The sky is falling!

Apparently we are having some big scary snowstorm. Um, okay.

I believe, and this is not backed by a shred of evidence at all, that lawsuit fears have made us so safety conscious that no one knows how to drive when the tiniest blip of precipitation falls from the sky. This, of course, makes things more dangerous.

When I was a kid, I walked to the school bus stop in a foot of snow. My kids won't walk to it again until it's bone dry. I rode along as my parents and the rest of the planet navigated snow-covered roads to go about our business. My kids see that the streets are practically abandoned when we drive on wet streets after a quater inch of snow has fallen on what would be a busy Saturday evening, with businesses practically devoid of customers. I was raised to not fear the great white plague of the pavement, and confindently battled the slush and ice and little white things falling from above. My kids will be stranded and not know what the heck to do when an inch of snow triggers some Weather Security elevated alert level.

Whenever the wheather panic button is pushed, it reminds me of the Christmas Eve blizzard of 1983.

We had been skiing in Colorado, and had plans to reach my grandparents house in northeastern South Dakota by Christmas eve. We didn't get far when it was apparent that the weather was going to be a bit nasty, but dad wasn't going to stop and stay in some hotel in Rapid City on Christmas Eve. I don't know if he didn't think it was that bad, or it was the South Dakota boy in him, or if he was just being a stubborn fart. We pushed eastward.

It's a good thing we had been skiing, because the temperature was at least 30 below, with a wind chill of 70 below. We were decked out in full skiing regalia, layers upon layers, with blankets to boot. We still froze our asses off. Dad put a piece of cardboard over the radiator grill to keep the frigid air from locking up the engine. They closed the interstate, and we were in the whiteout on the interstate in South Dakota, with not a Stuckey's for miles around.

We edged forward at no more than 10 mph. I could only see the truck in front of us when it was within a few feet of our van. How the heck we were supposed to find an exit, I had no idea, yet somehow we did. Relief came in the form of a small motel that still had empty rooms that had been locked up for the winter. That means there was no heat or water. But we had beds, and that must have been better than the school auditorium we heard people were sleeping in nearby. Dad took off on a secret mission and returned.

We slept in all our ski-clothes layers, and awoke Christmas morning to find that no one could get their vehicle started. Again, dad disappeared, and returned with our van. He had gone out the night before, knowing that he should be able to find a farmer with a heated garage somewhere. And that's what he did. Our van had more heat than we did that night.

We spent a good part of the morning jump-starting vehicles in the motel parking lot, and everyone went on their way. The skies were clear for the final leg of our trip.