It was 72 degrees and balmy when we opened the balcony door of our French Quarter apartment — a “rented” French Quarter apartment that is — Sunday morning just before 7:00. Normally we would not be awake that early on a Sunday — checkout day — but this year there was a looming ice storm approaching Mississippi so we had opted not to go to breakfast, and to just pack up and head home, hoping to beat the weather.
I had promised wife, Danny, that I had plans to get us home should winter storm Fern block our path, although one of them did include heading to Bay St. Louis, and waiting it out with one of her collage roommates, and dear friend still today, Debra Martin, and her husband Mike. I had already put Debra on standby and I’m pretty sure she was hoping we would have to come that way. She said we would have fun, and I’m sure we would have.
Neither Danny, nor I, are very savvy with those Roku televisions, so finding out much about the pending storm from the television in the bedroom was pretty frugal. But, as I always do because work goes everywhere we go, I had the office in tow in the form of the laptop and we were able to stream WLBT TV-3 and keep up with the latest conditions.
Anyone watching the storm, knows now, like we knew over the weekend, that nobody really knew what Fern had planned, or how far south that freezing line would drop.
We would just have to hit the road and do our best and that’s what we did. It was dry when we pulled out of the parking lot — an $80-a-day parking lot at that, and they didn’t even wash the car — but no sooner did we hit the Interstate, the bottom dropped out and the temperature started to drop. The further north we drove the faster it dropped and within 30 minutes, it had dropped nearly 30 degrees but was still above freezing.
“We’ve got this,” I told myself.
After all, we had plenty of experience driving in icy conditions from our days living in the Mississippi Delta. The Clarksdale corner of Mississippi, it seems, got a pretty good pelting of snow or ice every season and working folks couldn’t work from home back in those days. Working folks didn’t even have desktop computers back in those days, much less a laptop. I remember the computer system at the newspaper there being a whole room of all kinds of machines with great big spools of something or the other. That, however, has nothing to do with driving in snow or ice.
Back then, though, we longed for ten inches of snow and we would load up and head out to the Mississippi Levee, play hooky from work, and spend the afternoon sliding down and climbing back up, and hooky bobbing from the back of a pickup truck. These days I’m pretty sure I could handle the sliding down part, but that climbing back up might be a different story, and as for hooky bobbing, oh hell no!
Anyway, we headed out of New Orleans and back toward Mississippi and the rain got harder, and the temperatures continued to tick down, and I began to wonder how long it might take the Interstate to freeze over once the temperature gauge on the car dropped below 32.
Fortunately we were sort of moving just ahead of the front as we climbed northeastward toward Jackson until just before Brookhaven, where there was a distinct line marking rain vs freezing rain. It was like we blinked our eyes and the trees along the roadside were coated heavy in ice and hanging low to the ground.
Occasionally there would be ice pellets here or there, sleet I suppose, that would splat against the windshield and make us maybe a little more nervous. The temperature gauge still read 33 and seemed to be holding steady and we started driving a little bit faster than the posted signs suggest when it comes to the fastest one might drive on a regular day on I-55 in Mississippi.
Most folks, it appeared, had heeded the warnings, stayed at home, and were eating all that bread, and drinking all that milk, they had bought up a week ago. I don’t like milk, and don’t eat much bread, so I left it all on the shelves for those that do.
In wife, Danny’s, and my defense, we had made the reservations and paid in advance, well before Fern was even a twinkle in Father Nature’s eye, if there is such a thing when it come to catastrophic winter ice storms. And, did I mention that the reservations were non-refundable?
We would have gone anyway!
Like I said, we had plenty of experience driving on ice even if it was 40 years ago.
Plus, I had a plan. Several plans. Maybe good plans, maybe not, I don’t really know. I do know that we opted to stay Sunday night at the reservoir, we had beat the storm if only by inches at times and we only hit two slick spots and they were on Lakeland Drive in Flowood. We had power, and we had water, and the fireplace was warm,we ate pasta, and we dripped water all night, and all was well, so I guess we can say my plans came together. Sort of.
At this writing on Monday we were getting ready to settle back into our 150-year-old-plus drafty farmhouse, up on a windy hill in Sebastopol, for the rest of the week where we have a gas fire, gas stove, plenty to eat, and plenty of water to drip and drink.
That’s the new plan.
I hope all of your plans came together and you are warm and dry and safe. They say there may be some more colder weather coming this weekend so stay indoors until this all passes if you can.
One last note, do as I say, not as I do!
