It was sometime in early to mid-April of 1972 that we decided to drive over to Altoona for an evening.

This was during the year that I spent with roommates David and Walter in an apartment on University Drive in State College, PA.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to go to Altoona, which was about a 40 minute or so drive. Altoona was a city that used to frequently pop up in George Burns’s monologues about his and Gracie’s days in vaudeville, and frankly I was sort of surprised upon learning that it was a real place; after all, isn’t “Altoona” one of the silliest words you’ve ever heard? You mean people actually live there?

But real it is, and for something different to do on a Saturday night a bunch of us decided to drive over there and check out its one and only gay bar. I’m not entirely sure any more who was in our group except it was definitely my roommate David and our mutual friend Gene Coover, and I think there was one other fellow, whose name I no longer recall but he was primarily a friend of David’s. And perhaps Bernie, who often was a part of our little group, but I’m not certain.

Anyway the four (or five) of us piled into my convertible (actually it was technically my parents’ car), and off we went.

We probably left around 8 PM or so in order to get to our destination by around 9 PM. The bar where we were headed (I no longer recall its name) was on the outskirts of the State College side of Altoona, so we wouldn’t have to drive into the city itself. The ride there was completely uneventful.

Our visit to the bar was also rather uneventful, and I think we only had one drink each, certainly no more than two, and we were probably wondering why we had made the trip, when we decided it was time to leave.

It was at that point that the bartender, a pleasant, middle-aged woman, came over and said, “Mike”—and she pointed to the best-looking fellow in the bar—“wants to buy you a drink.” As she said this she put an empty glass upside down directly in front of me.

It took a moment to realize she was talking to me. I mean, this was not supposed to happen. David was the stud magnet in our little group.

Anyway, I explained to her that we were just getting ready to leave and thank you but no thank you and please convey that to Mike. (I really don’t recall the guy’s name, but Mike seems as likely as any).

I saw her go back and say something to Mike, and I figured that was that. So as we finished our drinks and prepared to leave, the bartender came back and actually put an open bottle of beer in front of me, said “From Mike,”  and quickly hurried away before I could say anything.

…tick…

What to do?

I conferred with David and he suggested that at the very least I needed to go and thank Mike for the beer. As he said this, he was signaling to the bartender another round for the rest of our group.

So I went over to thank Mike and explained that we were from State College and we really wanted to get going, it was such a long, long journey back and all. Well, I don’t really remember what I said other than thanks but I wish you hadn’t. Something like that. I’m sure that I was reasonably diplomatic about it. I mean I can be diplomatic at times, can’t I?

Still, the additional round didn’t delay us by that much, maybe 30 minutes, and when we finished those drinks, we got on our jackets and stepped outside to find the car… 

…was now covered in about a half inch of snow that had fallen since the time we entered the bar. And the snow was still coming down.

…tick…

Had we known it was going to snow? I don’t think so. Would we have cancelled our trip if we had? Probably not, as we were pretty well accustomed to snow in Central Pennsylvania, though we certainly didn’t expect any in mid-April.

The only thing the snow did was delay us a few minutes as we had to clean off the car. But it did delay us.

…tick…

Car cleaned off and we were on our way.

In the days to come we would muse on how if only Mike hadn’t sent that drink, if only we hadn’t been delayed by the snow, if only…

BOOM!

A deer, possibly blinded by the headlights, shot out into the road, directly in the path of the car. It smashed into the front grill, flew up over the hood, and then fell to the side of the road. Meanwhile, the car was careening out of control on the slick road surface.

Which is when my driver education training took charge. (Thank you, Mr. Spangler!)

I turned the wheels in the direction of the skid and very carefully applied the brakes (I pumped them, I think; isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?) Anyhow, whatever I did, I managed to bring the car to a stop without any injuries to those of us inside the car. All the more amazing when you consider that none of us was wearing a seat belt. (Reminder, this was 1972.)

Everyone was amazed that I had gotten the car under control so quickly. Really? They had that little confidence in my driving skills? But this was not the time to dwell on that. We needed to assess the damage.

Which we did. The front end of the car was completely smashed in. It was clearly not drivable in its current condition, and maybe never again.

Happily, a passing motorist, clearly a good Samaritan, seeing our plight, stopped and offered to help. Spying the dead deer (you didn’t think the deer survived if the car hadn’t, did you?), he asked us to help him load it into his trunk (ok, maybe he wasn’t being totally altruistic as visions of venison danced through his head). 

No sooner had we lifted the deer into his trunk than a police car stopped. Well, that certainly settled the question of how do we go about reporting this crash, a question that I don’t think had even occurred to any of us. But too bad for our good Samaritan and his venison dreams, as Pennsylvania law prohibited roadkill from being consumed. So the policemen directed us to take the deer out of his trunk and re-deposit it at the side of the road. (I believe that law has since been changed.)

The policemen did whatever needed to be done and told us there was a service station just down the road where we could phone for help. Our good Samaritan was kind enough to drive us there, and the police followed in their patrol car.

Dropping us off at the service station, our good Samaritan, with a determined glint in his eye, said, “I don’t care what those cops say, I’m gonna get that deer.” We thanked him and wished him well.

By this time it was probably close to midnight, maybe later, so we had to decide: whom do we call for help at this hour?

My first thought was Ron Funk, and Gene concurred, but that was quickly nixed by David as there was bad blood between him and Ron. David’s ex-boyfriend, Dennis, was Ron’s best friend in the world, and the breakup between David and Dennis had been especially acrimonious. Perhaps he feared that Ron would consign him to the trunk or tie him to the roof of the car, but more likely David just didn’t want Ron to be the one to rescue him.

There really weren’t very many other possibilities. Someone who had a car, didn’t despise at least one of us (or vice versa), and might be willing to set out at this hour with the snow still coming down. For a moment I thought we might be stuck at that service station all night.

But then David decided to give Bill Ellswick a call. Returning from the phone booth, David gave us the good news that Bill had agreed to rescue us. 

After a seemingly endless wait, Bill arrived and we piled into his car. The snow had stopped by this time but the roads were still slick.

Alas, Bill was clearly not in a good mood and couldn’t stop complaining about how we had ruined his night and didn’t we know any better than to drive out of town on a snowy night and… Well, he just wouldn’t stop complaining.

Finally, and it didn’t take long, David told him to stop the car, he would rather walk all the way back to State College than listen to Bill’s kvetching. “Don’t be silly,” said Bill, but that seemed to settle him down, and the rest of the ride back went mostly in silence.

There are three epilogues to this story.

1) Later that week, my father drove from Richland to the Altoona service station where the car had been towed, and he concluded that the damage was so severe that the car wasn’t worth repairing. Meanwhile, I took a bus back to Richland where my parents had another car that I could, uh, borrow. It was on that bus trip that I had one of the biggest surprises of my life.

2) From that day on, every single time any of us encountered Bill Ellswick, anywhere, he would refer to himself as our savior. Over and over. That got real old, real fast.

3) And several months later, I met a fellow named Bob. When I started to tell him the story of that night, he interrupted me almost right away. “Oh, it was you!?” he cried.

“Huh? What do you mean?” 

“I broke up with Bill that night. In fact I had just started to tell him that it was over between us when the call came.”