This Month's Story

I realize the story I’m about to tell didn’t happen at Christmas but it still is as much of the essence of Christmas as the drummer boy’s story.

It actually happened just after Thanksgiving several years ago when I was returning to Mississippi from a visit with my son in Maryland. I left at about noon, figuring it was going to be a long drive and I would get a good ways along before stopping for the night and finishing the trip the next day. Some snow was forecast and I wanted to get ahead of it.

When I reached Richmond, heavy flakes were starting to fall and the Virginia road crews were already out clearing the little amount of snow that had started to accumulate. I had all-weather tires on my car and decided I would continue until it got worse and then quit for the night.

It was a mistake.

As I crossed into North Carolina, I found that there were no state road crews out and the snow was already starting to drift across the road. There was little to no traffic. After about fifty or so miles, conditions started to get bad and I began to think about stopping. I passed a sign advertising a Holiday Inn thirty miles ahead.

By now I had slowed to about thirty miles an hour and consoled myself that this would only be another hour’s drive. Although the road conditions had deteriorated to only one lane, the car was handling well and it seemed to me that conditions were as bad as they could get. In a little over one hour I would be in a nice warm bed.

I was wrong. The radio was of little help. Mostly static and various North Carolina announcers telling me how the snow had caught everyone by surprise and that schools would be closed tomorrow. Oh yes, and that the storm was expected to worsen.

By now I knew this. The road had become extremely bad and I kicked myself when I realized I had just passed an exit. I wanted to turn and head back to Richmond. The sign immediately after the exit ramp said that the next exit was fifteen miles. Maybe there would be a motel or something.

Soon I was down to five miles an hour and I realized it would take all my skill at driving for the next three hours to make it to the exit. I concentrated on staying inside the two barely visible ruts in the road. For the first time, I started to worry, the storm was getting even worse, and my gas gauge said less than a quarter of a tank.

Three times I saw dark humps that were cars lying at odd angles in the center median and in the down slopping shoulders that bordered the road. These were mostly covered by snow and their interiors were dark. Were they abandoned or were there people in these cars? I was too scared to stop, not sure I could get my skidding, twisting car moving again. And even if I did stop, I had no coat or boots to push my way through the deep snow to those isolated mounds to check.

Finally, the exit appeared and it seemed that the wind had blown the ramp clear of snow. I started up and found that although, the snow was gone, there was ice. I was half way up when the rear of the car turned slightly and, before I could compensate, I had spun off the ramp deep into a snow bank.

I was helpless. There was no way I could get the car out of the snow. Even my getting out of the car was impossible. With the shoes I had on, I might as well have been barefoot. I turned the headlights off and for the first time looked around me. There was not a filling station or any sign of a motel at the road at the top of the ramp, not even a house. Nothing.

Up to the head of the ramp, I could see what appeared to be two dim headlights moving down the ramp toward me. It was a John Deere tractor and it stopped just above me and the driver climbed down from the tractors single seat and moved down the slope to where I was stranded.

I rolled down the window and stared at the bundled up figure peering at me through a heavy muffler.

“I can’t pull you up to the top, the ice is too much,” he yelled over the noise of the wind. “Ain’t nothing up there anyways. If I get you down, do you think you can make it to the next exit? It’s about eight miles and there’s a motel there and stuff.”

I nodded and he went back to the tractor and got a towline. For a moment he disappeared in the snow in front of the car and then stood up and, giving me a thumbs up, headed back to his tractor. All of this was slow going in the snow and once he slipped on the ice. Once back at the tractor, he mounted the seat and after twisting around to signal me once more, drove the tractor down the ramp.

The car twisted violently and then moved slowly out of the bank up onto the side rather than on the roadway. I realized he was trying to keep off the icy ramp where I would perhaps slide and run him down. I started the engine to keep the car somewhat under control and after a few minutes he had pulled me back on the highway into the two barely visible ruts.

He got down and again, disappearing under the car, retrieved his towline and placed it on the rear of the tractor. Slowly, almost ponderously, he made his way back to my window.

“It ain’t perfect,” he panted, “but it’s the best I can do.” I was exuberant with my thanks and asked how much I owed him.

“No money,” he laughed. “I heard the news of the snow on the radio and came over to the exit here to see if I could help some. I live with my wife about a mile down the road. We don’t have this kind a’ weather too often. Figured people would be needing a tow or something. I managed to help about five.

“You’re the first come by in awhile. I’m going to have to call it quits; I’m freezing cold. Been here almost four hours. I don’t reckon anyone else will be able to get here anymore tonight.”

I could see the bundled figure in the dim light off the reflecting snow. I couldn’t tell if he was heavy set or thin, or even how old he was. He seemed of average height although in the snow it was hard to tell. Except for the North Carolina accent, he was undistinguished in any way. I could have passed him on the street and not even noticed our passing. Yet here he was when I needed help.

We said goodbye and I drove on, taking my concentration off the road for a split second to see in back of me, the light of his tractor going back up the ramp.

About an hour or so later, I made it to the Holiday Inn that was packed with stranded travelers such as myself. It was another adventure that while memorable to me is not the purpose of my telling about this incident. My main purpose is to describe a man who left his warm house to go down to the road “to see if I could help some.” And when he found that he could, he stayed until he could help no more.

No, it wasn’t Christmas, but the spirit that permeates this time of year for us appears to stay in his heart for all of the days of the year. I’ve decided that when I die and go to heaven, he will be the first person I’ll look up. If he is not there, I’ll go out by the gate and wait.

He’ll be along, sooner or later.