I can't say that I love winter, but it never scared me before. I'd grown up in Indiana, certainly not one of the real snow states but someplace where snow is no stranger. Every year the TV stations blared winter storm and even blizzard warnings. Every year the snow trickled down and caused no problems. The alarmists had lost their ability to instill fear in me.
On that Friday morning, the TV had started, predicting a blizzard for tonight. Rather than raising my hackles, it annoyed me and made me determined that I wouldn't have my plans messed up by their damned doom and gloom predictions.
The last of our kids had flown the coop this spring, off to college leaving my wife and I alone. Our tradition had been to go out for dinner and maybe a dance or two before going home on Friday nights. No damn TV sensationalist was going to take that from me!
Cindy looked at me over her morning coffee. That girl still looks good at 44! "Maybe we better just come home after work and snuggle for the weekend." She gave me that come hither look that promised a weekend of more than snuggling. I have to admit that my blood got a touch warm at the prospect of a weekend of snuggling, but then the snuggling always got more snugly when we went out dancing on a Friday night.
I snickered at her. "Don't be silly, dear. It's never that bad. How many times last year did they call for bad weather when it didn't even snow?"
She had an uncomfortable look on her face but she just shrugged her shoulders. I looked out the window and there wasn't even a hint of a storm. The sun was just shining through a high stratus layer of clouds that was more beautiful than threatening.
As was our habit on Fridays, I took Cindy to work so that we would have only one car to go out right after work. I picked her up and took her for lunch. I looked into the sky and noticed that a few puffy white cumulous clouds were beginning to mix with the stratus clouds and the sun was having difficulty finding any openings to send rays down to the ground. Still the weather didn't look particularly threatening. Even Cindy had relaxed about the predicted storm. I knew she was fine when she started playing footsie with me under the McDonalds table. Dancing for sure!
When I picked Cindy up after work however, the situation had changed. The dying rays of the setting sun were totally obscured by gray puffy clouds and the first flakes of cold white wonder were drifting down. The temperature had dropped dramatically and we had to pull our coats tight to keep warm. The wind had picked up cutting through my light pants and making my knees cold. The car's heater felt wonderful after the brief exposure to the cold.
We were heading for the restaurant, one of our favorite steak places, listening to the sound of oldies on our favorite radio station when that annoying tone cut into one of our all time favorites. Blizzard warning. The disc jockey had a sense of humor and a good music catalogue because he came out of it playing "Winter Wonderland". Damn! Double whammy. Christmas might only be 10 days away but I didn't really want to be reminded!
The restaurant was nearly empty and the service was wonderful. So was the food. We'd been there just over an hour and were working on after dinner drinks when we heard the door open for the first time. The sound brought me around. I could hear the wind really whooshing past that door and the person who came in stomped to shake off snow. Someone said, "Oh My God! Look at that!"
Both Cindy and I stood up and looked out the window. The snow was really coming down! In the slightly over an hour we had been there probably 4 inches of the stuff had covered the parking lot and it was snowing hard. The whipping wind blew it nearly horizontally. You could not see the street through the blowing snow!
Suddenly I began to feel nervous. If I had listened to the radio, and Cindy, we'd be home now but instead I had several miles of country road to negotiate. I was wondering what would be worse, the drive home or the "I told you Sos".
It was dark out, the lights in the parking lot were almost obscured by the blowing snow. All you could see, when you looked toward the lights was streaks of white traveling with the blowing wind. Wind that cut through our clothes and nearly froze our skin despite the heavy winter wear.
I opened the car door for Cindy amid a cascade of several inches of snow and then searched for the scraper in the back seat. The rear window had been blown clear of snow but it was piled several inches deep on the front windshield. I couldn't believe the drift on the drivers side. Snow had been deposited against the car almost to the level of the door!
We were both nervous as we left the parking lot. I knew that the drive through town would not be bad but with the wind whipping and the blowing snow, the country road on the way home could be a bear!
I decided that we should find a motel. There were only three in town. I judiciously drove to the first but found a long line of travelers trying to call it a night. The registration line was backed up out the door. The good news was the line was moving rapidly. The bad news was that the line was moving because the desk clerk was sending them away, there were no rooms left in this manger. The news got worse. It was a parade headed to each of the remaining motels and no rooms left.
Driving was becoming an adventure. You could not see the road, only the packed tire tracks of the last hapless traveler. Follow the ruts and pray. More time wasted, more snow. The only choice, attempt the trip home.
My knuckles gripped the wheel and turned white with the tension. There was hope! We followed a snowplow to the edge of town but he belonged to the city and turned back. Cindy was remarkably quiet. When we got home, I was sure she'd chew me a new ass hole but for the moment, she was too frightened to complain.
I looked at our road with trepidation. Five miles to home. I could see the snow blowing across the road. I took a deep breath and turned. I was going very slowly. There was little sign that anyone had passed this way before us. The wind covered tracks almost as fast as they were made. One side of the road was nearly blown clean, the other showed saw blades of drifted snow that reached to the mid point of the road and beyond.
We crawled through fingers of snow a foot deep. Slowly we moved. The car slid and jerked on the slippery surface as it struggled for a foothold. Each slip caused a sharp intake of breath from Cindy who was probably praying along with me that the car would hold the invisible road. All I could do was look for the fence posts and try to stay in the middle as the wind covered and then revealed the road before us.
I had looked at the clock as we turned. We had come one mile in 15 minutes slowly pushing the snow aside as we crept along. It was almost 9:00 when we made the halfway point, A big new modern house that someone from Chicago had built a couple years ago. The stories said it even had a pool in an attached greenhouse. We didn't know the owners despite the fact that there were only half a dozen houses and farms between town and our idyllic home in the country. The wind quit howling momentarily and we could see the driveway packed with cars. Then just as quickly the snows came up again and we couldn't see the house anymore.
