The Skunk Convention

When I first started working on the ranch during the summers, John was already driving. He was 15. We all started driving early because of the ranch. I still remember driving across the ranch at 14 and learning to drive the old bobtail truck at the age of 15. When I took driver's ed in high school, it was a breeze. We would go out to the ranch in our brown and tan Chevy Suburban. It was a 1976 model with a 454 big block V8 motor. That Suburban could move! The main conduit of our East Ranch was the Salt Lake Road. It headed east of St Johns for about 45 miles, across the New Mexico border, past an old volcanic crater with a high-salinity lake in the crater, and ended up in a small town called Quemado.  

For the first 15 miles or so, there were several dips in the road crossing several fairly large washes. These gullies were dry most of the year, but when a good rain hit, they would fill quickly and become raging rivers carrying trees, boulders, and old cars…not somewhere you would want to be in a rainstorm! To keep from having to repair the road after every large rainstorm, many of them were paved in concrete from bank to bank. One in particular, Davis wash, was paved at just the right angles and transitions that a person could drive through up to 50 miles per hour, causing the same sensations you get when riding a roller coaster. On the trip down, we were weightless for just a second, and on the trip up, we were pinned to the seat with a few more pounds of g-force. It was always fun to do, but it was also fairly dangerous. You never knew what was in the bottom of that wash till you got to the edge and at high-speed, you never had the time to stop! That was probably why Dad told us not to do that particular driving activity, and also one of the reasons we did it, because he said not to! but we soon found out why. 

Once again, we were headed back home from the Garcia. We had a dance to get to and didn't want to be late. John had a hot date again. We were moving along at a good clip and, John decided he was going to wake me up by hitting Davis wash. I was, as usual, fast asleep. I could sleep almost anywhere, even on the back of a horse in the saddle! I was just beginning to stir when John hit the dip. The feeling of weightlessness jolted me wide awake. I glanced out the windshield to see a whole family of black and white cats together at the bottom of the wash. They had no time to lift their tails as we plowed through them, through brute force causing the release of their unpleasant aromas. We hit the up slope, pressed into our seats as our insides did flip flops, and launched out the other side of the wash as we screamed and yelled a few choice, colorful words. John had to slow down and stop to let his pounding heart relax. The adrenaline was so high that we both felt faint. 

  It was then that the smell hit us. Those skunks had released everything they had onto our suburban, and it was coming through the air vents and assailing our nostrils. John put the Suburban back into gear and started driving as we closed the vents and turned off the fan. We opened the windows for fresh air, but were not rewarded with that kind of odor. We were now operating at a skunk mobile with no relief in sight. As we drove through the town, people stopped and stared and turned their noses as we drove by. When we got home, we had to park the Suburban across the street at the city park for a week or two, and nobody drove it. It smelled pretty bad for a while and may have had a skunk or two hidden under the engine. I don't remember if we ever made it to the dance, or if John's hot date enjoyed the new cologne he was wearing, but I do remember being a lot more careful driving through those washes. I realized that you never knew what was hanging out at the bottom. However, I still had to learn the lesson about driving fast on dirt roads. Those came many times, over many years, and I still don't think they ever stuck. But I still slow down when entering blind spots. That smell did it for me.