Winter is coming and I’ve been thinking of icy breath and the sting of blowing snow. It happens every year when I start thinking of ice and snow and cold that I think of one adventure on a very cold weekend.

It was a week or two before Christmas, some twenty-five years ago when Mike McNett was off in Iowa attending classes at the big Buckeye. Mike was interested in coming home for the holidays and I had one day off from work in which to come and get him. I had an old ‘72 GMC pickup then, bought from my dad for the very reasonable price of “I’ll pay you back as I can”, and she was a good old truck. It would pound ungracefully through whatever I pointed it at, not unlike how bridge pilings move out of the way when a barge makes its own channel downstream.

I set off late on a Saturday afternoon after work, watching my speed so as to make the most of the horrible gas mileage and small, behind-the-seat gas tank. You could, on an open stretch of highway almost hear the gurgling, happy slurping of paychecks being sprayed against the spark plugs. I made the trip in about 8 hours, putting me in Ames sometime after midnight. I was pretty steamed for awhile, since at the end of an eighteen hour day my buddy Mike was nowhere to be found - out partying somewhere like a good college man will.

Whether I found him, he found me or I just went to sleep I don’t recall, nor is it important to the story. After cleaning about twenty inches of snow out of the truck, we loaded up Mike’s things in the bed on a crystal cold Sunday and finally left Ames an hour after noon figuring to hit home around 9 p.m. It wasn’t too late, we thought, and I would be back early enough, I thought, to get some sleep before having to get up at five in the morning and head to work.

Mike talked about his college stories and we laughed all the way to Dubuque. The sky had long since darkened, but by the time we crossed the Mighty Miss there were big, fat flakes of snow falling. Ten miles south of Savannah, IL they were still falling fat and heavy, but now they were falling fast and starting to blow in lazy swirls in the middle of the road. For those of you unfamiliar with that particular piece of geography, northern Illinois is a spiderweb of two-lane, curving and sweeping old buggy roads that join a string of farms together from one point to another.

I was driving two-lane roads my father had taught me my whole life, and those roads were slowly drifting closed with both of us still a few hours from home, and because of the increased difficulty of breaching into and out of blizzard winds the needle connected to the gas tank crept lower, and lower, and lower; and by now we were both down to a couple of dollars between combined wallets.

We were some point between Mount Carrol and Pearl City when I was so exhausted, and the truck struggling so hard to breach the drifts that we decided to pull over and wait for the plow. I kept (and still do keep) several warm blankets in my truck for winter time so we snuggled up as comfortably as we could in that small cab, my window cracked open just enough to give us some fresh air and a light dusting of snow for me.

I’m not sure how long we slept, a couple of hours at most probably when we were awakened by knocking and scraping noises. It was still dark and then suddenly a shaft of blinding light penetrated the glaze of ice and snow on the window into my face followed by a seemingly disembodied eyeball. (AAAAAaaaahhhhhh!!!) A sheriff’s deputy, it turned out, trying to scrape enough frost off the window to see if the truck was abandoned or occupied by a couple of corpses. The plow had opened up the road and we followed the cruiser into Pearl City where we were allowed some hot, sour coffee and a phone call to Mike’s mom to let her know we were safe. I don’t recall much of the conversation, probably because Mike was doing a lot more listening than talking.

The corner gas station was completely inundated with snow drifts, so even if anyone had been able to loan us any money we would have had to dig our way both in and out. We started out from Pearl City, at that point only a dozen miles from home with a fuel indicator known for its variance of accuracy. We made it about a mile or two at most when the truck started to sputter. Eagle eyes Mike spotted a farmer out early getting his tractor warmed up, so we gambled on his having some gas and drove up his lane. After some meekly plied promises to return the next day to pay him back we emptied his five gallon can into the tank and headed out for home.

We got to Mike’s mother’s house without further misadventure, and I figured I had just enough time to drink a new and much better cup of coffee before heading off to work. The last thing I remember thinking about was how kind that farmer was to give us what was probably the gas he needed for his snow blower, and who was probably thinking to himself that he’d chalk that one up to youthful charity when I was awakened by Mike’s mom asking me if I had to be at work. Through a groggy haze of exhaustion I asked her what time it was, found out I was already 2 hours late for work, and so made the wild half hour drive only to find out that while everything was closed down that day I had still been written up for being late. I still haven’t conquered that logic after all this time, but it was what it was. I had just enough gas to get home, still stone dead tired just in time to find my dad drinking some coffee in the kitchen, wondering where the hell I had been all night.

I grabbed a half-cuppa and told him I’d relate the whole story once the sidewalk and driveway were shoveled (a very, very wise decision on my part) and promptly left him to the rest of the pot. It took me about an hour to clear everything, and I couldn’t recall being so exhausted but went in to calm the waters anyway. An excellent sign was that there was a fresh pot on the burner (even though more coffee was the last thing I wanted at that point.) I nursed another cup slowly as I told the whole long story to my dad, who simply chuckled and told me to get some sleep. My father was incredibly understanding about adventure and conversely incredibly intolerant of stupidity. I had squeaked by on the positive side of the dividing line and so he let me be.

My dad had always been somewhat dubious of Mike for his own reasons and it took a fair amount of cajones on my part to brace him about our friendship. Having risked a bit of madness to go and get Mike from the cornless, windswept middle of Iowa was a demonstration of loyalty that I later came to understand was just the kind of language my dad understood in his muscles and bones.

In closing this chapter, Mike and I did scrape together a few dollars and went back to repay the farmer a couple days later. I’m not certain but I think my dad might have given me the cash.

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I’ve related that story to a few friends and acquaintances over the years and no one I’ve talked to can even imagine allowing one of their kids to do anything even remotely similar. Mike and I were young, without question, but neither of us were children. I frequently wonder if we as a society are too guarded with our young adults. I’m not qualified to talk about the freedoms or restrictions given to kids as I chose long ago not to have any. I’d like to think I would have prepared mine for something as simple as a long drive to help a friend in need. I’d also like to think I had an excellent mentor for raising and educating what someday I would have to set free and trust to care for him- or herself.

But like I said… I’m probably not qualified to make a statement like that.