When it rains in Southern California, the citizens don’t know how to react. But when it snows, everyone freezes along with the temperature. It hasn’t snowed in Los Angeles since the early sixties. And it rarely snows in Central California, where most of my family lives.

Back in 2018, it snowed in Bakersfield on the day or so after Christmas. I had to drive back to Hollywood that day. The 99 was closed, going up the grapevine, and that was my usual route. So I had to take a detour up through Tehachapi, where the snow had to be about five inches deep.

I stopped to get gas and almost slid to the ground when I reached for the pump.

It was a three-hour stall just getting there. I’d never seen anything like it in my life except for when I used to live in Pittsburgh for five years, where I expected snow every winter. But that was when I was a child. I was forty-one when I was stuck up in Tehachapi. It would take seven hours to get back to my apartment.

When the traffic finally cleared up, I split onto the 14 freeway toward Lancaster. The road was icy, and diesels surrounded me.

I drove at about fifty miles per hour and tried to glide easily across the ice. Then, at some point, I slid across a sheet, and instinctively, I slammed the brakes. My car spun around like a dreidel. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. My Hyundai stopped spinning after about three revolutions, and I continued forward without a bruise or a scratch. But my heart was still thundering. I didn’t want to die that way.

I finally made it home at about eight at night after a seven-hour journey through the mountains. I turned on the heater in my studio apartment and watched a movie on Netflix. It wasn’t snowing in Los Angeles. Hell, it wasn’t even raining. It was just cold and dry like it usually is in December. But I’ll never forget the time on the 14 when I almost slid to my death.