Growing up in Tahoe
One of the good things about growing up in a small community like Tahoe is that you know everyone. One of the bad things is that once in awhile while you are still growing up, one of those people that you know dies. Over the years I felt my daughters’ pain as they watched the slow death of their friend Kalena to cancer, and the sudden devastating shock of their friend Mia in an equestrian accident. For me it was Dallas McPherson.
Dallas was my friend who grew up down the street in Dollar Point. We played whiffle ball in the driveway, football on the street, and hung out at the beach. If we were really bored we would play football in slow motion on Dallas’ lawn. ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ was popular, so we thought slow motion with sound effects was really cool. In the winter, in an age before computers, we were addicted to Strat-O-Matic baseball, which was sort of an early fantasy league. We played for hours and waited anxiously for what seemed like forever for the new teams to arrive in the mail.
Of course, like most kids, our most common activity was sitting around and trying to come up with something to do. Before our teenage years we hung out at my house or our friend Glenn’s because Dallas had a family dog named Vicious. I often wondered whether Vicious was really vicious, or it was just his mom’s excuse for keeping us out of the house. About once or twice a year we would be given the great privilege of coming into the house. They would put Vicious in some out-of-the-way dungeon, and then if you had to use the bathroom Dallas had to go out first to make sure the coast was clear before you entered the hallway.
As I look back, Dallas had to deal with lots of issues at home. His mom suffered from some sort of long-term lung ailment, and suddenly, when we were teenagers, his parents were raising their three-year old granddaughter. She was left to them by Dallas’ older sister, in what to his clueless friends seemed like mysterious circumstances.
By the time I reached my junior year in high school, Dallas was away at college at Sac State — which provided a great opportunity for his Tahoe buddies to take road trips to Sacramento to see Santana, the Grateful Dead, or Jethro Tull. Once we embarked on a major road trip to the Bay Area where we were part of the 50,000 people at ‘The Day on the Green’ with The Who and the Grateful Dead. (I remember after four hours hoping that the Dead would finally stop playing and let the Who get on stage while we were still awake). Of course, all of this revolved around the usual ’70s and ’80s party scene, which for some reason included incredibly vivid oranges and lots of Led Zeppelin at high volume. Unfortunately, Dallas’ next door neighbors in his Sacramento apartment complex at 2 a.m. were not as enamored with ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as we were.
When I started enjoying the good life at Chico State, Dallas migrated back to Tahoe to become a real estate agent, working for his father. We were still good friends, but as was the case in those pre-Facebook days, you lost touch with people when you were not living in the same town. When I did see him he seemed confused as to what he wanted out of life and dissatisfied with the direction it had taken him. He was making money and driving a cool blue BMW, but at just 24 years old he was wondering how life got so serious so quickly and whether he was missing the fun stuff. He was living with a girlfriend when…
I got the phone call. The one I will never forget. My mom told me that Dallas had been killed in a car crash. He was at a party in Tahoe City and was on his way home to Talmont when his car drifted off the road, he woke up, freaked out, overcorrected, and steered into an oncoming car. Fortunately, the people in the other car were OK. His friends, when they heard the news, were not. Drunken driving at the time was not nearly as big a deal as it is now, but for us suddenly, it was a very big deal. Sometimes I wonder what Dallas would be doing today if he had taken a cab, had one less drink, or waited a little longer before heading home. I like to think that my kids would have been hanging out with his, sitting around the house wondering what to do.
~ Tim Hauserman is the author of the ‘The Tahoe Rim Trail: The Official Guide for Hikers, Mountain Bikers and Equestrians’ and ‘Cross-Country Skiing in the Sierra Nevada.’
