In 1975 we had an invitation to a wedding. It was the only wedding and reception I’ve ever heard of that happened all at night. It seemed to be somewhat in the vein of vampires, but who was I to judge?
It was late into winter and snow had fallen all afternoon. I wondered if the wedding would be called off, but I didn’t think that was done just because of the weather. Joyce, Annie and I loaded up in the family station wagon, in the bitter cold, and started out for the wedding. There was perhaps two inches of fresh snow falling on top of two more inches of well-packed snow on the road from our house to the major U.S. highway. I drove nice and slow to avoid any problems like sliding off of the road. We were poor then (not much changes in life) and I couldn’t afford a tow truck bill. We drove the half-mile from our house to the junction at highway 5. I approached a “T” junction on the road. A pickup truck left the highway onto our road. He made a wide swing off of the highway, so he wouldn’t slide, but he forced me to move closer toward the shoulder as I applied my brakes to stop before entering the highway. The car started sliding toward the ditch as soon as I touched my brakes. I knew we were going into that ditch no matter what I did, so I made the decision not to just lay down and let it happen. I told Joyce to hold on because I wasn’t going to get stuck in this ditch on a Saturday night and have to walk home. I gunned the engine as we slid into the ditch, climbing to the top of the other side, and then turned the wheel to avoid the trees at the edge of the woods, sending me back down into the ditch, heading the car up toward the highway. I turned the wheel back toward the trees again while I built up momentum to get onto the highway. The car was at a steep angle, so much so that the side window looked right out to the weedy ground just inches away. When I reached the top I told Joyce to hang on because I was going to swing the car across the ditch and onto the highway before before the ditch got so deep I couldn’t get out. I turned the wheel and stepped on the accelerator, running down into the ditch and hoping my forward motion was enough to carry me up the other side before I lost traction. We were lucky, the car just did roll onto the pavement as the back wheel started to spin. The highway had just been plowed and the pavement wasn’t very slippery so as I made my high-speed “U” turn to head in the correct direction, the car fishtailed a little and with more acceleration it straightened out nicely. We passed the road we had just slid off of and I could see the face of the passenger in the truck. He was looking to see if we made it out of the ditch. We were just a short way up the highway when Joyce said: “I wondered how you could check and see if there were any cars coming just before you pulled out onto the highway.”
“A… I couldn’t,” I replied. “But I didn’t have much choice or time to think about it.” We were lucky we didn’t end up in that ditch and have to walk home, or worse, pull out in front of an oncoming car. It could have been one of those accidents you don’t walk away from.
We arrived in time for the wedding, one I really didn't want to attend. The wedding went well enough and soon after, we headed for home. As far as I know, the couple stayed together for many years.
Bill
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