On December 30 at 1:00 AM I started back from the Detroit Airport; the only thing on my mind was sleep. By 2:00 AM it became apparent that my family wouldn’t be reaching our home in the near future. It was 33 degrees and raining, road conditions were aligned for disaster. As the temperature began to drop, the thin film of water across I-94 froze and covered the entire stretch of road in black ice.
It became routine to see a car, hazard lights blinking red, in the snowy ditch every hundred yards, then every ten yards. Eventually, driving no faster than five miles per hour, we inched down the freeway weaving our way between accidents, numerous ambulances, and groupings of police cars.
We rounded a turn towards exit 186 and made it no further. Because of the bend, the road was slightly slanted. All vehicles came to a complete stop, at least in the forward direction. As cars slowed to a stop, they began to slide sideways towards the semi-trucks in the far right lane. I couldn’t take my eyes off the window as I watched a few cars slide slowly into the semi-trucks to the right.
My dad, who was the driver of our mini van, pulled far to the left placing half our car in the snow for traction. “Is this normal?” our exchange student from Argentina asked. She was met by a series of answers from the rest of my family,
“Definitely not.”
“I’ve never seen it this bad.”
“Not normal at all.”
After twenty minutes of waiting hopelessly for a salt truck to pass us by, my dad stepped out of the car to meet with the other drivers. “David! Don’t make me a widow!” my mom called after him. My brother got out of the car and shuffled away after my dad.
About an hour passed; I was cold, tired, hungry, and above all, curious. I found the boots my grandma gave me for Christmas, plucked off the tag, slid them on, and went to see where my dad had gone. Barely able to stand, I shuffled along the ice back the way we came.
I shuffled down the freeway past a few cars and eventually did find the salt truck. The salt truck itself had slid off track but that didn’t stop the it’s driver from doing his job. He had gotten out of his truck and climbed to the top of the salt pile in the back of the truck with a shovel. By the time I got there, he and other drivers from around the area, including my dad, had established a system of spreading salt. There was a line of drivers at the back of the salt truck all holding up containers. They were waiting for them to be filled so they could spread salt across the area, move cars out of the way, and get the salt truck unstuck.
The containers came from anywhere. An ambulance nearby had produced a large garbage can, which in the beginning, was the only container being used. Other drivers began to produce miscellaneous containers from their vehicles such as large Tupperware containers and even popcorn machine.
By the time I got there everything was wrapping up and it wasn’t safe to stay. The salt truck began to move, and the traffic began moving directly behind that. I headed back to my car, and as soon as my dad and my brother were safely in the car, we followed the salt truck home.
