We came back from winter break that year, that would’ve been January ‘83. Solometo gave us a writing assignment. It remains etched in my psyche. An imaginative bomb of an assignment. He’d just returned to Ohio from California. Went out to visit an old girlfriend. Talked about hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains and how Venice Beach was chilly in the mornings. He alluded to his sexcapades with this old girlfriend, who was into psychedelics.
The writing assignment came out of his harrowing drive north. Teenagers like us, in southern Ohio, knew next to nothing about California’s geography. We thought of Hollywood and movies and San Francisco and Berkeley as the hippie mecca. It wasn’t until he printed off a map of the state that we saw how huge it was. On the printout, he’d highlighted the stretch of Interstate-5 that cut an almost straight line north through what he called the “Central Valley” to the east of this line were mountains. To the west were the hills and valleys that led to the coastal cities. Solometo explained this was farm country.
Solometo passed around a picture of his rental car, a blue and silver Dodge Charger. He was heading north to see his half-sister Rita, who he’d never mentioned before. He’d mapped out the route north. Up through the mountains, climbing to 4000 feet near Tejon Pass, then winding northeast towards something called the Grapevine. Finally, out into the flat stretch that people used to race north, dodging the big rigs, who usually stayed in the right lane. Most of the freeway consisted of only two lanes. Rural communities. Farmland. Endless rows of fruit trees, nut trees, root vegetables. All kinds of crops.
Solometo described zipping along, having a peaceful drive, enjoying the Charger’s horsepower. Suddenly, near a town called Lost Hills, a station wagon in front of him slammed on its brakes. The flow of traffic had been about 75 miles per hour. The cars in the left lane suddenly decelerated. Red brake lights everywhere. Then the slamming of metal upon metal, glass shattering, screams. Solometo saw it happening in front of him. At 10 ten cars. Solometo described swerving to his left, onto the rocky, sandy divider of the two-lane road. Solometo escaped a fatal crash. Though he made clear to us he didn’t believe in god, a sense of spiritual gratitude washed over him as his heart slowly returned to his chest. Somehow, his tires had survived the rocky stretch. When the car came to a halt and the dust drifted up and away, Solometo turned his head and counted 12 cars crunched into a heap of busted bumpers, broken glass, and screaming people. He couldn’t absorb it. He drove back onto I-5 and made his way to Oakland, where he spent a few days with Rita before flying to Columbus on New Year’s Day and making his way back to Athens.
On the board, Solometo simply wrote:
Three Versions of the same scene. Write them in this order.
—You’re driving north on I-5 in California. There’s a 12-car fatal crash. You are in the middle of it.
—You’re driving north on I-5 in California. There’s a 12-car fatal crash. You are the 12th car at the back. You get whiplash and bruises. You survive, but the memory of the accident haunts you for the rest of your life.
—You’re driving north on I-5 in California. There’s a 12-car fatal crash. You are driving just behind this line of cars. You avoid the crash.
Assignment: Write the story three times, each from the perspective of the driver. Use all of your senses. Include specifics. At the bottom of the board, Solometo wrote: It’s crazy how our minds work. How quickly we move on from moments that could have ended our lives. You’re all teenagers. You think you’ll live forever. You’d be wise to recognize you won’t and appreciate each day you get to live.
That night, I lay down on my bed with my notebook and wrote out the first version. I liked writing to begin with. I read The Hardy Boys series and some Stephen King novels and I got into Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi stories. Anyway, I imagined I was driving and The Cars’ “Good Times Roll” was blasting from the speakers. Driving through the night, 85 miles an hour on the dashboard needle, next to me was my gorgeous imaginary girlfriend looking like Ellen Burstyn from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Dark green convertible. Then I described the crash. I envisioned scenes from the movie Gone in 60 Seconds, all those smashed-up cars. I write about us dying instantly, our heads crushed by the impact against the steering column and the dashboard. Blood and guts everywhere. Then, like on a gravestone, my name: Jake Prazinski. Born 1967. Died 1989. My imagination allowed me to get to age 22.
It was awful to write that scene. I got up and took a hot shower and calmed myself with a glass of milk and some Oreos from the kitchen cabinet.
Then I went back to the bedroom to write version #2. What a fucking relief to write that second version. Same opening. The convertible zipping along. 85 miles an hour, though the night. “Let the Good Times Roll,” the chorus repeating over and over again with that guitar riff behind it. The crash happens. We’re at the very back of it. The terror of coming to a screeching halt and the sound of the brakes locking and the car skidding to a stop while crashing into the station wagon in front of us. It’s all vividly playing out as I’m writing the scene. I can smell the rubber that’s burning into the road. The whiplash impacting our necks and backs. The breaking glass cutting our arms and face. But we survive. The ambulances come. Most of the other drivers have died. But we live on. Neck braces and bandages.
The idea of a memory haunting the rest of my life, even at 16, I can conjure that. Images stay with me. As I write that second version, I think of the image of my mother screaming at my father for being late. I think of my father throwing a plate of pork chops against the dining room wall. I think of my sister grabbing me and taking me into her room and closing the door.
Then version #3. The same opening. The dark green convertible. My beautiful imaginary girlfriend, who I now decide is Ellen Burstyn from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. We avoid the crash. We live happily ever after. We have beautiful children. They all become movie stars. I become a movie director.
Solometo gave us a sense of mortality and appreciation for the randomness of life. Sometimes I’d play out three versions of events that actually happened or nearly happened in my life. It gave me a center, grounded me in a way that I definitely needed. Won’t forget that.