Submitted by: Larry Jones
When I was a kid growing up in the Mojave Desert, snow was usually not something that is on your mind. One day when I was about 7 or 8 years of age we woke up to snow. There was not that much snow in the area of our town, but about another 1000 feet up on what we call "Walkers Pass" there was plenty of snow. The church that I attended roused up a group of kids and they loaded us up on the church bus for a day trip to Walkers Pass for sledding or just some time to play in the snow since the only way for us to see or play in snow was to take a trip up to Mammoth. As you approach the pass, it is a very steep incline up one side and basically a steep incline coming from the other direction. So there is a short span of roadway (two lanes) to view for traffic. But back when I was a kid, there was not that much traffic so that was something kind of far from the mind of a kid faced with the rare SNOW day. I don’t have a clue as to why we would want to go there for sledding since there were so many spiked Joshua trees. One small mistake and you would be having a bad day. Anyhow, once the bus reached the top of walkers pass, he turned the bus around so that it was headed back in the direction from where we came. Kids played on the north side and kids played on the south side of the road. Back and forth we would go. At one point I was standing in front of the bus that was now facing homeward toward the east putting me on the south side of the road. Someone on the north side called my name and said, Larry, Come here. Without a thought, I took off across the road only to be confronted with of all things an 18 wheeler. Once I stepped out in front of him. He laid on his loud air horn and I froze. The next thing I remember from that point of freezing on the road, was me standing on the north side of the road looking at this truck drive on by. I have to this day, no idea how I got there. By all rights, this truck should have mowed me down. That was back in 1964 or 65. There was never a word spoken of this by anybody at all. You would wonder if this even happened. I remember it. Back in 2000, I met up with a classmate that helped me through a very tough legal battle. We socialized a little bit, but it was basically business most of the time. One day I told her this story and she was so shocked. She said to me, that was you? I said yes, why. I thought maybe she was there. She said she had a teacher tell her a story of this kid who managed to escape death at Walkers Pass during a snow trip with the church by vanishing from the middle of the road to the other side of the road in an instant. She did not remember the name of this teacher. I wish I knew who it was; I would love to talk to her. Is this why nobody talked about it? Who all noticed? Apparently one person did but said nothing. Not even to me. I guess back then, you would have been pegged as crazy if you spoke of such things. Maybe even pegged as crazy NOW! It is still a mystery to me even though I have heard the story of what happened to me from a friend. If such things are possible as vanishing and reappearing, I can tell you that it is done in a fashion without feeling. Death has escaped me on several other occasions only to add to my bewilderment as to why?
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