Lucky Breaks: Blizzard on I 70

It was February 1, 1981—a Sunday. I had been visiting a friend in Columbus, Ohio, and was ready to return to Bloomington for the beginning of my last semester at Indiana University. I anticipated an uneventful trip along Interstate 70 to Indianapolis and State Route 37 to Bloomington. As I passed Springfield, Ohio, the wind picked up, and the first ominous snowflakes struck my windshield. North of Dayton, gusts rocked my Cutlass while the snow fell so fast that my windshield wipers could not keep up. Darkness quickly descended, and the snow was accumulating in such a way that I could no longer see the white line along the edge of the highway.

Blinding Snow and No Good Options

Courtesy goingslowly

When I reached Richmond, Indiana, traffic had slowed to a crawl. My car heater was unable to conquer the chill from the bitterly cold blasts. I wondered how long it would take me to get to Bloomington, and I worried that the snow on 37 would be a problem. The audacity of the impatient truck drivers amazed me, as the semis rumbled past within inches of my car. I knew they could not see any better than I could, and I could barely make out the taillights of the automobile ahead of me. The squalls were increasing to blizzard intensity as I crept along at five or ten miles per hour. I could see nothing but a hypnotizing pattern of snow as if my car were the Enterprise abruptly entering warp speed. Now and then, red lights flashed just ahead of my bumper, and I slammed on my brakes so as not to hit the car in front.

Somewhere near an overpass, the car ahead of mine stopped completely. I followed suit and waited nervously until the car behind me stopped. When I saw the driver emerge from the automobile in front, I released my seatbelt and got out. Drivers were walking forward, their heads down to shield their faces from the driving snow. We found a fender-bender had occurred, and one of the cars was disabled. We pushed the immobile car off to one side, and the driver of the working car kindly gave the other driver a ride. Fortunately, both had the same destination. We returned to our vehicles and slowly restarted our blizzard caravan.

When I came to Indianapolis, my radio announced that the state police had closed Interstate 70 because of the number of accidents, including a jackknifed semi, which was behind me. I had never been on a closed interstate before, and I wondered what the consequences might be. I approached a sign for the road where my brother lived and decided I would stay overnight with him, but, when I saw the condition of the exit ramp, I chickened out. It looked impassable to me. I had visions of becoming so mired in the snow that I would slide off the ramp. As I left the exit behind, I confronted the stark reality that I had no options left.

I knew that I would never make it to Bloomington, but I had no idea where to stop in Indianapolis. I saw a street sign with a name I recognized. I had once visited the home of a friend of mine in the IU Marching Hundred Band, and I remembered that he lived on that street. I wondered if I could find his house.

The exit ramp was level, and cars had bulldozed a lane along it. I took the exit. In the blinding snow, I kept watching for landmarks that might be familiar, even though I had been that way only once before. I could not believe my good fortune! I spotted the house, "a refuge from the storm"! I slid my Cutlass to a stop in the half foot of snow, hopped out, and rang the doorbell.

My friend’s parents were surprised to see me, but they quickly grasped my dilemma. They said it would be no trouble to put me up for the night. The mother brought me a cup of coffee—about the best coffee I ever had, especially because I was still shaking from the cold and from spending several hours in anticipation that my car would be involved in a crash. I joined my friend’s parents for dinner, and we passed the evening in conversation and laughter. As soon as I climbed under the covers of the bed in the guest room, I fell asleep and slept like a baby.

I had breakfast with my friend’s parents and stayed at their home until I felt certain that the streets were clear. To this day, I am grateful to them for sheltering me from the storm, and I consider it a lucky break that I could find my way to their house.    

Lucky Breaks: My Experience in Salamander Cave

When a friend from high school knocked on my dormitory door at Indiana University, I was surprised twice. My first surprise was his visit, which came with no warning. My second was his suggestion that we go spelunking. I asked him where we would find guides, and he replied that we needed none as he was an experienced caver.

Aaron Valandra in Salamander Cave

Posted by Richard Vernier for Indiana Cave Capers on Facebook

Before long, we had parked our car and had hiked to the entrance of Salamander Cave. The crevice lay beneath layers of limestone. Almost immediately, the squeeze was tight. We twisted this way and that. We crawled. We hunched over. We went on our knees. Eventually, we broke into a large room.

Our world now consisted of cold, pasty, yellow clay, but our flashlights revealed an indefinable beauty in the surface undulations. I felt we had broken into a vault that God had hidden. The cool air made me shiver. We dashed ahead to see what the next passageways and rooms might conceal.

There were bats in groups. They seemed only shadowy smudges on the ceilings. Whenever we encountered a choice of two paths, we tried to memorize whether we had turned left or right.

A growing fear gnawed my insides. I was not yet in a panic, but the onset of claustrophobia had definitely begun. Finally, I summoned my courage and said, calmly, “I suppose we should be retracing our steps soon.” My friend agreed. We started back.

… but we could not find where “back” was! Nothing—and everything—looked familiar. Confronting alternative passages, we asked each other, “Did we come that way or the other way?” Our memory failed us.

I eventually had to admit to myself that we were lost. We trudged onward for a long time. We found ourselves in a narrow channel with a foot of water in the bottom. Our shoes slid on the slippery bottom of the groove. The water deepened and deepened until it came up to our chins.

The batteries in one of our flashlights died, and we had brought no food. Angry thoughts flashed through my mind. Why had he claimed to be experienced, when clearly he was not? Why had I been so stupid as to agree to this nightmare?

When we came to a wall, we felt despair. We could hardly go back again, as the volume of water was increasing slowly but surely, and neither of us could swim. We gave no utterance to what we were thinking: that we were going to drown. I suggested that my friend switch off the flashlight to save what was left of the batteries.

We stood there in the silent water for many minutes. I began to imagine I could see a faint light high above my head. I assumed I was hallucinating, but I fished around for the claw hammer hanging from my belt all the same. I asked my friend to shine the flashlight on the wall, and I used the claws of my hammer to dig toeholds in the clay. With all the effort I could muster, I scaled the wall by digging toeholds as needed. I was seeing light! That day gave me a deep understanding of the biblical quotation “And the light shineth in darkness.” At the top, I found a horizontal gap just tall enough for me to slither through.

My friend followed my lead. The light grew stronger, and, sure enough, we escaped from the cave.

It was late afternoon. A steady rain was falling. We were no longer in the woods where we had entered the cave; instead, we were standing in a pasture with a few clumps of trees and brush. The drops falling from the branches looked like diamonds—the more exquisite because I was still alive to see them!

We had no idea where we were or how far away our car might be. We strode through the meadow and came to a road. We made a fortunate choice and walked in the right direction. After a few miles, we came to a crossroad that we recognized. Ultimately, we regained our vehicle.

As my “experienced” friend had broken every rule in the spelunking book, I was not too sorry to bid goodbye as he returned to the college that he was attending. I was unable to wash out the yellow clay stains in the white jeans I had worn, and I had to throw them away. Tossing the jeans in the trash was just a bad outcome of a bad business, though with a happy ending! I never went caving again. As of today, Salamander is a closed cave—off limits to amateur cavers.

Rustic Prints 6 (Last Installment in This Series)

What is not to love about this rustic print? It glows within the mat as if filled with its own light. The blue sky and white clouds are true to a summer’s day. A pleasant cottage with a white fence is barely discernible beneath the branches of the welcoming tree. A man walks a large fluffy dog by the trunk. Farmers load bundles of wheat, also known as sheaves, onto a wagon pulled by three horses. A rooster and a chicken, like Geoffrey Chaucer’s Chanticleer and Pertelote (in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”), wait happily, knowing they will find grains of wheat when the nearby shock is knocked apart.

Framed Rustic Print of Horses, Wheat, and Chickens

When I exhibited my farm steam engine at the Will County Threshermen’s Association show in Illinois in the 1990s, I enjoyed loading bundles of wheat in the late afternoon. Tired from the hard work of a hot day, I somehow managed to find a burst of energy when fellow exhibitors and I walked the short distance to the field. With a pitchfork, my friends and I lifted the bundles higher and higher until the wagons were stacked to the sky with sheaves of golden wheat. We could nearly always count on the sunset to be spectacular, with reddish orange rays slanting between the bundle wagons. Don’t get me wrong! It was a workout, and my muscles screamed afterwards. The joy was in doing honest and collaborative work as it had been done in my grandparents’ and parents’ days. The banter was ever friendly; the camaraderie, always memorable.

In helping to load bundles in Will County, I learned that a shock must be broken apart before the bundles can be lifted. Shocks of wheat are carefully piled groups of bundles, with at least one fanned out across the top to help shed the rain. For most of the time that wheat was threshed—that is, before wheat was harvested by means of the agricultural implement called a “combine”—standard wisdom held that wheat should “cure” in shocks or stacks for a few weeks before being threshed. Should it rain during the curing process, much of the rain would be shunted aside by the bundles carefully spread across the tops of the shocks.

After being propped together for many days, the wheat bundles are commingled enough to make lifting one of them a challenge. By the simple expedient of easy movements with a pitchfork, the shock is loosened in such a way that the bundles become disentangled, ready for loading. In this rustic print, the man wearing suspenders is standing over a shock that has been knocked apart. His actions remind me of those jubilant evenings in Will County!

I began this series by admitting that I am a sucker for old-time illustrations that can be described as “rustic prints.” With a farming scene as spectacular as this one, I am confident that my passion for such prints can be understood by everyone.