Slipping into Music City

By Mike VanBuren
From the early February edition of The North Woods Call

     You think winter’s tough in the north woods?
     Try getting around on snow and ice in the southern United States—say  Tennessee.
  My friend—a native of Nashville—calls it “Hillbillies on Ice.”  I call it weird.
     I learned about these challenges one strange February night on Interstate 40 in middle Tennessee.  My American Airlines flight had landed at Nashville’s International Airport around 8:30 p.m.  Temperatures were dropping fast and a drizzly rain began to fall as the big jet touched down and taxied to the terminal gate.
      No big deal.  I’m from Michigan.  I’m used to slick pavement and winter driving.  My biggest concern was finding the Holiday Inn and getting a good night’s sleep.  The next day would bring long hours in the edit suite at Elite Post on Music Row, putting the finishing touches on the Kellogg Foundation’s sustainable agriculture video.
      I stopped by the Avis desk and picked up a small rental car.  Then I threw my luggage into the trunk and headed out for the 20-minute drive into Music City, and a warm bed at the Holiday Inn.
    Traffic was light as I left the airport.  I was pleased to be keeping such a tight schedule.  At this rate, I’d have plenty of time to go over the edit script before turning in for the night.
     That’s when I saw it—up ahead in the westbound lanes of I-40.  The prettiest display of colored lights I’d seen since Christmas.  Flashing yellows.  Blinking reds.  Sparkling whites.  All accented by an icy glare on the road.  By the time I realized what I was getting into, I was far past the last exit ramp, rolling down a long incline toward a huge, six-lane parking lot.
      At least it looked like a parking lot.  There were cars, trucks, buses and vans everywhere—lined up like summer tourists at nearby Opryland.  I lifted my foot from the accelerator and pressed hard on the brake pedal, sliding to a not-so-graceful stop behind a pickup truck carrying two middle-aged men armed with open beer bottles.  I was relieved to stop before I rammed the vehicle, because it was one of those legendary trucks with a gun rack bolted over the rear window.
     At any rate, all three westbound lanes were clogged as far as I could see.  In a matter of seconds, I was imprisoned in the middle lane of a busy interstate highway, boxed in tighter than Carrie Underwood’s blue jeans by several other vehicles that came sliding in behind me.
    “Must be an accident,” I told myself, reaching to shut off the ignition.  “They’ll probably have it cleared in a few minutes.”
  I opened the car door and stepped outside.  It’s a good thing I had a tight grip on the metal doorframe, or I would have been stretched out on the cold, hard pavement with my feet wiggling in the air.  Several other people were also dancing around on the slippery blacktop, like clumsy Olympic figure skaters going for the gold in street shoes.
    I climbed back inside my car and started the engine.  The heat felt good on my chilled bones, so I let the motor run for 15 minutes or so.  Not being particularly interested in dying of carbon monoxide poisoning on a Tennessee highway, I eventually turned the motor off and waited until I started to shiver before switching it on again.
    After the first hour, I was getting a bit antsy.
     “What’s going on up there?” I asked the driver of the car parked next to mine, who seemed rather unconcerned with the delay.
      “Probably just the weather.”
   “A little ice on the road?  C’mon.  You’ve got to be kidding.”
       He wasn’t.  We sat for another hour.  Then another.  Then another.
   None of the other drivers seemed to think it was unusual to be sitting still on Interstate 40 in the middle of the night with no indication that the traffic would ever start moving again.  They just sat patiently in their cars and trucks and buses and vans—an apparently typical winter night on the Nashville freeway.
       After the fifth hour of starting and stopping and re-starting the car—too tired to stay awake and not wanting to fall asleep—I was sure I was either on Candid Camera, or lost in the Twilight Zone.  It was surreal.  I had been spinning the radio dial, listening to various news broadcasts and generally searching for a credible report about the huge traffic jam that had the city tied in knots.  Nothing.  Not a single mention of it on the airwaves.  And nobody but me seemed to think there was anything unusual about the information blackout.
     “Does this happen often?” I asked a young woman standing by the car behind me.
     “No.  It’s just the ice,” she said matter-of-factly.  “We’re not used to that down here, you know.”
      Oh, really?  As if they were used to spending the night on blocked freeways in sub-freezing temperatures.
     Along about 4:30 a.m., I leaned my seat back and was drifting in and out of a fitful slumber.  I don’t know how long I slept, but I was awakened with a start.  Bright lights were shining in my rear-view mirror and a loud air horn was rattling my car windows.  A huge salt truck had come weaving through the traffic behind me and the driver wanted us to move our cars out of the way so he could get through.
      Saved at last by a tardy truck driver and the blessed chloride that eats jagged holes in our automobiles.
      As the other cars edged off the road, I loitered between the middle and right lanes until the truck passed.  Then I moved in quickly behind the huge salt spreader and followed the yellow monster through a maze of stalled vehicles.  I nuzzled the back of the truck for about a mile-and-a-half —determined to hold my place—until we came to the first cars, parked smack in the middle of an open road.  No accident.  No barriers.  No pulling to the side of the road.  “Let’s just stop here, Jimmy—until spring.”
    I still don’t understand what happened that night.  I passed the salt truck on the three-lane stretch ahead and had no trouble moving about 35 miles-per-hour over the ice.  Within about 15 minutes, I was rolling into the Holiday Inn parking lot on West End Avenue, exhausted and bewildered.  It had been more than eight hours since I entered the traffic jam and I still had heard nothing on the radio indicating that there was a problem on the highway.
     I stumbled into the empty lobby and rang the bell to summon the desk clerk.  Within a few minutes, I was on the elevator to the seventh floor.  At the end of a long hallway, I slipped the key card into the slot and pushed open the door.  I was surprised when the door caught on the end of the security chain with a loud crash.
   “What the #%!?” I heard a sleepy, but startled man say from inside the darkened room.
    “Oops.  Sorry, “ I said, as I closed the door and made a hasty retreat to the elevator.  “Wrong room.”
    Back in the lobby, the desk clerk apologized repeatedly and set me up in a vacant suite on the fourth floor.  I climbed into the elevator once again and shuffled down another long hall to the replacement accommodations.  Inside, I threw my luggage on the floor and flopped onto the bed.  It was nearly 5:30 a.m. and I was scheduled to be at Elite Post in less than three hours.  I turned out the light and quickly fell into a hard sleep.
    It was going to be a rough day—one sure to make me long for a good ole Michigan winter.