Mac's Family

     My mom, Sally Push, wrote this account of the harrowing Christmas that occurred not long after I was born.   She sent it to me in a booklet put together by her writing group.  I thought it was interesting, a little off my normal focus, but thought you might enjoy it.

The Blizzard of '54

by Sally Push

     Every year as was our custom, we would take off from out home in Nebraska and travel to Oklahoma for Christmas with my sister.  She and her husband had children about the same age as ours and it got to be a habit.

     This year they were predicting a snowstorm for middle Kansas, and said that it might become a blizzard.  Out daughter, who had been born in November, had pneumonia, and we decided that if she was released, we would again try to keep the custom alive.

     Bill said, "Look Sal, it is only a couple hundred miles where they are predicting it, and they expect that it won't hit till midnight. We should be through there and long gone by then."

     His reasoning was sound, and when the doctor released Cheri, we quickly loaded the car with presents and the two kids, age two years and six weeks.  When we got to the southern edge of Kansas, we both breathed a sigh of relief.  We were going to a small town north of Tulsa, so we had forty more miles to travel, but we had made it through the predicted storm path.  We had only gone a few miles when the storm hit.  It kept intensifying until you could hardly make out the front of the car in the swirling white haze of snow.,

     The lights didn't seem to reach far, but thankfully, we were only about twenty miles to our destination.  We crept along slowly, watching the side of the road as well as we could.  When we turned off the highway on to a gravel road, we were going so slow that we thought we were further along, and when the road branched, Bill put on the brakes.  The car slid into the bar ditch along the side of the road.  It wasn't even the road we wanted, but the one before it.  We tried to pull out of the ditch, but it just sat there with the tires spinning.

     Bill said, "Come and drive and I'll try to push it out!"  So I scooted over and took the wheel while he tried pushing.  No luck.  We were definitely stuck.  Bill crawled back in the driver's seat and I scooted over.

     As he was warming his hands I asked, "What are we going to do?"

     "Well," he said, "I didn't see any lights close enough to walk to, so I guess we stay put till another car comes along." Since it was only about 10 o'clock at night, we both thought another car would be along soon.

     At first we kept the car running, but then decided that we should turn it off, and just run it every hour or so to warm up.  We took clothes from the suitcases we had used to build up the backseat for the kids, and put layers of clothes on both Billy and Cheri, putting them to sleep on the back seat covered with blankets.  Bill and I decided we would talk to keep each other awake.  Each time we were going to start the car, Bill would go out and use the little camping shovel to remove the snow away from the tail pipe.  By 2 AM, he could no longer get the door open because of the snow, and we were about out of gas.  As the snow drifted higher and higher on the windows, it helped the car stay warmer.

     Bill said, "At first light I will try to crawl out of the window and make my way to the road." We were doing a lot of praying that night, and I kept praying that he could make it to the road. 

     Just before dawn, we heard a noise an we thought that maybe it was a car.  When we finally made it out, we discovered the snowplow had gone by without even seeing us since our car was completely buried in the snowdrift, deep in the ditch.  Evidently, he wanted to get it done so he could be home for Christmas morning.