The Deer Hunter

If life pivots around a few moments, none was more significant than my pre-dawn encounter with a deer in West Texas.

A True Tale From The Files

A random encounter that changed my life.

The summer road trip of 1986 changed my life.

In June, when my freshman year at San Diego State University wrapped up, I packed my trusty Toyota Tercel for a five-day road trip to my parents' new house in Georgia.

At that point, I was fully infected with the Jack Kerouac “On The Road” virus, and my nineteen-year-old mind could not conceive of a better adventure than a cross-country road trip.

I was right: it was magical.

I picked up my cousin in Houston, and we did our best to live up to the “On The Road” ethos. After a hazy night out in New Orleans, I woke up in a new T-shirt I could not recall buying,  $50 in half-eaten McDonald's strewn across the hotel room, and a thermonuclear hangover that didn’t pass until the middle of Alabama.  

The following two months were also memorable:  exploring Lake Lanier on my parents' pontoon boat, working in the fields of a winery with a cast of local North Georgia characters, and many wild nights with winery foreman Danny and those crazy Irish lads.

However, the event that changed my life didn’t happen until I was driving back from Georgia to California.

I was west of Kerrville, Texas, in the early hours, way before dawn, and driving fast. I had 535 miles to go until Las Cruces, but the stars were out, and I felt good.

I remember bombing up and down the hills of West Texas and seeing deer on the side of the road, but I really didn’t think too much about them.

I should have.

In an instant, there was this sickening crash, and a brown blur flew up and over my windshield. At first, everything seemed the same. I was still going 80, the stereo was still blasting, but the engine wasn’t running anymore, and the whole front hood was caved in.

I coasted to a stop in the center divide, stunned.

Deer blood was all over my broken grill and crushed hood. My radiator was gone. I remember thinking “something good will come of this,” but I was 100 miles from the nearest town (the pit of Fort Stockton) and my car was wrecked.

I hitched a ride to Fort Stockton — there were no cell phones back in ’86 — and got a tow truck to drag my car to town. The mechanic (who was a nice enough guy) said it would be four days before I was back on the road because the car parts needed to be bused in by Greyhound.

A hotel was across the street from the mechanic, and it was a seedy place, with a VCR and porn tapes, but no regular TV signal. (No wonder I wear glasses now.)

The Highway Patrol officer told me the next day that most fatalities along that stretch of Interstate 10 were from deer trying to jump over oncoming cars and going through the windshield. He said it was lucky I was going as fast as I was.

Those four days were a long wait, but that wasn’t the worst part.

I had been on my way to meet a girl named Kristy, someone I had flirted with down at the beach at T-street, but never dated. We started to write over the summer, and the letters became more and more interesting. She was a camp counselor up near Mammoth. She said that I should come to visit. She said she had a cabin to herself. I got the idea, and it sounded just fine to me.

Now that part of the trip wasn’t going to happen.

As promised, four days after hitting the deer, I slowly pulled out of Fort Stockton and headed home. The car whined and whistled, and the allure of the road was gone, but I made it home.

The night I returned to town, August 17, 1986, I met up with my friends Jason and Joey. We went to the movies and saw The Fly with Jeff Goldblum. It was a horrible, grotesque film.

Afterwards, we decided to get a few beers.

We pulled up in front of Broadway Liquor in Laguna Beach and grabbed the goods. A white Volkswagen Rabbit with two cute girls was in front of the frozen yogurt store next door. Joey went over and laid it on thick, busting all his moves.

They must have taken pity on us.

“Hop in!” said the blond. “We’ll show you a place.”

At this point, I was completely over it, tired and just wanting to get home. But I crammed in, and the five of us drove to Top Of The World.

The blond was annoying, but the other girl caught my eye. She had amazing brown eyes and curly brown hair and was beautiful. Jason, Joey, and I circled like seagulls, each trying to make our move.

We were sitting on a metal guardrail, with the entire city of Laguna Beach spread out below us. It was a clear and warm summer night.

There was a big drop into the scrub below, and we dangled our feet and talked, being dorks. Then it happened. The brown-haired girl — who I found out was also named Christy — lost her sandal. It fell off her foot and down into the bushes.

I climbed down, fished it out, and put it back on her foot.

She had a beautiful smile.

I climbed back up, and we started talking. She had just returned from a family road trip to Iowa, which had its own adventures: a busted air conditioner in Arizona, backseat battles with her younger sister, and the near mythic allure of The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

I couldn’t see her too clearly. It was dark. But I was intrigued as we swapped tales from the road.

She sat on my lap on the way back down the hill to our car, and I could tell she was interested, too. I asked her where she worked and told her I’d stop by.

“His friends say he’s a total scammer,” the blond told Christy afterwards, and she didn’t think she’d see me again. But she did.

The next day, I tracked her down, and within a week, we were dating. A few weeks after that, camp counselor Kristy called me, and I told her I had met someone new who took my breath away. That phone call ended poorly.

Thirty-nine years, two kids, and many adventurous road trips later, she is still the love of my life.

But none of that would have happened without a random deer, on the side of a predawn highway, in the middle of Texas.

June, 1987. LBHS graduation.