Hey....I lost the Hay, Al, Where, over the side....Well go get it.

This event took pace in 1955, if my memory serves me right....My dad had volunteered to take a load of hey up to Idyllwild up the back side of the mountain which is steep and winding but easier to get up than coming up from Hemet. That road was full of double backs, real steep and longer if you are coming out of Ontario Like he would-be doing.

I remember that we all went....My Mom, dad driving of course since he was a truck driver at the time, and me and my sister sitting back in the cab Quarters. I was about 12 at the time and my sister about 6, and a real pain in the but if you know what I mean.

The trip out Mission was uneventful. No trouble at all out on the Ramona Expressway out through the Perris Valley and our turn on to the north bound 79 was no problem either. You must remember that the 60 and 10 freeways did not exist out this far yet so we were coming out mission to Van Buran crossing through Sunny just North of March Air Force Base and heading east on SunnyMead Road.

As we came out of the Beaumont Badlands my dad stopped his truck at the tracks and checked his double load of Hey...The load appeared to be just fine and he did cinch up on a coupe of lines. We stopped for lunch at the old Gulf Gas station in Banning, right on the corner of Wilson and Old Beaumont Road (Hwy 79)

My dad then steered his Peterbuilt towards highway 243 and started up the steep climb. We had no schedule, as he was taking the double load of hey up to my uncles stables in Idywilld, so he took his time going up and around the first several turns. We was only doing about 7 mph since we had the set of doubles fully loaded to the brim with bails of hey.

Just north of Mt Edna road and just south of the small community of Twin Pines, we felt something 'Jerk' loose on the truck. Pretty soon my mom noticed the rear trailer leaning off to the left. My dad didn't see anything but he could feel the whole rig starting to pull towards the cliff side of the road. Not a good thing when you are about 3,000 feet up the side of the canyon.

It wasn't long before the whole load on the rear trailer slid right off, hit the road and rolled right down the mountain side. The first set held the road for about ten seconds, then it too starting sliding off the trailer and scattered across all lanes of the highway and halfway down the mountain side.

Fortunaly my dad had an old Johnston style crystal CB unit in the cab so he was able to call the CHP down in Beaumont and tell him of his situation. If I remember correctly it seemed like it took forever for CHP units to get to us, and surprisingly no one coming down the mountain ever stopped to help, ask if we were all right are anything. But my dad said it was only about 15 minutes since he had called. I guess people were just as rude back the as they are now.

Anyway my dad had one of the CHP units take up into Twin Pines to the station there and he my called my uncle Al Smith and his cousin Leroy Arnaize up in Idywilld so as to let them what had happened and how did they want to handle the situation.

My Uncle Al, true to his nature replied to my dad when informed of the dumped load, told my dad to 'go get it' My dad told him again that most of it had gone over the side. My uncle said it again. 'Go get it' My dad asked him how he would like him to do this and my uncle Al replied, well lets put it this way. That hey is still probably sitting down at the bottom of the canyon except now after all these years it has probably sprouted and is 50 feet tall cause they isn't no way in hell my dad was going to climb down into that canyon and drag hundreds of bales of hey up the side of the mountain.

So if you ever come up the back side of Mt San Jacinto on route 243 and see what looks like bales of hey piled along the road and down the side of the bank of the cliff, just remember, it was just a simple family outing that turned into a three ringed circus of a disaster...Well sort of...At least it was to my uncle Al.