It began to rain. We were just in the mood for it, for it began to cool things off. Several miles out of town, we heard the roar of a big car coming up behind us, and glancing back, we recognized it as one of the terrifically high-powered Packards owned by one of the wealthy families in our town. The top was down, and the wind-shield was laid flat against the cowling. The car was going very, very fast. It passed us, and we felt as though were were standing still. The Packard was half a block in front of us when we saw that we were nearing a dangerous intersection where there were stop signals in every direction but ours. Here the road curved slightly and turned from concrete into a smooth asphalt surface. Bill and I kept an eye on the car, wishing we were in it instead of the Ford. pur wishing came to an abrupt halt as the big car hit the asphalt and skidded. In a smaller car traveling - at a reasonable speed, a skid here would have frightened the driver badly, but would have been controllable. The terrific weight and momentum of this powerful engine of destruction altered the situation considerably, and immediately the car was out of control. It slid sideways across the highway, and struck a parked car. The noise was overpowering. The Packard careened off the car it had hit, throwing one of the occupants clear and onto the gravel shoulder, twisted and squirmed for 200 or so feet down the road, and struck a telephone pole, snapping it as easily as if it had been a match stick. The sensation of helplessness that had invaded us at the beginning of the skid left us instantly, and we began to move. The woman in the car which had been hit started to scream. The noise of the impact had barely ceased when the man who had been thrown out of the car began screaming. From the pleasant, rather alcoholic world of a few moments ago, we were jolted into a nightmare of noise and confusion. The highway was suddenly alive with people. Bill went to the fellow who had been thrown out and was still screaming, and I rushed to see what was left of the car and whoever was in it. There was a dent shaped exactly like the pole in the door by the steering wheel. The car was tightly wedged around the pole. The boy who had been driving and whom I recognized with horror as one of my classmates, was dangled over the side of the car and partly around the pole. He had been forced out of the car against the pole and was twisted around it backwards. His spine was broken in as many places as possible. The other fellow, whom Bill had run to help, was alive, very unfortunately. He had been hurled some twenty feet through the air, and had landed on his face in the cinder and gravel shoulder of the road. His entire face was a mass of blood and fragments of loose flesh mingled with the cinders that had ground into it. Blood ran down him in streams, and we could see that his agony was terrible. Never before had I heard a woman scream as the one in the other car was screaming. The machine had been mashed flat on the driver's side, and the doors were jammed shut. People were trying to get her out the other side. Her pain was terrific, for every bone in her left side had been broken. She was still conscious. She would not faint, but kept on screaming every time anyone touched her. In a few minutes an ambulance arrived, the police came, and everything was under control. The whole scene had consumed fifteen minutes at the most, but the effect on Bill and me was the same as that of several cold showers and quantities of black coffee. Perhaps it had been the close contact with the death of one classmate and the agony of the other. Maybe it had been the woman's screams, or it might even have been the cool rain. Whatever it was, we were cold sober. On our way home, at a sedate and extremely careful 35 miles per hour, we discussed the various phases of the accident and what we would have done in the driver's place. We had it all figured out that he could have avoided the tragedy. What we didn't know then was that he had been very drunk and had been driving nearly seventy miles an hour, and that the car had smooth tires on it. Under those circumstances, no one could have avoided the accident. Bill and I made our resolutions then and there. We agreed that we would not drive at all if we had had a few drinks, and that the one who had the car would give the keys to the other one as soon as the gaiety started in earnest. A couple of weeks later, on our way home from a dance in a neighboring town, we decided to stop in for a beer at a place we knew. We hold the bartender that Joe sent us and enjoyed a few light, harmless brews. It was hot that night, and we were certain that was the reason for the slight dizziness we noticed. That old feeling came over me, and we soon discovered that the old car was still wonderful at squirming through traffic. I got it almost up to 60 on the open highway that night. JUMP OFF CANYON Again, the Holy land "blossomed like the rose" and supported prosperous and energetic peoples. Today it is pictured as quite unholy with its drought and endless fields of sand. In the early years of Utah settlement, Parley P. Pratt on a trip southward through Utah found the trail which later was to become U. S. Highway 91 traveled lush grasslands in many extensive areas where now "no birds sing" and the gullies delve ever deeper into the barren mud among the sparse, witch-like vegetation. Region four of the U. S. forest service and similar government agencies, including the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, have put some of the best scientific brains in the country to work on this problem and by constructive programs in that direction pledge themselves to aid further in restoring, and even in improving, the chief natural resources of the state of Utah. These men say that one major cure is taking the livestock off the watersheds until they recover and thereafter controlling grazing in areas where grazing may be permitted at all. The greater problem is improvement of the sage and barren areas through re-seeding to suitable grasses millions of acres throughout the state. It is a program to be applied not only on public lands but also on private lands by open-eyed ranchers and farmers. But, remember, this poverty of the land affects not merely landowners but every one of us, our children, and our children's children. Page 22 by Lenore Chase As I rushed out into the rain to gather the baby's half-dried things from the clothesline, I thought how silly I had been to hang any clothes out. It had rained a little the night before, and I could tell by the skies that it would rain again soon. My clothes were soaked through before I got back in the house. Janie was crying with all the force in her little year-old body. She always cried when it rained, and she shook like a leaf when the thunder roared across the skies. I grabbed her in my arms, then dashed through the house, closing all the windows. The rain slapped against the roof louder and louder until it sounded like just one stream. Standing by the front door, I could see the stream the drain-pipe sent down. It was making a hole in the soft ground where it fell. "Oh, Lord," I muttered under my breath, "If Chris were only here." Janie had stopped crying but her head was burrowed as deep in my neck as she could get it. Right then I wished I could do the same thing just burrow my head into something that would muffle the sound of the rain. Our little house was just below Jump-Off Canyon, as far up on the slope of the mountain as we could get. Between the canyon and our house lay our rows of young trees. Those trees would bear fruit next year and they were our life, Chris's and mine, and little Janie's too. I felt sick as I watched the rain beat against the slender limbs. Under their branches little rivulets of muddy water were beginning to run down the hill. For the first time I looked up into the canyon and my breath caught at what I saw. "Don't be too pessimistic, Mona," I thought, "but maybe you and Chris had better forget about this little project you've worked so hard on." I checked myself as if Chris had heard. He hated jokes about anything serious, and it was serious enough all right. The sloping blond cliff on the right side of the canyon was shining wet; below that was destruction water and mud tumbling down the mountain toward our orchard. I didn't forget about the other orchards either. I knew other people were standing helpless at their windows, or maybe shooing a stray chicken into its pen, just to be doing something. Chris and I had never gone through a flood before, and he was going to miss this one too. "I'm glad," I thought. "I'd hate Chris to see it happening." I jerked forward when I heard a sound like thunder but different enough so I knew it wasn't thunder. It was a huge rock zig-zagging down the mountain, and it came faster every minute. I saw it splash through the rivulets of water pouring down and send smaller rocks spiraling off into the air. "Not this way, please!" I clutched Janie closer as I kept saying it over and over. Suddenly it didn't zig-zag anymore but rolled straight over the smoother ground and headed for our trees! I didn't think then that it might come crashing through the house, because I saw it splinter a row of apricot trees as if they were matchsticks. Chris and I had planted those while we happily figured how much money we would make selling apricots after the trees began to bear fruit. "We'll give the first bushel away free," Chris had said. "Let somebody have some apricots on the Spencers." That lucky somebody would have to wait now. Fate wasn't very generous at the moment. Abruptly, the rock veered off, missing the last few trees in the row and rolling by only 50 feet away to tumble over the rise onto the road and farther down the valley. I hoped it woud stop before it reached Cartwright's orchard. The neighbors had told us what a flood would be like. Oh, if it hadn't come for another year or two, at least not so bad as this. Water was running everywhere. The rain pattered on and the little rivulets grew deeper and deeper. When I looked at Jump-Off again, I was amazed at the change. The whole mountain was coming down. Mucky streams of water were gushing down, loosening rocks that rolled slowly at first and then faster and faster. The gullies, even at the top of the mountain, were so deep that I could see them very clearly. Was it ever going to stop? I didn't want to look at our pitiful orchard, but I did anyway. The beaten little trees stood forlornly out there on the mud. The rain had whipped a lot of the leaves off and even broken some of the smaller branches. Underneath the trees, here and there, rocks had lodged themselves in the mud or against a toppled tree Miraculously, Janie had gone to sleep, so I laid her in her little crib, covered her and kissed her smooth little forehead. "That's right, sleep. I wish I could sleep, too; sleep and sleep, until Chris comes home and I've a shoulder to cry on." So this is how it felt to have your dreams and hopes and work washed away as if they had never existed. First, we'd planned about this place even before we were married, and saved for it. Then the war came and Chris had to go before we had saved enough money to buy the land we had chosen. We both pinched every penny we could, and the little roll in the bank grew. It didn't grow enough, though. Even after all the scrimping, we couldn't even make a substantial down-payment. The government came through after Chris was discharged. He got a loan to buy the land, and we moved here not quite two years ago. We loved it from the beginning because we had rich fertile land under the shadow of Jump-Off mountain. We could see other orchards to the side and below us. They were full of matured trees that brought a good net income almost every year. They were as good as a guarantee that ours woud look the same in a few years. That was a laugh. We were just getting started and now this. All at once I was mad. I wished I possessed Chris's art of cursing. I never felt more like doing it in my life. I ran over to the door and threw it open. My face was soaked in an instant. And when I felt the coldness on my feet, I looked down. The muddy water was sloshing there, and creeping swiftly over the floor. I knew it must have been seeping under the door and through the cracks near the ground. Our temporary house was far from being well built. Janie was safer inside, I decided, so I grabbed a coat and ran out into the storm. The thunder still roared, closer than before. The water kept coming, too. Would it ever stop? The bald hills above me were free from grass of any kind. I could see the little green blades swirling in the water. I didn't understand too much about floods and why they occurred, but I knew that if those muddy hills above me had been covered with shrubs, plants, trees and grass, I wouldn't be standing amidst the ruin of what had been a promising orchard. Peach and apricot trees were bent and broken. All the ground around me was covered with big rocks and little rocks and among this the little rivulets, robbing the canyon above me of every bit of soil that they could take. There was nothing I could do about it, if I wanted to. All I wanted was to go away and forget the whole thing, and I didn't want to see Chris's face when he came and saw it. Standing there, hating the world, I was oblivious to everything around me. My eyes looked but I didn't see, and it was not just rain water that was running down my face. Page 23