As I watch the snow coming down with some of the flakes half the size of a snowball, I think back to the last time we had snow like this. The weather lady said it has been two years. A good snow cover is very important for the ground water and we haven’t had that in some time.
The freezing rain and ice were a surprise when I stepped off the porch this morning. I turned around and got my cane before trying to get off the walk and across the blacktop to put mail in the box. I inched along the blacktop until I got to the driveway to my daughter’s house. Her two cats were waiting for breakfast! The front steps were a solid sheet of ice but I finally got up on the porch. I fed the cats and Shadow decided he was going out. I said, “Alright, you’ll stay out until I can get back to put you in.”
Ice Melt and cane in hand, I carefully went down the steps. I took care of the steps and then threw Ice Melt on the blacktop so I could get across to my yard. That’s the first time I have ever done that but I had to get back to my house.
I thought back to the morning I encountered black ice on Moyers Gap. The temperature was 38 degrees when I left for work—no thought of ice on the road. I had experienced how dangerous Jack Mountain and Moyers Gap can be in the winter, many years before this day. There is a culvert right in the cut next to the driveway to the late John Bowers’ home, and ice would freeze up over the road. It snowed while I was at work and the road hadn’t been plowed, and when my car changed gears passing over this snow-covered ice—it was gone. The car flew across to the right shoulder and back across to the left shoulder into the bank. This all happened in a split second! I thought now what do I do? I managed to get the car back to Mr. Bowers’ driveway. I started walking up Jack Mountain, and I don’t remember who the kind person was that came along and brought me home. My husband pulled the car home. The passenger side was damaged and the front tire flat. My first car accident.
Getting back to another black ice story—I got down over Jack Mountain and started down Moyers Gap when I saw a truck hanging down over the road in the one sharp turn halfway down the gap. I tried to stop and found out the road was a solid sheet of ice. I managed to inch across the road to the other shoulder and park. It wasn’t long until someone else came along and got stopped before they hit me. Our worry now was that someone may not get stopped, and we knew a bus loaded with children was coming behind us. I don’t know who but someone got word to the bus driver and it was stopped before it got to where we were waiting. We waited for the state road to get there. They had to get the truck back up on the road before they could get by. A telephone pole had stopped the truck or it would have gone all the way to the creek below. After a good layer of cinders, we were able to get safely down the gap. The children and I got to school two hours late.
I would ride the school bus when I first started working and remember the time the late Jim Ralston was driving and it snowed before school let out. He hung up in the turn right above the late Claude Simmons’ house and slid down over the culvert—there was no getting out of there. Once again I started walking up Jack Mountain toward home but this time I had company. There were children from Sandy Ridge, Moatstown, and the Sinnett Lane area. My late husband, his brother-in-law and a friend came along on their way from work. They brought me, our children, and Kathy Propst home while the other students walked on. That was quite a walk for some of them and they didn’t have any boots either.
I recall another time and the late Giffin Lambert was driving the bus on the Front Thorn and Black Thorn. He hung up one evening just before you get to Totten Chapel Cemetery on the Black Thorn. Some of the older boys helped him to get the chains on and we came on home.
My sister was working as a substitute cook at Franklin Elementary School on one of these days when it had snowed during the night. We took the four children and the laundry for two families and headed out in the Ford Pinto. For some reason rather than crossing Jack Mountain, we headed down the Lower Thorn. I don’t like that road in the heat of summer! We arrived at school only to learn that school had been called off. We went to the laundromat and did the laundry, then headed home. Surely the state road had scraped Moyers Gap and Jack Mountain by the middle of the day. The road hadn’t been scraped or had drifted back but right above the Bowers’ house; she was pushing snow with the front bumper. We inched our way up the mountain and got home. Guess you could say the two of us were a force to be reckoned with if we set our minds to something. We usually had the four children with us. That’s what young mothers do when husbands leave on Monday morning and return on Friday evening in order to have a job. You learn very quickly what needs to be done and do your best to see those whatever needs doing, it’s up to you.
I have never been a real fan of snow and ice since my days of walking a mile in deep snow to get to the school bus. School was rarely if ever closed when I was in school—you got there or was counted absent for the day.
This morning’s snow reminded me that years ago I braved the deep snow, wind and ice most times with little trouble, but many was the time I would have much rather been safe at home.
Violet R. Eye
January 6, 2024
