Christmas trip was frosty adventure

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Dec. 17, 2008. We often hear stories of harrowing holiday travel, usually involving busy airports, canceled flights and lost luggage. Jack’s story here is a little bit different. Here’s hoping all of your holiday travel is safe and uneventful this year.

It will always be the Christmas trip that should not have been made.

It was, as I recall, 1983.

The year had been a rough one. My father had died that March, and Connie’s father had suffered a series of strokes that had him at death’s door in August. By December, he hung on. But it was an open question whether this would be his last Christmas.

That fact alone convinced us to make the trip.

Normally, it takes about six hours to drive from Jay County to Jacksonville, Illinois, my wife’s home town.

But the weather when we awoke the morning of Christmas Eve was anything but normal.

Even today, the temperatures are astonishing. We’d survived a rough winter in 1977 and the great blizzard of 1978.

But that morning temperatures were lower than I’ve ever seen them. It was something like 24 below zero.

That wasn’t the wind chill. It was the temperature.

Wind chills were in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 below zero.

The high temperature both that day and Dec. 23 was about 11 degrees below zero.

We are talking cold, a time when anyone with a lick of sense would pull up the covers and go back to sleep.

But it was Christmas Eve and family beckoned, so good sense went out the window.

Miraculously, the car started. And the heater worked.

Bundling up the twins and tossing all the gifts in the back of our little Chevy Cavalier station wagon, we headed off.

By the time we had driven a block, I was convinced that we had made a mistake.

By the time we reached the highway, I questioned my own sanity.

By the time we reached the outskirts of town, the idea of turning around was just as frightening as the idea of continuing. So we continued.

Along the way, we counted dozens of cars and trucks abandoned by the side of the road or dumped in ditches.

There were radio reports of semis driving down the interstate that had the diesel fuel freeze in the fuel lines, bringing them to a halt.

The pavement was covered with about 4 inches of frozen ice and snow. It shook the little car until our bones rattled, but if you were careful with your speed, there was no great chance of sliding out of control.

Instead, the risks were stopping and freezing to death. If you kept moving, no matter how slowly, you were as safe as possible under the circumstances.

From Indianapolis on to Illinois, traffic was all single file. We used the shoulder because the ice was less jarring there.

At Crawfordsville, we stopped for gasoline.

As I stood at the self-serve pump I exchanged glances with other fools who were crazy enough to be out on the highway during such miserable conditions.

There was a hearty camaraderie among us, even if it was the camaraderie of madmen.

My recollection is that the trip took more than 10 hours. Perhaps it was 12.

I know we started early in the morning — when things were at their coldest — and arrived after dark.

But we made it.

Tough as it was, I figure that not making the trip would have been even tougher.

And Christmas? Well, Christmas was as memorable as ever.

And significantly warmer.