I was 18 and the alcoholism that would plague me for the rest of my life was becoming evident, though I wouldn't recognize it as a problem for 30 years. I had gotten off work at the Lucky Store where I was working as a bag boy, and attending the local junior college at night in an attempt to get reinstated after I flunked out the previous semester. I think it was a Saturday, and a couple of the other guys and I got ahold of a bunch of beer and proceeded to get totally shitfaced. I blacked out, and remember nothing until the car was on top of me, upside down. I managed to crawl out through the passenger window, but then crawled back in to turn off the radio. When I got out again I saw that the car, a 1949 Cadillac, which was built like a tank, was lying across both lanes of California State Highway 12. I was in the middle of the Valley of the Moon, not far from Jack London's Wolf House museum, about 10 miles north of Santa Rosa. Why I was in that place at that time I have no idea, unless I thought it was cool to go for a ride.

The roof had been torn off the car. What did I do? I hitchhicked back to town and went to bed. At around 4 a.m. I was awakened by two California Highway Patrol officers, one of them shining a flashlight in my face. I saw my parents standing behind them with their arms crossed. I was told they spent over an hour looking for a body in the orchard that grew right up to the road's edge, and, finding none, came to my house.

Apparently I had fallen asleep at the wheel and had driven off the road and up the embankment, causing the car to roll. Then it went end-over-end a couple of times, landed on its left side, and hit a telephone pole at hood-level, shearing off the roof. Since I had fallen on the floor I avoided being decapitated. The car then slid back onto the highway. I didn't have a scratch, though my parents chewed my ass pretty well for the next month. Why I did not die I can only chalk up to being drunk, relaxed, and lucky enough to slide under the steering column.

I've had some really sucky times in my life, and during those times I often wonder if I really was killed and this was HELL.