, if ‘hope’ was the only thing one had to hang onto, it was good to have it.  Because, at least you could see a possibility of survival.  There was a ray of hope, and I could see back to the west that the sky was getting brighter.  That single storm cloud was moving on to the east.  It was now completely past my location, but the possibility of flash flooding was still there.  After another fifteen minutes, the hail was still too big to move across, I would have to wait another fifteen or twenty, maybe even thirty more minutes before the heat of the day would melt the hailstones.  I started hearing the sounds of running water.  Running water makes a distinctive sound, and as the water deepens or as it moves faster down a hill, the more distinctive the sound becomes.  It doesn’t sound like the winds whooshing over the countryside, it is a sound more like a million drops of water dripping from a faucet.  You first think it is the breeze through leaves at the top of the trees, but you know it isn’t because the wind isn’t blowing any longer.  The problems is that you hear it but you can’t see it yet, so you don’t know which way it might be coming from, but still you know it is there.

I hurriedly walked to the back of the Malibu and looked back to the west that is the direction from which it should be coming.  After all that is the direction from which the storm cloud had rolled across the landscape, but also because I knew I was east of the Rocky Mountains and the sea level of the landscape would be decreasing the farther east I drove.  To the west of the Rockies, the terrain dropped more sharply than it did on the eastern edge of the mountain range.  That this is true probably has more to do with the fierceness of the easterly flowing winds than the runoff of the water from the elevations.  Water should flow downhill evenly on either side of the continental divide initially.  But, over time the western slopes of mountains become more and more steep.   

As the whooshing sound intensified with every passing second, the urge to get in the Malibu increased, but at that moment I did not know which way I should go.  I thought if it was flash flooding and my position was about to be swamped I needed to get out of the area quickly.  But, what if the sound I was hearing was coming from just east of my position under the overpass, and was coming up from the south.  If I headed to the southeast on the Interstate, I just might get myself and my Malibu headed into the flooding and get myself and my car deluged.  After debating the possibilities for several agonizing seconds, I hurried from the back of the Malibu, opened the driver side door and jumped in to the Malibu, cranked it up and floored the accelerator.  The Malibu lurched forward immediately, and as I was speeding up I looked to the south of the Interstate and saw a wall of water rapidly advancing on my position.  My skin began to crawl, as hair stood up all over my arms and neck.  I was instantaneously scared.

I didn’t know how long it would take for that wall of water to arrive at my location, but I wasn’t going to sit in the Malibu idly while it overtook my position.  So, I pressed the accelerator all the way to the floorboard.  The Malibu steadily began to respond and the speedometer’s digital speed began to move upward at an ever increasing rate.  It seemed like I wasn’t moving very fast.  Slowly but surely the indicator showed the speed increasing from 35…. 37….40….44….49….55….62….70….79….89….100….112….116…125…140.   That’s when the indicator stopped showing an increase in speed.  Even though I might have been actually going faster, the speedometer was only programmed to show a maximum of 140 miles per hour.  I was now moving down the I-84 at a speed of over 1 mile every 27 seconds and just when it seemed to me that I was getting ahead of it, I would look out the passenger side window and it was all too apparent to me that the water was catching up.  Just then the I-84 turned ever so slightly to the east northeast because the land was increasing in elevation.  That just might be the break that I needed.  If I could just go up in elevation about one hundred feet, I might just be able to avoid getting swamped.  The highway continued to elevate higher and higher.  And, just as I crested the hill, that wall of water reached me and my Malibu, and splashed the entire area with an enormous spray of water that covered the Malibu completely for a few seconds before it dissipated off the car and down the road’s surface in every direction.  There I was, standing in the door of the Malibu looking in every direction and realizing I was stranded again.  Twenty minutes before I was afraid of being swamped while parked under the overpass.  Now, instead, I was on a little knoll somewhere on the eastern approach to Billings, Montana, and I was stranded by the newest formed Lake in the entire country.  I hoped it would continue to dissipate but it seemed stubbornly happy right where it was.  And, looking at the immediate environs, it occurred to me that I was in a huge bowl that happened to have a peak right in the middle of it.  It was in fact a huge crater formed when a meteor struck the earth there more than 10,000 years ago.  It was obvious as I slowly turned on my heels and began looking at the horizon; and noticing that the horizon was the same all the way around.  And, it appeared that the horizon was about two miles away.  But, no one had noticed it, apparently until I happened to get stranded on its central peak.

I was stuck, and the water would cover the I-84 for another 34 hours until I could see the highway’s surface again.  I was stranded without food, freshwater or anything else to drink unless a helicopter just happened my way.  Well, there was not enough room left on the central peak for one to land, but maybe, just maybe one would happen along and drop off a couple of Big Macs, a large order of fries and a gully-washer of one kind or another.  It got dark and I tried to sleep, but as it began to darken I realized I was not alone on the central peak of that crater.  There were other inhabitants and I think as the water filled the bowl of the crater, a few creatures joined me: swimmers, creepers, roamers, flyers.  Some poisonous, some had beaks and sharp claws to shred it prey, some had stingers, some had big claws, big paws and mighty maws (for chomping). 

Just then I heard a sound, like a hiss.  And, it made me think about a similar sound I had heard about two weeks before in a story about ‘plains and watering machains.’  In that case, so as with time, the hiss was a preliminary sound for the squalling, screeching sounds that would follow.  I turned toward the north and looked up, and there perched on the top of the highest part of this central peak, we were all stranded on, was this golden mountain lion, or cougar, or puma, or catamount.  It didn’t matter which word was most appropriate, the simple truth was that this was a very, very, very large feline, and it had big claws, big paws and a big maw (for chomping).  It began to threaten me, so I got back in the Malibu and locked all the doors.  From there on the big cat walked across the peak along the roadside for the hours.  And, if it wasn’t pacing up and down, it would stop and sit directly opposite the driver’s door.  And, after several hours it came up to the side of the car and reared up against the driver’s side window and just eye-balled me for a while.  And, on several occasions, it would charge my side of the car and stop just inches from the door.  I could tell it was unhappy that I didn’t surrender to its needs.  In fact, it was obviously quite peeved that it couldn’t get to me.  I’m just glad it did not know how to throw rocks.

In addition to the cat on the hot tin roof (so to speak), not more than fifty feet from me, I had just spotted a couple of coyotes, a prairie dog, an opossum, a diamond back rattler, and what looked like a family of armadillo.  I was just hoping for some peace amongst the inhabitants of this, shall I call it ‘Fantasy Island.’  The potential with this group of known inhabitants was for there to be some problems.  But, over the next few hours, till it became first light again, all inhabitants displayed a sincere measure of tranquility.  Sometime during the middle of the night, the water levels began to recede, and by morning most of the highway to the east was mostly devoid of water.  An hour after dawn, I said a fond farewell to the other unintentional inhabitants of ‘Fantasy Island,’ cranked up my Crystal Red Tint Coat Malibu and headed off to the east on the I-84 toward Wyoming.  I drove for a total of seven minutes until I reached the crater’s rim.  As soon as reached the rim, I saw very quickly that slamming on the brakes was going to be necessary.  There, right in front of me was a lake whose width was at least a mile across.  I was stuck again.  This time, the wait was going to be a lot longer.  I couldn’t tell how deep it was over the top of I-84, but I couldn’t risk getting out into water deeper than the axles.  If the water was too deep, the engine could flood out, and I’d have a very damaged, brand spanking new Malibu.  So, I decided to turn around and go back to the central peak of the crater.  It was much higher above the floor of the crater and the surrounding terrain outside of the crater.  I just thought I would be safer there, and closer to Billings.  And, after being on the crater’s peak for an hour I realized that the mountain lion was gone, but the two rattlers were still curled up on the big rock.  It didn’t really matter what else there might be I was going to stay in the Malibu until I was ready to move east.  Right about then, I had the idea to turn on the radio again to see if that meteorologist was still talking.  And, It was then that I realized that they were talking about the new lake that currently existed across I-84 about ten miles east of Billings. 

The new program’s anchor said, “there is indeed a new lake crossing I-84 about ten miles east of Billings, but there is also a lake across I-84 about three miles east of Billings.  And, it appears that there is one lone car sitting out on a mound about eight miles east of Billings.  Whoever is in that car is stranded and will be stranded for the next several days.  And, we understand that there is a helicopter on the way out to that car to see if the driver is alright.  There was a small plane that flew out along the Interstate yesterday that located that car.  It has not moved that we know of, and there is concern for the driver’s safety.” 

And, I thought, they are talking about me.  And, sure enough in about forty-five minutes there was a helicopter approaching my little crater mound from the west, back toward Billings.  It landed about fifty feet behind the Malibu and two men got out and began to run up the bank towards me.  I rolled down the window, as they approached, and as soon as they arrived at the side of the car, I warned them about the rattlesnakes, and the mountain lion that had been up on the prominence just behind them.  They turned to look for the snakes and the lion, but seeing only the snakes, they turned to check back on my situation.

The taller of the two men said, “Sir, we are concerned that you are unaware of the severity of your situation.  You are stranded here, and it looks like you will be for several days.”

I responded by saying, “I knew there was a lake in front of me about two miles, but you are telling me I can’t even get back to Billings.”

The other man said, “That is correct, there is another lake across the I-84 about five miles behind you.  It will be dangerous for you to stay out here for the next three days with food and fresh water, unless you do, we recommend that you come with us, and stay in Billings until the MHP can determine that the I-84 is safe to travel.  Right now it is not.”

“What about my Malibu, sir,” I asked him.  “What will happen to my car, it is brand new and I just don’t relish leaving it out here unattended.”

The taller man then added, “Sir, we have been requested by Montana Highway Patrol and the Safety Department of Montana to evacuated you until it can be determined that the I-84 is safe to travel.  Until then, sir we have to ask you to step out of the car, and come with us.  Your car will be alright, and if it isn’t then that will have to be the fate of the car, but we cannot leave you out here.  You are the only person that we know of within eight miles of here in any direction.  Now, we can monitor the car, but SDM has determined that you have to come with us.

“I will be right with you,” I said, and I gathered a few things and unlocked the door, stepped out of the car, and pressed the button on the remote to lock every door or other access.  I said, “my luggage is in the trunk, if it is alright with you guys I need to get a couple of bags out of the trunk so I will have my personal supplies, my medications and my clothing.”

They asked me to hurry, and I went to the rear of the Malibu, pushed the trunk lid button and the trunk deck popped up.  I pulled out the three bags that held those items and started down the bank toward the chopper, whose rotors were still rotating at idle.  The crew helped me up into the chopper, threw my luggage into the back and boarded the chopper.  The aircraft rose straight up into the sky and within seconds wheeled back to the left about one hundred and eighty degrees and headed back toward Billings.  I did not want to leave my Malibu isolated out in the middle of nowhere, but I could see that these two meant to evacuate me.  So, I complied.

We landed twelve minutes later at the Montana Highway Patrol office on Billings’ East End.  I was helped down off the helicopter, and was escorted to the office.  I was placed in a concrete block room with a single exit door with a 20 inch by 30 inch double glass window.  Within a few minutes, another man came in and introduced himself to me as Captain Edward Greene.  He informed me that he was required to ask me a few questions and after that I would be taken to any hotel or motel I wanted to stay at for the next three days or so.

I responded to him by saying, “Sir, Captain Greene, I was not happy that I was being forced to abandon a brand new Chevrolet Malibu out there unprotected.  I need to get that car back here as soon as possible, if the MHP can bring it in for me, or can take me back out there to get it.”

He said, “Sir, we removed you for your own good.  We cannot allow people in jeopardy to die out in the more isolated areas of the state.  It is not good policy.  As for your car, we believe that the lake covering I-84 that is three miles east of Billings will be gone first, so we think we will be able to have your car brought back in as soon as the Safety Department says it is safe to go get it.  That will not likely happen for about three days.  The lake covering I-84 that is about ten miles east of Billings probably will not be gone for seven or more days.  I know you want to get on the way home, so I can appreciate your position, but I just hope that you can appreciate our position as well.  That water will not drain very rapidly, and you would have suffered a lot staying out there with your car.  This is the best alternative.  We hope you will be able to see that and understand what your future would have been like out there.  The environment is harsh out in those areas just about any time of the year, but with large predators, no food or water, your situation would have deteriorated rapidly, and you would have become desperate for food and water, and quite frankly your safety was in danger.  Oh, by the way, that lake that formed out there over I-84 about ten miles from here is about 34 inches in depth right now.  According to NOAA it will take nearly three weeks for it to drain.  By contrast, the lake over I-84 just three miles east of Billings is only 14 inches deep right now.  According to NOAA, that water will probably be gone in about seven days.  If the sun were to come out and stay out for several days, the rate of evaporation would improve significantly, but this time of year, the sun is not likely to cooperate.  So, you need to be prepared to be here in Billings for another week.  Sorry, but that is about the best we can do for you.  You are quite fortunate that the pilot of the surveillance aircraft spotted your car. ”

 

It was six days before we could go get the Malibu.  They drove me out to the Malibu in one of their squad cars, and I got into my car, cranked it up and slowly turned around.  The drive back to the East End of Billings took all of five minutes.  I parked outside of my hotel, and walked back over to the Montana Highway Patrol office about two blocks away.  It was now just a very hot day in Montana, and on this day it was nothing less than a scorcher.  Well, the heat would help dry up the big lake ten miles east of Billings.  They had estimated eight days before the nearer of the two lakes would be gone, it had been just six days.  They sent out two deputies to check the I-84 lake that was 10 miles east of Billings.  They had put a boat in the water and had checked its depths every tenth of a mile from one side to the other along the I-84 corridor.  The deepest depth was 22 inches.  It had gone down, at most 12 inches at the deepest point.  They were estimating now about 15 days for it to be opened back up and safe to navigate across.  NOAA’s original three week estimate was still holding. 

My forced stay in Billings was going to cost me about one thousand dollars for lodging alone.   Food cost was another large expenditure, and estimating thirty dollars daily was going to add another six hundred dollars.  Another cost of being marooned in Billings was laundry.  It was going to cost me another fifty dollars to keep my clothes fresh and clean.  The sheriff came by and took me to lunch two or three times a week as it turned out, and that became a rather fortuitous relationship that I had developed while there.  The sheriff asked me if I would like to come stay at his house for the remainder of the days I would be there, but I told him I did not want to intrude on his family’s peace and on their routine.  I knew it could be difficult on them and on me as well.  Sharing resources when you are not use to coming and going as you saw fit was not always a good thing.  I did take him up on the occasional dinner though.  That was a very interesting thing that I was able to observe.  That being the inner workings of a household whose head was the sheriff of Yellowstone County Montana.  That was indeed interesting.  And, what made it more interesting to me was the fact that the sheriff’s wife was the Chief Operating Officer at St. Vincenti’s Hospital in Billings.   She was a rather busy person, and because of her enormous responsibilities at the hospital had hired a housekeeper and a landscaper to take care of the daily operations of and around the house.  In fact, they were both very responsible people in the Billings area.  That they were willing to take me in for more than two weeks was a very hospitable thing to do, but I just didn’t feel I should.  His wife, got me a part time job at the hospital working in the executive offices as an assistant.  It just happened to be the hospital’s fiscal year end and she needed some help to get things in order, and with my experience, I believed that I could help out.  So, I did and was compensated nicely.  I was working ten hour days, and over my last two weeks in the Billings area.  I worked twelve, ten hour days and was paid almost $2,500.  Now, that really came in nicely and helped me pay for the room and other expenses I had to incur while having to stay in Billings.

The lake, I lovingly referred to as Lake Wiki, had completely dried in the summer heat in just over eleven days, about four days earlier than NOAA had expected.  And, I would have left Billings on that day except that the Chief Operating Officer of a major hospital asked me if I could stay until the end of the month, which was another sixteen days.  That would really do a lot to pay for all my traveling expenses.  My seventeen day trip to Oregon was already extended by eight days (three extra days in Lodi, California, three extra days in Amity Bridge, Oregon, an extra day in Cheyenne/Laramie Wyoming, and an extra day in Fort Bridger, Wyoming).  Now, I was going to stay an additional sixteen days in Billings, and I had already been there sixteen extra days.  That meant my 17 day round trip to Oregon, was going to be 47 days, and I was still three full days from home if I drove straight through.  The hospital was where I would spend the next two and a half weeks for my lodging. 

In the month I spent working at the hospital, the Chief Executive Officer had given me a ‘hot spot job’ and had paid me $20 and hour to do it.  Because I had been working ten hour days, and sixty hour weeks, she had paid me over fifty-six hundred dollars, and had found me a place to stay which had saved me another thousand dollars in lodging expenses.  Her generosity had paid and saved me around seven thousand dollars.  Then, on my last day of working at the hospital, she came into the office she had assigned to me, and told me that she had another month of work I could do for her. 

At first, I told her that I had to be getting on toward home because I had been gone six and a half weeks, and would have to drive a lot of hours to get home before the fiftieth day ended.  She told me that she really could use my help for the month of September, and if I would agree to stay, she would set me up on a ‘consultation contract’ for thirty days and would pay me ten thousand dollars to do so.  You can stay here like you have been, then she added I could eat every meal in the executive commissary.  The value of the commissary and the lodging offer was another five thousand dollars.  I told her that I would stay if I could get the okay from home.   Then she said, oh by the way, you can play golf on the nicest course at the Billings Country Club.   I told her that I had no clubs and no clothes and no shoes and none of the other paraphernalia needed to play golf.  To which she responded that would be no problem.   I knew I couldn’t turn her offer down.  In fact, it became clear to me that I would be an idiot to turn her down for any additional time she offered to retain my skills for. 

The moral of the story is this:   You’ve heard it said:  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.  In other words, ‘when someone gives you a gift, you should accept it for what it is.  Be happy with what it is, and that someone thought enough of you to even give you a gift.  By questioning the value of a gift, or diminishing the value of a gift, you show thanklessness; or that you should have been the recipient of an even better value than what you were offered.  When receiving a gift, we should show that we are thankful and appreciative.  By even assessing the value, or worth of a gift, you are showing the giver that you are more concerned with the value of a gift, than with the value of the friend that offered it to you.