Take those icy corners slowly

The gravel road in front of my house is slick with heavy ice.

The school bus that picks up my son hasn't been able to stop at our driveway to pick Timmy up, it slides right by. Timmy must walk down the road to get on the bus after it finally glides to a stop.

This ice is dangerous to drive on and walk around on outside. Older people will be staying indoors more because it is too dangerous to walk on the icy sidewalks. Breaking a wrist or hip can happen quickly on the dangerous ice.

The heavy ice on the roads and sidewalks will make the winter seem longer. It is taking me an extra 15 minutes to drive on the secondary roads before I can get to the main roads that are more cleared off.

Around 12 years ago we had a winter similar to this one. Most of that winter the gravel roads had the same heavy coating of ice on them that they do this winter. This was the first winter that my son, Danny, had his farmer's license. He was in basketball and took turns driving back and forth to practice with another neighbor boy his age.

The two did fine driving to morning practices, but at night after a practice when they were pumped up full of energy and hungry, whoever was driving would often take the turn on the gravel road to our house too fast. Night, after night Danny would slide his vehicle into the ditch. Tom had to pull his car out with our tractor night after night. One night the neighbor boy, Jay, was driving his dad's four-wheel-drive pickup when he took the corner too fast and slid the truck into the ditch.

Jay told Danny, "Ah this is nothing, we can drive into the field and get right out of here."

Jay drove the pickup further down into the ditch and crashed through the snow, into the plowed field. The ground underneath wasn't frozen, and the field was soft and muddy. Jay got the pick up stuck even deeper. He and Danny walked the quarter mile to our house and called Jay's dad. His dad drove over with another four-wheel-drive pick up, and he got this stuck. Tom drove him home to get his tractor, which was larger than ours. It became a long cold night getting the two vehicles out of the field.

Needless to say, Jay's dad was really upset and loudly proclaimed to his son to drive more carefully and to slow down. Actually he said a lot more than that, but I wasn't present to hear it. Danny and Tom said that they had never seen him so angry.

Tom and I decided that Danny was getting a good lesson in winter driving. But when a young boy is 15 and driving for the first time, it takes him a while to get the message to slow down in his head.

A couple nights after the incident of the two trucks in the ditch, I was taking a walk at night with my daughter Bridget, and I heard Danny's car coming down the road. The car had a distinct sound that went tick, tick, tick as it drove along and could be heard a mile away.

I said to Bridget, "Here comes Danny. He is driving too fast again. Let's head up into the fields because I know he will be going into the ditch again, and I don't want to see it."

Bridget and I headed up into the fields and took a long walk. When we got home, Tom said that he had just gotten indoors from pulling Danny out of the ditch again. Bridget and I acted as if we hadn't heard Danny driving home.

Danny never did learn to slow down that year, but he is safe driver now. All my kids had to learn to slow down, as have I. This winter, I will be taking my time driving on these icy roads as I don't want to end up in the ditch. Take care yourself on the icy roads and sidewalks the next couple of months.