For those of you who have never journeyed into the "frozen
tundra du Nord", here are some highlights from my recent excursion taking
my mother-in-law home.
(Nord is French, isn't it? Spanish, Norte? I forgot French at a much
faster rate than I learned it. And sorry about the phrase in mixed languages
- sign of impending imbecility.) |
We begin the trip with a check on the weather forecast in several cities
on the route, on the Internet. Clear and sunny weather, highs in the 40s
on Saturday. The Internet lied - it never got above 30 north of Nashville.
It was all a plot to entice visitors from the south. |
When we get to Wart race (or is that War trace?), Tennessee (near BellBuckle
- one of my mile-posts on the route), the weather has become noticeably
colder. No problem. We pass the Grand Ole Opry - I'll have to visit someday.
(I never stop on a trip.) We notice in Nashville that the cold weather
has slowed down the courteously slow and friendly fast food staff. On a
previous visit, the fried chicken place took our orders, then fried the
chicken one piece at a time. They were practicing for this visit. |
This time we stop at a restaurant. The staff stands around looking
for their brains. They know they had one when they went to work, but the
cold must have done something to them. They know we are there - they keep
looking at us - but they don't seem to know what to do about it. All of
the seats are empty - everyone with good sense has stayed home out of the
cold. Finally someone helps us to a seat. Later... much later, I guess
their brains finally thawed and someone actually takes our order. The cold
does that to people - stand around in it too long and your brain slows
down. After a while your brain quits. I've warned people in Minnesota about
this - they go out in the coldest weather with no coat. |
There are no Interstate rest stops between Nashville and central Illinois.
I know that - but they should post a sign for unwary travelers: "Last chance
rest stop for 1000 miles - pee here while you have a chance."
We leave the Interstate for one of Kentucky's turnpikes just after the
Tennessee border. It isn't long before we start seeing snow. No problem.
Snow always melts off in two or three days even in northern Kentucky. |
Kentucky has a state law: Every twenty foot section of highway must
be at least one inch different in elevation from the neighboring section.*
This is so cars will go clump clump, clump clump and keep you awake through
the miles of vacant land, reminiscent of the old railroads. I wonder if
the new highway through Hazard - the geographical area the Dukes of Hazard
was based on - will be the same? I wonder how the Kentucky Film Artist's
Coalition is doing - it's a good group. |
The sun is down and all around us is frozen landscape. Problem - this
snow in middle Kentucky is a week old and is ice on top. Gulp! |
Indiana. Evansville. I turned down a job with AMF here designing electromechanical
relays - not the center of the universe. Picture of David Letterman on
a billboard (Indianapolis native) saying something to the effect that Evansville
could be his proud new home. I wonder what his price is for selling out.
But Evansville has a good soccer team, an excellent hospital, and if
worse comes to worse there is a big blood donor center where you can sell
your blood. Just ahead, the Red Skelton bridge. Metropolis is to the left
- I always wondered if that was Superman's home - aka Little Egypt. If
I angle to the Northwest I could get lost in Lickskillet or Gnawbone, or
maybe catch an IU ballgame. I like names from old towns. Go to any state
and you find unusual names. I wonder where the names come from. I'll probably
never find out - I never stop. I continue north. The snow on the ground
bothers me. |
Over the next eighty miles we enter an area that always has a cold
and snowy weather pattern which gets worse the farther north you go. These
are the plains of the Midwest where a two inch snow drifts into four foot
snow drifts. I begin dodging giant clumps of frozen ice/snow which have
fallen off car and truck wheel wells. My muffler makes contact with one
and I hear a resounding "pok!" The roads have changed from slick to hazardous. |
We trade a parkway for a fourlane. The snow around us is deeper, and
the roads are no longer clear. Snow has packed into ice, and drifted and
packed deeper, making ice ruts that last the entire winter. Snowplows sand
and salt continuously, but the ice only leaves during a warming trend -
and that doesn't happen in January and February. |
Illinois. The one and only Oblong. Needmore. Needmore what? Indiana
also has a Needmore, and so does Georgia. We trade the fourlane for a two
lane, then a single lane, then finally a dirt road and a footpath. This
is the place where the mother-in-law lives. Darkest Illinois. It's very
dark (well, it's two a.m.). It's cold - somewhere in the teens. |
The mother-in-law's (TMIL's) drive is packed with eight inches of snow
and the snowplows have left us a gift - they've thrown an extra foot of
snow and ice across the first ten feet of the driveway. Like I'm going
to start shoveling snow at 2 a.m. so I can get the car in the drive - but
the only place to park on the street is an eighteen inch snow-bank.
Memories of bashing my way through four foot snow drifts in a 4800 pound
Jeep Wagoneer. Sometimes the drift was too long and raised all four wheels
off the ground - it had to be dug down. I bash through the drive and up
50 feet of ice and snow. I hear my muffler taking yet another beating.
But we have arrived. |
Next day. TMIL is ecstatic - her own digs, her own food, her own space,
her own friends - she has the entire week planned, chock full of places
to go and people to visit. She's doing somersaults and stomping around
in the snow. (At our house she couldn't walk across the floor without support.) |
Before we can leave we have to take down the ceiling light fixtures
and wash them. Oh, well, it's worth it. |
I try to start the car. It won't. Heeelllllp! Were going to be stranded
here! Common cold weather disease for cars. Cars are just exactly like
people in cold weather. They want to stay inside, and if you make them
stay outside they shiver and shake when they run and finally freeze to
death if you let them set too long. If there is a weak part - a starter,
battery, carburetor - the cold makes it fail. You could limp along for
a year in the south with the same part. |
Memories of cars that are difficult to start. Ice condensed in the
gas, preventing the car from starting until it sits in a warm garage -
preferably at $50.00 an hour since you thoughtlessly left it outside. Starter
failures on the coldest days. More than once I jacked up a car on snow
and ice and crawled underneath it to replace a starter, laying on the frozen
ground, holding a thirty pound chunck of frozen steel in place with my
bare hands, while I fight to align starter and shims and bolts in places
you can't reach, cursing the sadistic idiot who designed anything this
uncooperative, hoping the jack doesn't slip on the snow because I know
the safety chock I put under the car may go sailing on the snow if the
car falls on it. This is as good as it gets - If I can't live like this,
I don't want to live. |
My car had a tune-up just before the trip - a jump just might work.
Should I risk blowing the diodes on the mother-in-law's alternator so she
gets stranded later in freezing weather on remote highways, or should I
have a tow truck come and jump me? I go inside to warm up. She complains,
"Can't you jump the car?" like I was some kind of incompetent...
I go back outside. The jumper cables are so cold they won't uncoil,
and they won't stay on the car. I charge my battery for twenty minutes...
but avoid cranking on her alternator. My car still won't start. Start it
with a jump and leave TMIL stranded, or... It's a hard decision, but I
opt for the tow truck. |
I call an old high school friend who runs the singular local garage
and ask if he knows of anyone with a tow truck. "Nope, I don't think I
can help you today." I can't remember ever getting help at a garage on
the same day - and all I want is to know if there is anyone around who
has a tow truck. Thankfully garages no longer sell gas - they would have
everyone on an odd-even day ration system. I keep my fingers crossed -
maybe he will think of someone today.
He continues, "There's nothing around here like that now - the closest
towing service must be forty miles away." This place has shriveled up and
died. Buildings are being replaced at a one to six ratio - six fall in
and one goes up. The only thriving business in town is the funeral home.
When my kids called Grandma, their first question was always, "Who died
this week?" |
I have to get out of this place - I need a jump. I eye the mother-in-law's
car. She's 82 - she can't last much longer anyway. After all, my brain
is frozen and I can't think straight. But deep in my cold slush filled
heart I know it's not the right thing to do, even if she does keep whining,
"If it was me, I would just jump it." She never jumped a car in her life. |
Something isn't quite right with the car, but a new, bigger battery
will take care of it. Crank that sucker 'till it starts 'cause I'm not
standing around in 20 degree cold, trying to sort out problems on a computer
controlled, fuel injected engine that a specialist already couldn't find.
In the north you always put the biggest battery you can get in a car, because
you never know when you'll need it. I get a super big battery and put it
in and crank on it for over a minute. Heh, heh - it takes off! |
Before we can leave we have to bust open the driveway so TMIL can get
her car in and out. Remembering my muffler, I use her car. It has rear
wheel drive, and with no weight up front it gets stuck very easily. More
cursing car manufacturers for not putting some form of positraction on
cars so they don't get stuck... My wish for car manufacturers is that each
automotive design engineer, business manager, and marketing person get
buried together - along with a shade-tree mechanic who never had a dime
for a new car or a mechanic. I'd pay to watch for a million years or so. |
I use the front end of the car on the ten foot gift of the snowplows.
It is four layers of ice and snow - hard to break through and compact.
It went like this: Stuck, unstuck, stuck, unstuck, stuck, unstuck, stuck,
unstuck, stuck, unstuck... all the while rocking the car by alternating
forward and reverse gears while trying not to tear out the transmission. |
Nashville. Our car breathes a sigh of relief. We need a new muffler...
We can get out of the car without our coats and not freeze to death. The
fast food people deliver a meal that isn't too late.
Atlanta, GA. We are comfortable with only a light jacket. In a few days
the temperature climbs to near 70 (in January). The ice and snow and the
treacherous trek to the north are nearly forgotten.
This is really the way it was... well, maybe I exaggerated just a little.
- Scott
*PS: Kentucky fixed the roads the next summer. I'm not sure how they did it, but I envisioned giant grinding machines smoothing off the edges - whatever they did it worked very well. The thirty foot spacing between cracks isn't really their fault. Some geologists theorize that the force of the moon on the earth causes the cracks. The bedrock under the topsoil is similarly broken, and eventually helps lead to the development of caves. Or perhaps it is just proof that we do indeed live in a digital universe, or perhaps it just means that God used calculus (successive approximations) to develop the earth. We'll probably never know for sure.
Update: Another year, my wife drove to her mother's in good weather. Then the weather turned cold and the car wouldn't start, so she couldn't leave on time. Then it snowed and rained and froze until knee deep crusty ice filled the drive. She was trapped for two weeks. Finally a local farmer took pity on her and plowed the drive so it was passable.
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