Wild ride down I-80 canyon

It was the summer of 1950 that I decided not to return to the farm in Weston. I needed a job for the summer, which came about through the help of Jimmy Reed. He was a delivery man for Coca Cola of Salt Lake. I got the delivery route that no one else wanted and with the truck that should have been retired. It was a Ford 1940(?) that had only mechanical brakes and transmission.

My route included the west side of SLC around the area of West High School. Two days weekly I drove up the canyon to Park City and Kamas. In those days Park City was almost a ghost town. Maybe 100 people lived there, since the mines had been abandoned years before.

On a warm August afternoon I was driving home down I-80 freeway that had been completed but for the construction zone at Lamb's Canyon. This was the largest site that had required months of filling the canyon with thousands (millions?) of tons of dirt and gravel that had to be compacted prior to paving it with asphalt. The roadway over the fill was really bumpy, requiring vehicles to transverse it at about 5 MPH to avoid going over the side for a 1000 foot drop off.

On this beautiful descent down the smooth freeway I decided to kick it out of gear and coast along at about 50 MPH. I was enjoying the scenery until I noticed ahead about half a file the Lamb's crossing. So I hit the brakes to no effect, then I pulled the emergency brake with a similar result. So my next remedy was to try to shift into high gear. But with the prehistoric transmission it was not possible to shift into high, then I double-clutched and even triple-clutched to make engaging high gear. Needles to say, although I make all of these efforts to slow down, the half mile to the crossing had shortened considerably.

I seem to recall that a prayer was formed in my mind, while I was trying to do my personal best to save my truck and life. So I made a final effort to jam the gear shift into high---Hallelujah, it popped in, slowing me down some. Pretty quickly I made the next down grade into second gear. My next frantic effort was to aim the truck onto the track across the crossing. We hit the crossing doing about 20+ MPH. Coke bottles were flying off the top of the truck as I guided the truck so as to avoid the drop off into the canyon. The truck bounced along and finally arrived at the paved freeway and a slowing stop on the side of the pavement. There I likely offered a more orderly prayer for the help of my guardian angels.

No more coasting for me!