Mark -
What an amazing story !!! Sheesh, growing up outside of
NYC, I can't imagine anything like that !
Here's mine:
I was all set for my annual journey to Das Awkscht
Fescht, a car show disguised as a Pennsylvania Dutch
Festival in Allentown, PA. It had been cloudy on this
August day in 1991, with a chance of showers. My 58
Plymouth was packed and ready to make the three hour
journey from CT down to NJ, where I would be staying for
the nite, doing the last hour and a half the next day.
As I headed into NY state, it began to rain. As I drove
toward the Tappan Zee bridge, a huge suspension bridge
over the Hudson River, it became a torrential downpour.
The rain was pelting against my windshield, but the
variable speed wipers did their thing to keep it as
clear as possible. The windshield gasket, however, was
leaking and water was dribbling over the dash. The door
rubber was leaking as well. The car persevered, and I
make it thru the bumper-to-bumper traffic over the
bridge and on to NJ.
Ron
> It may not rain in SoCal, but the same is not true in northeastern Montana.
> I was born there and lived there until I was 12 or so, including eight years
> in Peerless, MT, which was 5 miles from the border with Saskatchewan, and
> about 60 miles from North Dakota, so we're talking NORTHERN Montana. You
> haven't seen a blizzard until you've seen one in the flatlands and prairies
> there. The west side of our house would regularly be buried in snowdrifts
> during the winter. I remember once as a youngster, when Santa was sneaking
> toward our house for Christmas, and was walking past our living room window,
> all I could see was his black-booted feet at the top of the window until he
> got on his hands and knees and peeked in and waved!
>
> It was in conditions like this in which we visited some friends who lived
> about four miles out of town, their completely gravel driveway was about two
> miles long, including a short but treacherous wooden bridge about 20 feet
> long and 9 feet wide over a creek which regularly swelled to the bottom of
> the bridge during the winter.
>
> I think we had been there all day helping them brand cattle or something,
> then my folks played cards until 10 pm or so. When we left, snow was coming
> down sideways, and with the wind chill it was about 50 degrees below zero
> (i'm not kidding!!).
>
> It was about 1976, and we were driving our 1973 Chrysler, so we had electric
> wipers, but that didn't matter. Even as an 8 year old kid who didn't pay
> much attention when driving somewhere at night, I remember being terrified
> that night. I was sure the bridge would be out, as seemed to happen to our
> friends about once a winter. They had offered us to spend the night, but
> for some reason my folks opted to go home.
>
> The bridge was only about half a mile from our friends' home, so it came
> pretty soon. The creek was washing OVER it, but we could still see it was
> there, so my dad decided to go for it. Very slowly, he inched forward.
> Over the fury and gusto of the wind, I could hear the sideways boards of the
> bridge groaning under the weight of our two ton Chrysler as the creek was
> probably up to where the tire met the wheel on the car.
>
> Once on the bridge, there was no turning back. Continuing to move slowly,
> we could finally see the end of the bridge as the rear of the car started to
> slip downstream on the slippery boards, and the wind howled and shrieked
> almost as much as my mom did.
>
> We could all feel the rear of the car start to slip under the pressure of
> the rushing water of the creek on the wet bridge, my dad as much as the rest
> of us. So he punched it as much as he dared, and the car lurched forward.
>
> I should say that our friends 2 mile gravel driveway was mostly straight, or
> gentle curves, except where this bridge was. An old bridge had washed out
> earlier that winter, and the new one was slightly upstream from the remains
> of the old one. So as one approached the bridge, the road veered to the
> right, then left, then over the bridge, then left again and right again to
> rejoin the gravel road.
>
> When my dad punched the gas, we shot over the remainder of the bridge.
> Unfortunately, he had to make a hard left at the bridge abutment, which he
> did, and it spun us sideways on the icy gravel and frozen mud of the bridge
> approach. He corrected the steering to the right and made it around the
> hard left and then right corners and we were back on the straight part of
> the road!
>
> We thought we were in the clear, but we still had a mile and a half of
> frozen, icy, uphill and downhill gravel yet to contend with in the type of
> white-out conditions visbility you might experience if 1000 camera flashes
> were constantly going off at the same time right in front of your eyes.
>
> Probably a mile from the bridge, and about a half mile from where the gravel
> road met the main road to town, there was a right hand curve which sloped
> uphill. Nothing major, but the road was icy enough, and the visibility poor
> enough, that dad put the car in the ditch, and we were stuck. No amount of
> rocking would unstick the car, and he only tried pushing once, as much more
> than a minute or two outside the car and anyone would get severe
> hypothermia. My brother and I were too young to be any help, too, as I was
> about 8 and my brother around 5.
>
> So when dad got back in the car, he and mom had a conversation. We had
> about 3/4 of a tank of gas, it was about 11:30pm, and we were going nowhere.
> It was too far for anyone to walk for help, either to town or to our friends
> house, as the walker would most certainly freeze to death. So without
> making my brother or I aware of it, mom and dad prepared for us all to die.
>
> We left the car running at an idle, with the heater blasting as much as it
> could, bundled up with all the clothes and blankets we had, and they told us
> kids to go to sleep, which is exactly what we did. Years later, my mom told
> me they expected the gas to hold out for several hours, and mom and dad
> hoped that with fresh snow around the tires they could try rocking the car
> once more before we ran out of gas, and then. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> .
>
> About 2 am, I was awakened by the pounding on the windows. It was Bernie
> Dighans, the guy whom we had visited! He had called us every hour or so
> since we had left his home on our four mile journey, and he and his wife
> Carol decided by 1:30 that we hadn't made it home.
>
> He loaded us up in his big old Power Wagon and got us the rest of the way
> home. I don't really remember much else from that night, but I do know that
> we never again attempted a drive like that when the conditions were similar.
> That Chrysler was a great car, but a year or so later my folks traded it in
> on a new Mazda Cosmo. Anyone ever heard of one of those? Well,
> long-winded, and not a vacuum wiper story, but these other bad weather
> stories just keyed up this long dormant memory. Hope I didn't bore everyone
> too much!
>
> Mark mjh
> '57 Fury, '57 Savoy, '64 300 (for sale, please contact me privately if
> interested!)
>
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