When I was a kid, we definitely had winter. “Snow Days” occurred usually in January. It wasn’t a huge deal. Rarely, did we lose power, if ever. I’m not sure how this worked, but I can’t recall sitting in the dark freezing cold. Maybe we were just lucky through those times. It was not advisable to drive when the roads were icy, so mostly, we didn’t, but sometimes when we were going somewhere and we hit winter weather, well, we (Dad) just had to soldier on.
I remember once, going out to West Texas to my grandparents’ house for some holiday, probably Thanksgiving or Christmas, and we hit a snowstorm head on. It was night time. It was crazy scary, but being that Dad grew up in Oklahoma, he’d seen much worse. In these situations, it isn’t always us that is the issue, but usually “them” that do not have experience driving in snow or ice and do stupid driver tricks skidding out or doing donuts in the middle of the road, out of control.
Once we were going down to Houston for my grandmother’s birthday party and there was black ice on the freeway. Two cars in front of us collided, then parted just in time for us to shoot the gap, my Dad driving, just escaping a bad accident. We turned around and went home on the feeder road. It was scary for the passengers, that’s for sure.
Many times in other places I have lived, there have been snowy and icy roads that had to be traversed. Usually, we got through it, but not always was it pleasant, and usually, it was treacherous – but, we were very, very lucky most of the time.
Once again we have the onslaught of cold weather with a lot of people impacted by this. I am grateful we have, this time, been less impacted. As we know it could be worse, and it still could happen in the next couple of months. We’re not out of the woods yet.
