Christmas 1969

part one of trip

At some point we entered I-55 north.  Somewhere in Mississippi, Sharyn was driving and I was sleeping.  We had agreed that when she passed a car, she would slow down to the speed limit.

At some point I jerked awake. She had slowed down and then began speeding up again.  However I saw a cop in the windshield with a red flashlight.  She pulled over.  She used her East TN accent to get the officer to write a 10 over ticket even though she had been going 85 in a 70 zone.

We sped through the night and got to Cincinnati in the morning.  We spent a few hours sleeping (probably at mom & dad's).  We arose and went to the wedding of Cathy Winstel Cook.

They left on  the honeymoon in the Poconos, where the snow was so heavy they were trapped in the hotel.

On Monday, we took the car into be repaired.  The points had been destroyed by the hard driving.

We stayed in Cincinnati through Christmas.

When we left, we took I-71 to Columbus then I-70 east.  We were about to enter the PA turnpike at New Stanton when we pulled off to get hot drinks.  There we found out the turnpike was about to close because of the snow storm.  We immediately left.

Somewhere between New Stanton and Breezewood, we were going down a slight grade with a slight curve.  I thought I saw something in the road, so I braked hard.  We did not have ABS so we started a skid and the car shifted to about 20-30 degrees to the right.  At the end of the skid, we hit a snow bank.  There was a skrunch.

Earlier a Cadillac had been abandoned on the turnpike.  It became covered in snow.  Three sailors in a Chevy rear-ended it.  They were the "something in the road".  When I skidded, they jumped into the snow bank.

They explained they were going to be AWOL at Norfolk.  We put one of them and his gear into the car, somehow.  We drove him to the Greyhound station in Richmond.  We then drove down Mechanicsville Pike.

We turned right over a creek that had a Civil War history marker.  We took the road to Cold Harbor.  On the road was the house of Sharyn's mother's mother and father - the Southworth's.  We stayed with them a few days.

We left for Oak Ridge where we stayed with Bob and Ruby Burrell.  A few more days and we went back to College Station.