It Was A Dark and Stormy Night…
I’ve grateful for all-wheel drive these days, and can’t imagine driving anything else in the snow. What models do you recommend (or not!) for winter driving?
Most of us have stories about at least one harrowing winter drive. Mine was a late night commute between Eagle Bay (near Old Forge) and Canton late one wintry night…. or early morning. I was in my 20’s, and my car was not much younger.
The snow was way too deep for my 1966 Plymouth Valiant, but if I kept my speed up I could sort of ‘float’ through it. Stopping was not an option. Momentum was my secret weapon that night.
The snow was so deep (how deep was it?!) that it was coming into the interior via the steering column. It was packing in around the pedals and around my feet. I was watching the reflective markers to the left and right sides of the road, trying to stay halfway in between. The road was a bare snowy field; no lines were visible anywhere, and I don’t remember any other navigational hints. This was years before cell phones, GPS, email, and long before I could afford the annual AAA membership, not that it would have helped much that night. There were few year-round residents in that area, and no 24-hour businesses. No radio stations either!
Most people stayed home in that kind of weather, at least until the plows came through in the morning. Me, I had to get back to work the next morning. I made it, just in time to drive straight to the office.
The Plymouth isn’t around anymore, but I have a lifetime of humorous travel stories with that car – for another post.
Tell me: what was your most harrowing drive? Blizzard of ’66? Snowstorm of ’77? Ice storm of ’98? Inquiring minds want to know!
Barb,
You were probably driving home from a gig at The Hard Times Cafe(?). It’s likely that I was there that night.
My most harrowing drive was in the Fall of 1981. We were rushing home to Old Forge from Ottawa to be with our sick infant daughter. Grandma had told us over the phone that her temperature was 104 degrees (poor Gwen!).
We made it as far as Tupper Lake in our old Renault R5 when the headlights quit. As you mentioned… no 24-hour convenience stores, no triple A, few people and no radio to listen to. We hit a bump… the lights went back on, we hit another bump… they went off, bump… on, bump… off all the way home. There was no moon that night or it might have been fun.
That Renault met it’s final demise on our way home from Lowville one night after going to see our friends The Raquette River Rounders play.
Jim Tracy, Old Forge
Jim: You’re right! I was driving home from The Hard Times! It was the peak of snowmobile season, and we played there every Wednesday night all winter. What a ride! Thanks for YOUR story. I think musicians have some of the very best travel stories anywhere!
My most unnerving drive was somewhat recently, December 2003 during that blizzard we got mid-month (waaay worse than what we just got over the past couple of days) and it was not in a car incapable of making snowy drives (I know there were probably worse drives from when I was much younger and in cars with questionable capability but there may have been traffic laws broken from which I may still be within the stature of limitations.) In this case I had left Rochester with my 78 year old father and my parents dog, heading to my house just outside of Saranac Lake. We had just visited my mom who was in a nursing home for a couple weeks for heart rehab – Dad was not in a position to stay at home alone without my mom there, hence the reason for my visit and this trip back to my house with him. It was 3:30 in the afternoon and snowing very hard. The Thruway was not bad, and neither was I-81 (much to my surprise – this was not a lake-effect storm) but as we got on Route 3 and further into the Adirondacks the snowfall got heavier and the depth was significantly deeper. By the time I’m going through Star Lake and then Cranberry Lake I was seriously questioning if a plow had even been along in the past few hours. I decided to only go as far as my sister’s home, 40 miles closer than my house, just outside of Childwold. By now I was the only car on the road…the absolutely only car on the road…and by the time I got on her road (back road near the community of Conifer) the snow was up over the hood. It was the only time I’ve owned a 4 wheel drive vehicle (Honda CR-V…which ultimately turned out to be the worst car I ever owned…except that night) and the only time I was really appreciative of being in a 4 wheel drive (I think 4 wheel drive is vastly overrated) I kept thinking what I was going to do if we couldn’t get through…elderly dad and elderly dog – not a good scenario. We made it. I don’t know if my dad ever actually realized the seriousness of that drive although he was very happy to see the lights of my my sister’s house as we drove in the driveway.
A few years back (1963) I was 21 working in Rochester driving home for the holidays with my roommate Paul riding along. I had worked a day shift that day but Paul was working swing shift so we did not leave Rochester headed for Sandfordville until about 0030 hrs. It was not stormy but as was normal in those times the back roads were plowed but not salted and sanded so there was a 2-3 inch layer of hard packed snow on the back roads. As I recall we were on the Norwood-Knapps Station road about a mile + from the T intersection with the Knapps Station-Stockholm Center Road when I fell fast asleep at the wheel at about 0400 hrs and apparently I put the pedal to the metal. There was a railroad track about 3500 feet from the T which jolted me awake and the rapidity of the landscape racing past brought me to acute focus on the rapidly approaching intersection. Instinctively my eyes glanced at the speedometer of my trusty 1957 DeSoto, best two wheel drive snow vehicle I ever owned, and snapped directly back to the road. The DeSoto had a mechanical speed indicator which was a rotating drum imbued with a bright red band such that it appeared to be a red stripe crawling across the instrument panel to indicate your speed. My recollection is that it was red all the way across. By this time I was likely within 1500 feet or less of the T and I observed that the relatively deep snow had been plowed into a long V with the point directly in front of me. As I was on hard packed snow I knew severe braking would undoubtedly lead to an out of control skid so I decided my best bet was to use the snow pile as my deceleration mechanism. My next decision was head on or sideways and instinctively I decided on sideways so as to impact as much of the snow as possible. A couple of hundred feet from the plowed snow I snapped the wheel to the right and back and hit the the V of the snow nearly dead center on the door column between the front and rear doors on the driver side. I know not what my indicated speed was at that point in time but I imagine it was in excess of 80 MPH. When the car stopped it was about 8 feet in the air right at the intersection of the two roads. As this episode had taken place in roughly 30 seconds I had not had any conversation with my roommate/passenger until we stopped sliding; however, in my minds eye I realized he had been attempting to tune in a radio station when the excitement was initiated and I believed had continued to do so throughout the ordeal. When I asked him why he had not thought racing toward a T intersection at 100 + MPH was not lunacy he simply confirmed what my recollection was that he was tuning the radio and had not noticed that I was asleep and we were traveling at the speed of heat.
I have probably driven 100’s of thousands of miles in snow and ice in the past 55 years and had dozens of harrowing drives; but, the one above was without a doubt the scariest as there was a house directly across the T.
I agree with Mark 4 wheel drive is vastly over rated and gives poor to mediocre drivers in the snow false courage to drive as imbeciles. I have two two wheel drive and two 4 wheel drive trucks, of which only one at a time are licensed, and I much prefer driving the two wheel drives. Obviously there are times when 4 wheel is preferable but not often and I now tend to stay home under those conditions.
I’ll play. My story took place on Independence Pass, at the time an unpaved and harrowing short-cut into Aspen. We were driving an aged F-10 pickup, with nothing in the back to help with traction and not nearly enough power for the grade. It took half a lifetime getting to the top and a terrifying few seconds getting down the other side. I demanded a “rest stop” and floundered my way behind the nearest tree. There I found a well-visited clearing with dainty little wisps of toilet paper tucked here, there, and everywhere.
It seems that I was not the first person to be scared —-less on the Pass that evening.