In a Fog

I am old. It happened again this week.  I see something on television.  This reminds me of something I experienced years ago.  Then my thoughts take off.  One memory leads to another.  I sit in the recliner and let my mind drift though memories.  Suddenly I realize an hour has passed.  Dirty mugs are waiting in the sink and I have not looked at Facebook for three weeks.  

CNN showed Chicago and Philadelphia buried under snow.  I’ve lived in both places.  I was in the Chicago area during the big blizzard of . . . can’t remember the year . . . Streets in Chicago were not cleared until spring, while Mayor Blilandic honeymooned in the Bahamas.  That ended his political career. 

As for Philadelphia, storms brought snow which melted after a few days.  People who live in those East Coast cities are as ignorant of what Midwest winters are like as Texas Baptists are ignorant of the beauty and meaning of a Catholic mass. 

Meanwhile, Texans shivered when the temperature fell to 45 degrees.  The television screen went gray; the weatherman said that pictured the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas hidden by fog.  

That brought a whole series of different memories.

It happened more than 60 years ago.  Dr. Audrey Wiley, head of the English department of the college we attended, brought Marjorie and me to Dallas to attend a writers’ conference.  That night as we headed back to Denton, the World was wrapped in the same kind of fog that hit Dallas last week.  Dr. Wiley gripped the wheel of her little car as she strained to see the roadway.  She drove slowly around curves on the two-lane highway.  Her headlights reflected back from a wall of gray fog which completely enclosed us. 

Marjorie and I huddled in the backseat in terror, yet I kept my eyes open, looking over Dr. Wiley’s shoulder for the danger which might suddenly crash through the thick gray curtain in front of us.  It seemed impossible that we met no speeding car coming from the opposite direction.  Yet we saw no lights, not from other cars, not from the few houses along that road.  We were as alone as if the Rapture had carried off everyone else in the World.  After midnight the professor finally let us out at our dormitory, where a sleepy attendant let us into the brightly lighted hallway. 

How times have changed!  Today we drive from Dallas to Denton on a six-lane highway, I-35E, lined on either side with auto dealers and franchise restaurants which serve the communities which have obliterated the farms which used to provide bucolic vistas along the old highway.  Denton is now a suburb of Dallas. 

I-35E is a north-south highway which runs from Canada to Mexico.  It was not I-35E which had problems in last week’s fog.  Fort Worth connects to Dallas with three west-east expressways   A local six-lane highway runs through the northern suburbs.  I-20 is on the south, and I-30 goes from downtown to downtown and on across the state.  I live just a half mile north of I-30; that’s the highway I take to go to the Dallas Museum of Art.  Last week it was on I-30, just east of me, that fourteen big trucks and some cars jack knifed and piled up in the fog.  The highway was closed for two days while cranes and bulldozers cleared away the mess. .      

My thought was “Typical Texans!”    They elected Governor Ric Perry and Senator Ted Cruz.  How could anyone expect them to have enough sense to drive through heavy fog?