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| Incident #3: 7/27/14 |
But let’s begin at the beginning. 5 times in 10 years I have been perilously close to being killed by a falling tree. When a tree falls, it is with a percussive explosiveness that one never forgets, one of the most frightening sounds there is. In real life, trees do not fall like they do in the movies. There is no "timberrrrr" and slow-motion arcing as gravity propels the trunk towards ground. In the movies, it always looks like there’s a fair amount of warning (and time to evade) as the tree creaks and creaks before beginning its descent and then it comes down more like a parachute drop than anything else.
In real life, it’s much more like a grand piano being suddenly dropped from a 5th story window, and with even greater force, considerable greater force. There is no creaking. There is just a very loud crack, like a gun shot, as whatever force of nature had been holding it together suddenly fails, and then in the blink of an eye, a tremendous whooshing as the tree slams into the ground. All this happens in a fraction of a second and the force and sound of the tree striking earth is like a bomb going off. In reality, there is no warning. There is just the tremendous crack followed immediately by the explosive crash, with absolutely no time to react. Of course, anything caught in its path is instantly obliterated.
The first of these five incidents was perhaps a year after Dad died, a very high wind had blown up and, in the middle of the night from my bedroom, I heard a terrific thud in front of the house. The next morning I discovered that the big triple-trunked elm tree in front of the garage had one of its trunks snapped off by the winds and this 20 foot long pillar of wood was laying across the driveway in the spot where I traditionally parked my car except that, on that night, it was luckily in the garage. The fallen trunk though had grazed the corner of the garage roof. There was so little damage that it was hardly noticeable, yet when the insurance assessed it the repairs came to over $2,000 dollars. If the car had been there, it would have been a lot more.
Flash forward to the fall of 2012. I had just finished selling the house and moving to Keego. Hurricane Sandy was tearing up the East coast with Detroit being right on the fringe edge of the storm. I was heading to my birthday party in Ann Arbor, driving on Pontiac Trail just before Halsted when a strong gust of wind, an after-effect of Sandy, gushed up and suddenly a great tree was pulled right up by its roots and slammed down on the road right smack in front of me. There was just barely time to slam on the brakes, but to no avail. The tree was much too close and I crashed into it.
Fate? An Act of God? And a great mystery as to why natural and supernatural forces converged precisely at that instant to not only spare me from what should have been a certain death, but enabled me to actually walk away without a scratch. The first thing that crossed my mind was how grateful I was to be alive, since I should not have been. But I also stood in awe of the sheer chaotic randomness of fate. If it had fallen a second later, I would have missed it altogether, a second earlier and there would have been ample time to brake, just as there had been for every car behind me. But what sent shivers down my spine was the thought that a fraction of a second later, instead of falling in front of me, it would have fallen right on top of me and crushed the car and the driver inside. When the difference between life and death is a fraction of a second, all I could conclude was that it was not my time.
My prized 2003 Pontiac Vibe was totaled but the insurance company gave me enough money to replace it with a 2008 Saturn Astra, the closest thing I could find that resembled the Vibe, which was no longer being made. One month ago today, that Saturn met a very nearly identical fate. Near tornado-like storm conditions ripped through the area bringing down trees and power lines all over Oakland, with Keego and Orchard Lake especially hard hit. Keego looked like a war zone and was part of nearly 100,000 power outages throughout the metro area. Of particular interest was the old maple tree in my front yard which, like the old elm on Erie, had sprouted 3 huge branches about ten feet above the base. The storm had snapped one of these big branches sending a 3 foot diameter 20 foot long rotted out trunk smashing across my driveway in the exact spot where I park my Saturn. Once again, forces had converged to spare me as I happened to be driving home from Ann Arbor at the time the tree came down so the car was not in the driveway.
But now I understood how dangerous that tree was and, happily, the owner was in agreement that it had to come out. Unfortunately, it was one of thousands of trees hit by the storm, every contractor was terrifically backed up and we could not get scheduled for at least another month.
Which brings us to three days ago and incidents 4 and 5. At 4:50 p.m. Tuesday, a sudden violent thunderstorm swept through the area. It lasted only ten minutes but, in just that first 30 seconds, I heard that terrific "crack" again immediately followed by a BOOM. I looked out the front window and saw that another very large branch from that same tree had just snapped and was this time lying across Kenrick, just a few feet from my driveway and my Saturn. I was horrified enough at the storm last month thinking that, if I had been parked in my driveway as I usually am and the Saturn had been destroyed, how does one explain to the insurance company that you had two cars destroyed in less than two years, both by a falling tree. Now I was considering that same horror story again. What if the Saturn had been destroyed last month? What if I had just now replaced it with another new car? And now that car is destroyed by yet another falling tree just a month later? I’m afraid the insurance companies may not be thinking of this any longer as an act of God.
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| Incident #4: 8/26/14 |
Then, a few hours later, a fifth incident. I am by now convinced that this gigantic tree in my yard could come down at any time. Truly, I wasn’t really all that concerned about the car. Now I was much more concerned about my personal safety. It has only been by sheer fortune that the tree has always fallen in a direction away from the house. But it could easily fall on the house. I was wondering if the house was strong enough to withstand that kind of concussion or if it would just instantly collapse some night while I’m on the computer or in my bed sleeping. But aside from that, my neighbor Val felt strongly that, until the tree is removed, I should get my car out of the driveway and parked somewhere out of the reach of the tree. She offers to let me park in front of her house for the duration and I do so.
It is about 9 p.m. and as I depart the parked car, Val joins me and we continue conversing on this very issue. Suddenly there is another very loud bang. It sound like some jerk is firing off fireworks just across the alley, something not at all unusual for this neighborhood but, still, it is late August so this is getting old, kind of rude. But in the dark we have no way to investigate. The next morning we discover that a very large branch from a tree in Val’s yard had snapped and was laying across a vast expanse of her lawn. And this was not a rotted tree like mine was. To add to my perplexity, I had to consider that I had parked the Saturn right underneath one of her other trees and it could have just as easily been that tree that snapped and then, despite my best efforts to avoid it, my Saturn would have been wrecked anyway, and very likely Val and I would have been injured too, perhaps worse.
Now I was getting downright existential over the whole thing. Is it really possible to defend oneself against fate? How many times every day do we do something or encounter some force or some circumstance that could have easily resulted in disaster or death except that fate had determined at that particular and precise moment that we take a different path? How many times have I gone up and down the very steep staircase in my house only to very slightly slip but still somehow with ever such vague subtlety catch my balance instead of falling down and breaking my neck? How many times has some crazy driver nearly smashed into me and I was able to swerve out of the way only by virtue of luck and very quick reflexes, reflexes that might not be so quick next time? How many times have I had a circumstance in my life like last month, when I arrived home to find a tree had fallen across my driveway and I had to open my fence gate to get into my house, then learn the next morning of a downed power line in the next block and that all the fences in the neighborhood might have been electrified? Truly, is it really possible to defend oneself against fate?
These are the things I was ruminating upon the last few nights as I awaited word from Kris as to how long I had to live with the dread of that tree coming down on top of the house? I was in fear for my life. I received reassurances from several people that they really didn’t think it was likely the house would collapse and, though there would be heavy damage, I would almost certainly be safe. That made me feel a lot better. Still, it was too terrible to ponder so I would just as soon not think about it. I needed a distraction so spent a good part of Tuesday night working a project I had long been putting off – searching the Internet to try to locate some long lost friends in Los Angeles.
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For years I’d been trying to find information on the current whereabouts of old friends like Robyne Hemingway, Connie Sumile, Bruce James, Sam Coquillard, Jack Friend, Bruce Yaeger, and my old boss from Northrop, Art Brock. For years I had especially been trying to reconnect with Bruce Yaeger and Art. Bruce and I had become good friends and I had even stayed with him, his wife and their daughter at their home in Van Nuys during my trips to L.A. during the 1990s. Bruce and I had held the same position at Northrop and I had always wanted to talk to him about his career path to get an idea of where I might have been had I not gotten ill, get an idea of how much ground I had to make up. And Art – good old Art Brock, my boss at Northrop, the Lou Grant of Northrop, gruff on the outside but a little teddy bear underneath it all. I wanted to find Art and let him know that it wasn’t just any ordinary virus that had knocked me out and that they had finally figured out that the real source of my malady had been sleep apnea. The reason my body had fallen apart at Northrop in 1989 was because, at that time, I had not fallen asleep in twenty years and, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, it was going to be nearly another twenty years before they would figure that out and finally treat and cure me. I wanted to let both he and Bruce know that I was now okay and preparing to start a new career.
But at least ten years ago, Bruce had moved out of Van Nuys and had left no forwarding address. It’s either that or I had fallen out of touch with him just long enough for the post office forwarding order to expire. He had also changed email addresses and, hard as I tried, I could not find any leads on him, not on Google, Facebook, Twitter or anyplace else. The same was true of all the others too. But none of the others were nearly as important to me as Bruce Yaeger and Art Brock.
Then, a few years ago, I’m searching some database somewhere and up suddenly pops a Canoga Park address for Bruce. And I know it’s him because it says he lives with Elna and Elna’s his wife. How many Bruce Yaegers can there be in L.A. who are also married to a woman named Elna? And Canoga Park is not far from Van Nuys so it all fit. I made a note of it. No phone number or email, but at least a place to send a letter. And every week since, it had been my intention to send a letter asking him to email me or send a phone number. I had so many questions. I looked up his address on Zillow and discovered he now lived in a 5,000 sq. ft. house valued at $1.5 million in the very upscale suburb of West Hills, just west of Van Nuys. Yes, he must have done quite well for himself in his career. Did he spend his entire career at Northrop? Did he advance into management? Senior management? I had a great many questions.
So Tuesday night I decide to direct my attack first at Facebook, since the last time I had done this search Facebook had not yet quite taken off. Much to my pleasant surprise, Robyne and Connie both now have Facebook pages. I am still having no luck with Sam, Bruce James, or Art Brock. But now I decide to look at all the Art Brocks everywhere and find that there’s only a dozen or so. There is one Art Brock page with no descriptive information at all but a list of a half dozen or so "friends" of which one is a Gwendolyn Brock. Could that possibly be his wife? So I click on her link and, again, next to no information but there is a display of several family photographs. And that’s when I hit pay dirt. There is a photo of Gwendolyn sitting next to a man and the man is the one and only Art Brock I worked for at Northrop. I had now found three more lost connections.
Still not a clue about Bruce Yaeger but, with a little more research, I rediscover that the web site I had found Bruce’s address on a few years ago was Spokeo and so revisited that site. Bruce was still there and still at the same address in Canoga Park/West Hills. And now I even get a pop on Jack Friend and an address on him in Los Angeles.
So it’s a pretty successful hunting expedition. I can leave a brief message on the Facebook pages and hope they’ll email me. And I’ve got a couple letters to write. And I don’t know what exactly prompted me to do so, but I decided to take one last stab at getting some more information about Bruce. I went to Google and did a search on him.
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What came back was so completely shocking that it made me cry. Up came an AP article about Bruce dated just two weeks ago, August 12th, from Flagstaff, Arizona. Bruce, his wife Elna, and their 23 year old daughter Michelle who had just graduated from UC Berkeley, had been vacationing in Arizona and were returning to California on the interstate 15 miles east of Flagstaff when for some inexplicable reason his 2006 Honda sedan jumped the median and crashed head-on into an oncoming 2004 Honda sedan. The report only said that all three of them "died at the scene."
They were not speeding. There was no drugs or alcohol involved and everyone was wearing safety belts. I can tell you that Bruce was straight as an arrow. He was not the kind of person who would be talking on a cell phone while driving, and certainly not engaging in texting or any other distracting activity. The Arizona Highway Patrol only said that it was a complete mystery as to what could have caused the car to jump the median and that the investigation is ongoing.
It was such a terrible shock that the whole family had been wiped out in a flash, not at all unlike a tree falling on a car on a fluke. But the statement that merely said that all of them "died at the scene" without any details just threw me for a loop. What did that mean? Usually they would say that they were killed instantly, or that they were pronounced dead as soon as the paramedics arrived. But "died at the scene"? What does that mean? Does that suggest that they were all still alive when the EMS arrived and died at the scene while they were being treated? Does that mean they suffered? This is what really upset me, the prospect that they might not have been killed instantly.
But then I saw a photo of the smashed up car. How could anyone not have been killed instantly? The car was flattened like a pancake. It was so hard to imagine that so much damage could have been done by just one sedan hitting another sedan, especially in view of the fact that the occupants of the other sedan survived the accident, one even walking away without a scratch. (Well, not quite all of them. Another piece of the mystery and another great part of the tragedy is that there was a fourth fatality – a 3 year old in the backseat of the other sedan. Again, everyone in seatbelts, the children in proper restraints, no speeding or other improper activity. Why everyone else in that car survived but a three year old killed, and in the backseat no less, was yet another mystery. )
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| Bruce Yaeger's smashed Honda: 8/14/14 |
I am very sad for the loss of my friend and his wife and daughter and regret so much now that I did not write and reconnect with him long ago. An entire family wiped out in an instant, not unlike a tree falling on someone or a plane crashing into a house (or a skyscraper.) The police are calling this a mystery but are committed to keeping the investigation going until they have an answer as to what circumstances, natural or supernatural, might possibly have caused Bruce to jump that median, an answer upon which I cannot even begin to speculate. What possible answer could there be except fate, an act of God, a convergence of circumstances natural and supernatural that we all experience every day, except that once in every lifetime, they don’t work out to our favor.
I cannot even imagine what this is doing to the relatives. How do you even do a funeral where an entire family has been killed at the same time? I will leave a note on the funeral home web site asking if a relative can contact me so that I can talk to them about Bruce, and maybe even get a chance to ask about his life during the last 14 years when last I saw him. I will contact Art Brock and inform him that I have sad news about Bruce. And if I recall correctly, cousin Vince has a vacation home in Flagstaff. Perhaps he can contact the police there and get more details about this mystery.
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| The big tree coming down: 8/28/14 |
With all this tragedy, I can at least end this story on the modestly happy note that the contractor came out today and removed the tree. I can sleep more peacefully now. But with falling trees on my mind this past month and particularly these past few days, Bruce Yaeger’s catastrophe is just another reminder that life is full of unpredictable and uncontrollable circumstances. Most of the time we will survive them.
But we can be certain that there will be one time that we will not.
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