During the winter of 1977, Joan and I lived in Chatham,
but I had left newspaper reporting for a day job at Lambton College in Sarnia. The
commute in my red Volkswagen 1600 was an hour each way.
The 1600 was a bit bigger than a VW Beetle. It had a trunk
in the front over the gas tank and another trunk in the back over the engine.
Like all Volkswagens, the air-cooled engines produced very little heat in the
winter. VWs tried to compensate with a secondary defrost heater that burned gasoline.
This would help keep windows from frosting up when it worked. Gas heaters were
unreliable, so Volkswagen drivers kept a small scraper handy to maintain
visibility for the road ahead: one hand on the steering wheel and the other
hand scraping the inside of the windshield and side windows.
Wallaceburg was half-way between home and work, and the trip
this cold morning as far as Wallaceburg was uneventful. I turned right onto the
main street after crossing the Sydenham Bridge, then north again onto the
county road that took me straight up to the college. At the north edge of
Wallaceburg, a line of cars had stopped on the road in front of me. I realized
why when I saw the wall of white. Thick snow, high into the sky, was blowing from
west to east across the road head. A car coming south emerged in a poof from
the white wall like a special effect on Star Trek.
Immediately, I turned around and raced back through
Wallaceburg and south down Hwy 40 toward home. It wasn’t long before the
white-out was catching up with me. Through my windshield, I was seeing blue sky
and open fields. In my rear-view mirror was the oncoming tempest of white. Once
I was in it, I could not see the sides of the road or anything around me. I
soon did not know if I was still on my side of the road. I dropped into second
gear and crept along, then first gear. The tail lights of a car ahead appeared
just beyond my front bumper, then were obscured. That car was moving. I
followed, glimpsing the tail lights then losing them in the white. Same with
headlights near my rear bumper. It was stop and go, moving blindly as part of a
chain.
When the car in front stopped moving, I could only wait –
nothing to do but scrap the inside of my windshield. Visibility was a few feet
at best.
This was corn and soybean country. No hills, no forests, no
windbreaks. The fierce wind had free reign from Lake St. Clair across
kilometers of open field. I had no idea how far I had travelled, whether I was
near the ditch or the middle of the road, whether there were any homes nearby,
nothing. I kept the engine running trying to keep out the cold. I was dressed
for work in a jacket and tie, overcoat and scarf, thin rubber galoshes over my
shoes, leather gloves and no hat. All I could do was hope the storm would end
-- no cell phones in those days!
A long time had passed when a man in a snowmobile suit appeared
in the whiteness and rapped on my hood. He motioned for me to get out. “Keep your
hands on your car. Don’t leave the car,” he said. “Is there anybody behind
you?” I shouted yes and he disappeared into the whiteness. He reappeared with the
guy from the car behind me. I tied my scarf over my head and ears. Nearly blind
and being whipped by the fierce blowing snow, we plunged forward through drifts
along a line of vehicles, picking up other people waiting at their cars,
careful not to step out of reach of a car or each other.
Our group came upon a few more people who had been rounded
up from the other direction. We held hands, shoulder to shoulder, our backs to
the wind. Conversation was impossible. I could not see how many of us were there.
A snowmobile came out of the whiteness, then another, to take us away, one at a
time.
When it was my turn, I was freezing from the cold. I was
worried my fingers, face and feet were freezing. Eventually, a house appeared. We
could not see it until we were right next to it.
Inside, we were cold to the bone, and could only warm up
slowly. I was numb until well into the afternoon. When I thought Joan would be
home from the school where she was a teacher, I used the phone in the house to
tell her that I was safe. I learned that schools had been let out early in the
morning because of the storm emergency. Joan had been worried about my safety
all day.
By the time she had gotten home that morning, the white-out
was enveloping our street in the north part of Chatham. The power went out soon
after. She could not see anything out the windows. The storm did not let up all
day. Snow piled against the screen door in the back of the house, so Joan had
to use the back door from the garage to let our bichon frise, Gonzeau, outside to
do his business. She had to pick him up and toss him onto the hard packed snow,
then lift him back inside.
I slept that night on the crowded floor of that house with
other stranded drivers, still not knowing exactly where we were. The next day
when the storm was over, I recognized the crossroads with the little
ranch-style house. I had only made it halfway from Wallaceburg to Chatham.
A
convoy of snowmobilers was organized to shuttle us one by one, down the snow-covered highway,
passing stranded vehicles left and right. At the edge of Chatham, a police car
was stranded where a barricade had been set up the day before. Down the road,
over lawns, through parking lots and into our neighbourhood of deep snow-covered
streets, we saw people starting to dig out cars, doorways and driveways, but
the only thing moving that day were snowmobiles. My ride ended right at my
door.
Inside, I returned the borrowed snowsuit, and hugged my
wife.
On the TV news, an aerial view showed the highway north of
Chatham was deep with snow drifts. Stranded cars and trucks were scattered facing
all directions. Most cars were buried in snow and only recognizable as bumps in
the drifts.
It took two more days to clear the highway of snow and
stranded vehicles.
When I went to the impound lot, my old Volkswagen 1600
started right up, ready for another adventure.
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