Safe, Sober Holiday Driving: Fill & Download for Free

In 1993, my husband and I moved to the mountains of Idaho, in an extremely remote, isolated area to manage a funky old hot-springs resort that was only open to employees and investors of a bigger company that owned the property. My husband and I were given a small log-cabin on the property to live in. Sue, the sister-in-law of one of the founders of the company, was also given a small log-cabin on the property to live in, while she worked in a nearby store that sold the company product. There were only about 250 other residents spread throughout an approximately 50-mile-long canyon, two gas-stations, and three saloons with attached restaurants. Most of the people there are very conservative and religious (but also hard-drinking), former military, loggers, truckers, ranchers, potato farmers, and so on. We were an hour-and-a-half drive from the nearest town with a grocery store, doctors, schools, etc.My new co-worker and neighbor Sue was in her early 60s, and was a warm, wise and witty person. I was about 30 - significantly younger than almost everyone else in the valley. Most of the social life revolved around the saloons, private parties, snowmobiling in the winter, and riding ATVs (four-wheelers) in the summer, hunting, fishing, and holiday events. My new neighbors were not very friendly to me, so Sue and I spent a lot of time hanging out with each other in our cabins after work. She became my only friend.She told me her life story - she came from a Mormon family which had forced her to marry an abusive older man in her teens, and then rapidly had four babies in a row, when at some point her husband had pressured her to drink liquor with him. She said that, with that very first drink, she felt she’d found the answer to all her problems, and didn’t stop drinking from then on. Soon, she found the courage to run away from her husband, leaving all her young children behind. This would’ve been in the 1960s. She lived on the streets for several years, drinking, doing drugs, and prostituting to support her drug habit and alcohol abuse.By the time we met, she’d been clean and sober for maybe 20 years, her oldest daughter had found her a few years earlier and she was re-establishing a relationship with her family (when she asked her daughter how she’d found her, in the days before the internet, she was told, “Oh, the Mormon church has ALWAYS known where you were, everything you did, everywhere you went!”).When people open their hearts to me, telling me incredibly vulnerable things like that, I let them know they’re not alone, that I understand them, by telling them stories from my own life. I grew up in San Francisco, living and going to school in mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods. And while I was never an alcoholic or drug addict or prostitute or gang member, I had many, many friends who were, so I had various interesting and sometimes dangerous, even violent experiences because of that. I won’t go into detail here, but I did with Sue. I felt safe with her. She got me.I kept going to the bars, the restaurants, local events and even parties at other neighbors’ homes in the valley, as well as hosting big parties for locals at the resort, and continued trying to talk with people, but no one would have a conversation with me. Finally, maybe a year after I’d moved there, I sat in the bar and started talking with one of the women, Flo. We joked and laughed and swapped stories for an hour or two. Then, she blurted out, “You know, I’ve always been afraid of you! Sue would come in here after work, and sit here with her Diet Coke, and just talk and talk and talk… and the crazy stories she told about you! Well, she must’ve been lying, because you’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met! I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time not talking to you.”I was devastated. I had liked and completely trusted Sue. I knew all her secrets, including that she considered herself to be a “white witch” who only practiced witchcraft “for good,” which would’ve turned all the locals completely against her if they’d known (along with all of her other past activities). I don’t believe in witchcraft, good or bad, but accept that it brought comfort to her, and I would never have betrayed her trust like she did mine. I never did tell anyone else her story (until now - but not to anyone who knew her, and not while she was still alive). After that night, Flo must have told everyone else that I was OK, and the whole valley became much friendlier to me for the next 15–20 years my husband and I lived there.(First picture is of the hot-springs resort where I lived and worked. The other pictures are of the area.)

Absolutely -Would I call them ‘criminals’…no. They may have violated a state or county statute, but none of these individuals were anything close to being what I would call a criminal.As for the frequency: while I would not say ‘all the time’, I can say I did this myself many, many times over my career. The most common - a written or verbal warning on a traffic stop vs a citation.There were also a few potential DUIs. I say potential because I did not arrest them so I don’t know what their BAC was. This was most common around the holidays when people that normally would not be drinking and driving - were. In almost all of the cases, there was someone sober in the car that could drive them home safely (why they were not driving to begin with…). This type of action has potentially very negative consequences, so it was a special case and never if they had a prior arrest for the same. This was also long before the term ‘designated driver’.Another was possession of very small amounts of marijuana. When I started in the 70′s, ANY amount was a felony. I found it very difficult to stick someone with a felony conviction for a minuscule amount of weed. Like the DUIs, not a common thing, but it did happen from time to time.There were others as well - always for minor offenses and the individual circumstances predicated what I could and would be able to do. Individual discretion was (and hopefully still is) - a cop’s most valuable tool.

The whole relationship was a tornado of chaos from start to finish (6 months) with me ignoring everything in the beginning because I was just there to get laid and then catching feelings/falling in toxic love and then being manipulated. Some highlights: she was fresh outta rehab for heroin addiction (like her 5th trip to treatment/mental health facility), her love of her life bf would call from jail often and she’d tell him I love you and miss you so much while lying next to me getting fucked from behind, fucking multiple ppl in same day, she was thrown out of 3 sober houses in 2 months for drug abuse and stealing roommates drugs (once going so far as to figure out a roommates safe code and also pretend to be her and steal her drugs from pharmacy), failing urine tests, being placed in drug court, being placed in the drug monitoring unit for work, relapsing on dope and using undetectable prescription drugs, dumping me on a whim, fucking 4 ppl that I know of in the first 3 weeks of our first breakup, driving her ex bf to relapse and OD on heroin, trying to get back with me after he OD’d as he was now of no use to her, meeting some new guy and lovebombing him, dumping him for his lesbian best friend who was also his roommate, driving him to relapse, going to Europe with the lesbian within a week of “dating” her, getting dumped by lesbian, getting back together with me, driving the same ex bf to OD and end up in ER again, her family members OD and end up in treatment, being obsessed with me again then completely shutting down, making multiple adult videos with me while talking to her exes/other men, asking me to look for her missing pet while flirting/setting up new supply, going on holiday with me and texting with other guys the whole time, me having enough and ghosting her and her playing immature games and texting me/reaching out for past 5 months (all of which I have ignored). Keep in mind I did not find out half this stuff until after the fact being she was such a cunning manipulator and liar. There is TONS more that happened in the course of those 5–6 months, that happened before we dated and I can’t even imagine the things she’s done that I don’t know about. Oh, and by the way I still love her and miss her.