Kentucky Snow

As the family headed home to Florida from one Indiana Christmas, we had reached the hills south of Louisville on I-65 when a nasty rain began to cover the already slick roadway. The semi traffic was heavy in both lanes, but the pack moved fast and steady about 65 to 70.

As temperatures began to fall by early afternoon, however, what had been mere annoyance at the traffic became something approaching panic. The drizzle had changed to freezing rain. I couldn’t keep it off the windshield. It iced as soon as it hit the glass, no matter how high I ran the defrost trying to melt it. I also realized that the steering wheel turned too easily. I was going at turnpike speed in a van with my wife and small sons, and I couldn’t steer. I also discovered that I had to keep the accelerator pedal very steady. Either releasing it or attempting to accelerate, even slightly, produced an immediate skid. As for brakes, forget it. I was driving on pure ice, and so were the cars, pickup trucks, and 18-wheelers a few feet beside, ahead of, and behind me.

The road was slick as frozen glass, yet none dared slow down. To do so would have been to get creamed. The freezing rain began to mix with snow and blow harder. It was dark as night by three o’clock, and we were trapped at 65 mph between two roaring, big rigs, a gas tanker in front of us and a flatbed with some big tarpaulin-covered machine on it behind us that seemed intent on eating my van for lunch. Still there was no letup in the traffic. Slowly it dawned on me why no one was getting off: they couldn’t! The ramps were too steep and slick. No one could slow down enough to negotiate them safely. No one could exit our impromptu convoy. We were all stuck at the same speed till the end of the ride. And being between two metal walls that completely blocked my vision, I couldn’t see any exits approach. Whatever signs there were just went by to the right in a blur.

“Can’t we stop? Can’t we just get off?” Barb pleaded.

“I’m trying,” I returned, but I couldn’t imagine where or how.

Every once in awhile there would be some fuzzy pink arc lights amidst the foggy gloom, and some shadows, and soon another ramp would flash by. The semi's held us in a tight vise. We couldn’t have slowed to exit without getting sandwiched like sardines between those rigs. On our right were hulking crags of the Cumberland’s looming against the road and signs to watch for rockslides--the least of my worries. On our left were occasional guardrails and deep ravines.

At length the trucks released us and moved on to other prey, however. Amidst cars again, I felt a little better.

“Oh no!” Barb suddenly gasped. “He’s going to crash!”

The blue car two vehicles in front of us spun out, hit a guardrail against the median and showered sparks as it scraped and bumped along the whole length of the metal. The guy ahead of me somehow managed to avoid him and go on. Then, losing control, the blue car careened across my lane and spun 180 degrees sideways right in front of me, headed back to the median. I could see the terrified face of the driver through the glass as he gaped wide-eyed into my headlights, sure I would smash him to smithereens. But he was going just as fast on that ice sheet sideways as I was going straight at him! Finally his spinning wheels propelled him out of my path, and he disappeared for a brief moment over the embankment into the deep median, then reappeared churning and spinning his way along parallel to me, striving mightily to regain the road by swerving and plowing through the deep snow. It was no use. His rusty Pinto’s dim little lights soon disappeared into the gloom in my side mirror.

No one would help him for hours, I was certain. He would just have to try to stay warm. I had visions of that happening to us.

“I want to stop,” Barb sobbed. “Please, just stop.”

I winced and gripped the wheel tightly. Then there was a solid thud and we lurched forward as Barb screamed. “What was that?”

“We’re hit!” I yelled. “Somebody rear-ended us.”

“Well, stop, then! Pull over!”

“I can’t!"

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t stop!”

Only then did it occur to us that Stephen and Scott were in the rear seat. “Steve, Scott, you guys okay?”

“We’re okay, Mommy. Somebody hit us.” Scott began to cry.

“Who is it? Are they still back there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The window’s dirty.”

We seemed to be moving uphill and slowing, then suddenly we lurched forward and leveled off. The other vehicle--probably a car--seemed to have smashed up onto my Chevy van’s flat rear bumper when I had tried to brake ever so slightly, ridden up on it far enough to get hooked on my trailer hitch ball, been dragged along over the ice for a time with the rest of us as part of our entourage, then lurched off at some point, all at about 68 miles an hour, on ice. They may have stopped, swerved off the road, or gone on. We’ll never know. We honestly couldn’t stop to investigate.

It appeared that they were unhurt and we were unharmed also, though I had no idea what I might find at the rear if and when I ever did come to a stop alive. Our only chance of not having a worse wreck was to keep moving with the flow. If we did succeed in ever getting off somewhere without getting hit, we couldn’t get the traction to start moving again on the ice sheet that was now everywhere, and there was no place to pull over and get out.

By this time Barb was begging me to stop driving, but I couldn’t get off at any of the ramps. When I tried once and turned my wheels, the van kept going in a straight line and we coasted right by the ramp! It was that slick, the worst driving we ever had to attempt. It was turning into the trip from hell.

We crossed the state line into Tennessee, and I hoped for some improvement. I don’t know why I thought that a different state meant an end to the nasty weather. Traffic still had not begun to thin out, especially the trucks, and it took us till nearly eight o’clock to get to Nashville, even though it was only 37 miles further.

It took us three and a half hours to go that 37 miles, in what would have been a half-hour’s ride in the summer. The trucks ahead of us slowed to a near standstill going up the steep hills, then, cresting, they would fairly race their engines barreling down the other side. Those behind us blared on their horns for us to get out of their way so they wouldn’t lose momentum going up the next rise.

Several times we just stopped and waited, miles of us in a row, while someone slipped and spun his way forward to the top. Then we’d all spin our wheels and try to slide up behind him. Some made it, some just pulled off and parked. We managed to keep going. We were miles from the nearest exit. There was nowhere else to go. During that run we saw at least four cars and semi trailers go off the road with our own eyes, and saw at least a dozen others overturned in the median or the berm and disabled by the road from earlier in the storm. It was like driving through a war zone, a slow-moving wreck, a kaleidoscope of twisted metal, ice, wind, snow, rock, streaking lights and broken glass--nothing you could focus on, just grinding, roaring, menacing forms and images all around for six hours of harrowing, skidding slide into oblivion.

It’s a good thing we had a van. A lighter vehicle would have never made it. As it was, I couldn’t get off myself until the traffic finally thinned east of Nashville on I-24, at Winchester, about ten o’clock that night. Every ramp in Nashville had been either too steep or too tight and abrupt, or we couldn’t see well enough through the gloom and the glare to make a decision because our windows kept icing up too badly, or we couldn’t slow down because of vehicles behind us on that glazed road ice sheet. I have never been in a situation before or since where I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t get off, couldn’t stop and couldn’t control anything but try to keep the van pointed forward and steer for dear life, hour after hour.

When we did reach the ramp at Winchester and managed to ease off the ice pack successfully to the safety of a motel, we couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time. I was literally shaking from nerves. Barb had nightmares all night about it. What a relief it was to get over Monteagle into the southern air as temperatures rose above freezing the next day, and we headed down I-75 into Georgia and home.