Highway Curling

 Highway Curling

Back in the late 1960’s, I drove truck part-time, and also attended school. One route, a night-time trip, took me from Milwaukee north to Appleton, with stops along the way.  The route, Highway 55, ran along Lake Winnebago for some twenty-five miles. It was here on a snowy and windy night that I ran into the first obstacle of the trip, large snow drifts covering the roadway. My truck quickly got bogged down and finally stopped, stuck with wheels spinning. 

Because it was the wee hours of the morning with no other vehicles on the road, and cell phones then were still in the realm of science fiction, I had to put out flares around the truck and wait for help. After a time, as the stormy sky started to lighten up in the east, a big snow plow truck pulled up, the driver put a chain from his truck to mine, and he pulled my truck out of the drift. After thanking him profusely, I followed him in my truck as he cleared one lane of the roadway through the deep snow. I made it to Appleton, surprising everyone at my destination, and unloaded. The people there told me that it was their understanding that, though the snowfall had been huge, some fifteen inches, and winds hadn’t abated much, my best bet was to go east to Highway 57, and follow that well-traveled road back to Milwaukee. I did so and encountered much bigger problems on the way.

By the time I reached Highway 57, the snowfall had stopped, though the wind still hadn’t. The sun, however,  was high and the sky blue. Snow continued to blow at times across the roadway, and, at these times, I had to slow way down out of concern for slippery pavement. This was especially the case when I came upon “cuts” along the highway. When roadways are built, a common practice in order to level them is to bulldoze through small hills to make a cut. A level surface is great for driving most times, but with snow blowing over the top of the cut onto the highway, it creates a hollow where not only does snow accumulate, but also where, as it blows through the air, it reduces visibility, sometimes totally and even during the day. I approached these places with all due caution, slowing down to a crawl when visibility, as well as slipperiness, became a problem.

This worked well on Highway 57 for many miles until I got within a couple miles north of the city of Plymouth. Here I entered a cut and slowed way down to maybe ten miles per hour. This cut was so thick with flying snow, my eyesight could not penetrate very far into it. I applied the brakes gently to prevent a slide, but this time I skidded on ice. As I did so, the back end of a car appeared out of the white-out, going even slower than I. I could not stop, and bumped him. The car disappeared again, and apparently spiraled around on the ice, landing in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. I cautiously proceeded out of the cut, pulled over on the shoulder, put my four-way flashers on, and ran back to see if the driver was alright. I blew a sigh of relief when I saw the driver out of his car surveying the damage. Another sigh of relief came when I saw that the damage was slight, a dent in the bumper. I wasted no time, but got out the last of my flares and placed them on the roadside on both ends of the cut. Then I apologized for hitting his car. To my surprise, he was understanding and even friendly. We waited for a short while, bemoaning the predicament, but soon flagged down a passing motorist. The man said he lived a short way down the road, was headed home, and would call the state patrol. 

In a matter of a few minutes a patrol officer arrived, and called in a tow truck. While we waited, the officer took our information and filled out his report. Soon the tow truck came and winched the car out of the ditch. The car, however, had sustained more damage to its undercarriage than we had thought as it went into the ditch, and had to be connected up to the boom of the tow truck in order to be towed to a mechanic. The wind and snow continued to blow in the cut. I needed to return to my truck to get my driver’s license to show the officer. As I was walking back to the tow truck, I dropped my license and the wind blew it onto the shoulder. As I went quickly to retrieve it, a semi came barreling through the cut, slid just enough to clip the car as it hung from the boom of the tow truck. The car was basically totalled, the tow truck unscathed. The driver whose car I had hit again astonished me with his humor and equanimity. He said to the tow truck driver, “Well, instead of towing it to the mechanic, I guess you’ll have to tow it to the junk yard.” As for me, I was, for the first time in my life, happy that I had dropped something in the wind. For I surely would have been flattened by the semi.

I drove the man to Milwaukee, where, it turned out, he was to be a competitor on an ice rink. It was a curling match I took him to, a sport which involves sliding heavy objects on ice into other heavy objects, much like we had done out on Highway 57.