Hi Friends, Sometimes we can use a reminder of how little we can control things here on Earth. This recollection of an accident is one of those. It came to John via a random sighting of an old orange VW Van similar to one he rode in with some friends on a ride that took a few fateful (literal) turns. We hope the telling of this helps us all loosen our grip on whatever imaginary reins we’re holding and let go into the wonder of not knowing.
— Patti
A Few Fateful Turns
If I had rolled down the window, my fate may have been very different.
JOHN: Strange how life happens sometimes. You end up getting drawn back to places or people that left a deep effect on you. We recently moved to an avocado ranch that sits right at the bottom of the Cate School mesa, where I boarded as a freshman and sophomore in high school. That’s where I first fell in love with music and my first girlfriend. Where I would learn the important art of sneaking off campus so I could do things like skateboard to Rincon at midnight, surfboard under my arm, and attempt to ride the perfect waves empty of crowds (a rarity).
The beautiful campus and its memories drew us back over the years. One of the attractions was the chapel at Cate, where my best friend Jimi and I discovered that playing just one note on the piano and holding it and listening to it reverberate in the arched space was enough to inspire awe.
Patti and I devote a chapter to improvisation in our book The Way of Wonder that begins as we make that unexpected discovery – the joy of one note, then another one, and another - on the piano in that chapel. Jimmy had adopted the Jimi Hendrix spelling of his name “Jimi” while at Cate – another example of music's powerful influence on us.
The building rests on the edge of Cate Mesa, and its ocean-side wall has a floor-to-ceiling, stained-glass window that can be slid open to view the Santa Barbara Channel with Santa Cruz Island floating on the horizon. So when my good friends and I got together in Santa Barbara one summer afternoon between our first and second years of college, it was natural to visit Cate and see if we could make a little music in the chapel.
Jimi was driving an orange and beige VW van at the time (which he called “The Magic Bus” of course), and there was no guard gate at Cate back then, so we rolled right in and up to the top and parked on the road below the chapel. The doors were locked. Undeterred we decided to check the stained-glass window. This required scaling the brick wall to get to the second story. As Jimi and I started up the wall side by side, one of the bricks broke off in Jimi’s hand. He looked at me as he hung on the side of the chapel, laughed, and tossed the piece of brick over his shoulder with a “Woops!” and a devilish grin. I thought maybe a little reverence was in order when you break off a piece of “a house of God” and hoped that no bad karma would come of it.
With a lot of oomph, the stained-glass window slid open, and we could climb inside. We opened the door for our other friends, Jefe and TK. We made some music for a while, admired the view, and then decided to head out and see if the old couch was still in the reeds on the other side of the road. It was, and we all enjoyed some beers in the afternoon sun before heading back down the curvy Cate Mesa Rd. Jimi’s mischievous ways started getting the better of him as we rolled down the road. I was in the passenger seat, and Jefe and TK were in the back. Of course, no one was wearing seat belts. We were loose and happy.
As Jimi came into the last turn, he accelerated down a steep drop and cranked into the flat right turn bordered by thick oak trees and a 30-foot fall to a creek. Thankfully, the van's back end slid out, and we power-slid through the turn. I looked at Jimi with a sense of nervous relief, and he returned the look with an excited, mad gleam in his eyes and floored it towards the ‘T’ where Cate Mesa Road dumped out onto Lillingston.
We entered the turn at full speed. A strange quiet came upon us as he carved into the turn, and the driver's side of the car started rising magically to my left. Jimmy became lightly suspended above me for a moment until Bam! I was pinned underneath him, my shoulder pressed into the passenger side window, as I watched sparks dance an inch away from my face on top of a blur of grey asphalt. The rain gutter ground down until another heaving crunch when we had slid to the far side of the turn and hit the curb.
The windshield exploded out, and the van went into a slow-motion roll onto its roof, onto the driver’s side, and then back onto its wheels before it came rocking back to a stop on the dirt of the ranch that we now call home.
Jefe and TK had been floating around in the back like astronauts and landed in a heap on the floor. Someone smelled gas and actually said, “She’s gonna blow!” and we all jumped out through the hole where the windshield used to be. The flute that TK had played earlier in the chapel had been damaged, and the van was completely totaled, but no one was hurt. Jimi’s first words as we stood there looking at the van were, “Oh man, my dad is going to kill me.”
Well, thankfully, the event didn’t kill me. I’ve reflected many times on why on a warm summer afternoon, when I got into the van that had been parked in the sun, I didn’t roll down the window. Anyone who drives with me often knows that the first thing I do when I get into a warm car is roll down the window. I can’t stand cars that are too warm. If I had rolled down the window, my fate may have been very different. Maybe lose an arm or a face? Or a life. You just never know.
