The Trip From Hell (1)

At this point in our lives we were coming off a catastrophic near-bankruptcy following a disasterous attempt at trying to run a small sawmill. So when this piano tour was offered to us we accepted it, having no idea what lay ahead in the Rocky Mountains in the winter or the west coast with constant rainstorms and road washouts. You never know when you're going to leave on the trip from hell because they always start off with fun and anticipation. But then, after you leave...

There were two trips from hell. The first one, in 1996, would be five weeks in duration and range from Michigan to Seattle (WA) to Fresno (CA) to Bloomfield, Iowa, and many points in between. This would actually be the first cross-country tour of our career and we were anticipating this like a dream come true. But then, of course, as we were painting trim on the back porch (pictured) my ladder capsized and my left leg was shattered in many places. We were scheduled to leave in two weeks. 

• The doctors told me the bone had broken off below the knee and was driven through the knee cap into the upper leg.

• I almost died from a battlefield shock syndrome. 

• Certain doctors said that because the bone was shattered into 100 tiny pieces my leg would have to be amputated. Dr. John DeSantis stepped in and said he could put it back together. And he did. We have referred to him as the magician doctor ever since. 

• I was on morphine for two weeks for pain. Time was approaching when we should be leaving on the trip. Dr. DeSantis told me to go ahead and go. I'd be driving (sitting) a car, sitting at a piano, and sitting in a wheelchair the rest of the time.

•  We left on the appointed day driving an old 1991 Chevy Caprice with over 200,000 miles on it. My wheel chair and walker went in the back seat. Our suitcases were stuffed to the limits and filled the rest of the back seat and trunk.  

• The pain pills were within reach. 

• Next day: driving to De Tour Village, upper peninsula, Michigan. 305 miles.

• I learned that everything took three times longer. Getting out of the car, into the wheelchair, into the rest stops, same coming back, was something I was going to have to get used to.

• I learned that using the walker hurt my arms. New muscles needed to be strengthened.

If you don't know what "lake effect snow" is, it's a phenomenon we have here in the Great Lakes area. Moisture above the lakes suddenly freezes and turns into snow. It's not predictable on the weather channels, and the picture to the left is what it looks like coming in. 

         Linda schlepped the bags back out of the hotel at 8:00 a.m. We’d had four hours of sleep, but still had over 300 miles left to drive. Also, we’d heard of another pass in Washington somewhere, so decided to simply run for it, play the gig, then sleep for two days afterwards. When we left the hotel it was raining. A strange woman in the driveway was asking me if I “knew Jesus.”

         About halfway along the drive to Olympia we heard on the radio that Spokane had been decimated by an ice storm that came down from the mountains. Apparently, the storm was rolling in just as we were leaving. News would report later that all their power was shut down for four days, with broken electric poles and lines scattered all over the city. We had just missed it. The trip from Hell was on, but there was more not even imagined yet to happen. 

Olympia, Washington: Nov 18:

         Linda wheeled me through a downpour into a retirement village which had hired me. I somehow managed to play a 1 ¼ hour performance. They handed me a check for $300.00. I slept for the next several days in a cheap hotel which used up the $300, then started to come out of the daze. It was still raining hard as is typical in the Pacific Northwest. Endless rain kept coming down. Then I received a message that my concert in Elko, Nevada, scheduled for the next week, had been canceled. It turned out the two people running the theatre had been fired by their board of directors. So, just for the hell of it, they cancelled my concert now that I'd driven all the way out from Michigan to play it.

         My next performances were at the Fresno (California) Ragtime Festival, starting on Friday. On Thursday I learned that it was 900 miles to Fresno. I’d slept a day too long.  

Nov. 21, Thursday: Leaving Olympia.

         We left right after lunch. Linda had schlepped out of the chintzy motel and now we were driving south on Interstate 5. Huge ponds of standing water filled the medians and exit ramps from all the rain. We’d been warned of yet another pass, the Siskiyou Pass, which was down by the Oregon/California border somewhere. We'd been told to stop in Roseburg, Oregon, call the state police and find out if the pass was even open. 300 miles and constant rains storms later we were looking for a pay phone in Roseburg. It was well after dark whe we found one in what appeared to be the worst neighborhood of any city. Linda sat in the car, I hobbled up an incline on my walker, and put the dimes in the pay phone. The booth reeked of puke and urine.

         The police informed me that the pass was indeed open, but to “go for it now,” because it would soon be closed because of dangerous incoming conditions. Having just experienced "dangerous incoming conditions," I put the pedal to the floorboards, preferring to get a speeding ticket rather than go over anything like Lookout Pass again. Snow and crap were already coming down when we roared over the pass, but it was basically uneventful.  At 3:00 a.m., and after 450 miles, we pulled into Yreka, California. This was our first trip into the legendary land of fruits and nuts, earthquakes, weirdoes and lunatics, and the only motel open in town was called “The Richter Scale Motel.” Too weary to go on - Linda schlepped into it.

Following the Fresno festival we had one week before our next gig in Bloomfield, Iowa. Originally, we’d have been going to Elko, Nevada, but now that was canceled so we had to kill time for a few days. Hotel bills would add up, schlepping would take its toll, and the trip from Hell wasn’t over yet. We decided to hang out with our music friends at the hotel now that we were all done performing. We finally went to our room about 10:00. I crashed on the bed and turned the TV on with the remote. Tired, I just collapsed back onto the pillow and decided to watch whatever came up on the screen. It was the weather, and a talking head was telling us about a "rare winter storm barreling in at us from the Pacific Ocean. Streets will be impassable by morning. Be aware of incoming high winds and tremendous ice and rain storms…”

We packed our bags, abandoned any idea of sleeping, then took off out of Fresno around 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. We decided to start heading back east by going through Death Valley. We stayed in a little hotel somewhere out there where we learned that a person can evaporate faster than they can drink water in Death Valley. When we got up the next morning we saw the news on TV in the lobby announcing...

"Fresno is completely buried under ice and snow. Do not go to work. Do not go outside..."

It was Thanksgiving Day when we stumbled into a “Wild West” saloon on the eastern edge of Death Valley. Two cowboys were serving fresh turkey dinners, and we were the only customers.

“How’r ya’ll?” was the friendly welcome. The dinners were great, but we had to vamoose. 600 miles later, and something like 2:00 a.m., Linda schlepped into a motel outside of Salt Lake City. Since our American Express card was approaching $2500 in motel bills, we opted for cheaper places. But it's not always a good idea. 

We didn’t know yet that cheap motels were often dangerous motels. There was obvious drug and prostitution activity going on, but we were too tired to go any further. All the druggers, whores and pimps had their eyes on us and our car as we struggled in. I turned on the television set:

“News flash: a tremendous storm has hit San Francisco and points both north and south. It has now roared across the entire state and will be going into the Rocky Mountains soon…”

Yes, we were in the mountains and the blizzard was coming for us.

Linda schlepped back out about 8:00 a.m. so we could try to outrun this thing. We took off further up into the mountains and prayed that the interstate wouldn’t turn to ice or snow. Bloomfield, Iowa, was still 1200 miles away, so we drove about half of that before stopping and schlepping again. On the television news was this announcement:

“Flash: Salt Lake City has been buried by a blizzard. All roads both in and out are closed…”

Linda un-schlepped the room the next morning and we were off again, this time driving across the wide open Great Plains of Nebraska. We hoped that the storm didn't catch up with us because Great Plains blizzards are incredibly dangerous. The winds have nothing to slow them down, and the snow and ice will simply cake your windshield and make the roads impassable in all directions. This means that you are 100 miles from help from anywhere, and the roads are impassable.  I drove like a bat out of hades and we pulled into Ottumwa, Iowa, late on Saturday night, Nov. 30. We were 20 miles north of Bloomfield. Linda schlepped. Unable to help because of my broken leg, I crashed into bed.

The next morning was December 1. The concert at the Iowa Theatre was scheduled for 2:00 p.m. My phone was ringing.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi, Bob,” came the voice of the theatre director. “Have you looked out the window?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“It's snowing.” he answered. “I’m canceling the concert.”

There was 1/2" of snow on the sidewalk. I exploded and started screaming.

“No, you’re not! People may be driving over here through all this snow to hear me! We just drove 1500 miles to get to this *%#@! place, and I don’t care if there are only three people in the audience, you’re putting that concert on!”

He agreed not to cancel it.

Linda and I found a breakfast shop. We had about two hours before the afternoon concert began. Someone came through the door from outside and the sun glare actually blinded me for a moment. Then I heard a voice say, 

“Hi, Dad!”

My daughter, Carrie, had driven down from Iowa State University where she was pursuing a doctorate degree in biology. (Today she is a leading turtle expert in the country). I noticed snow on her coat when she sat down, so asked,

"Is it snowing out there?"

"Yes," she answered. "It just started."

The leading edge of the blizzard had come to town. And I had to play a two-hour concert while the snow built up outside. Well, that's just the way it goes.

A total of about 22 people were there, but one man had driven 200 miles up from Missouri to hear me. This meant that the concert was a complete success because we didn't disappoint someone, even thought we made very little money on it.

“Dad," said Carrie, "the news says that the storm is coming in with a vengeance. Salt Lake City and all points west are completely closed down. Better get going…”

When we left around 5:00 we had to drive 80 miles north to get to the interstate. The snow was about a foot deep when we came out of the theatre, and it was still snowing and threatened to get worse.

Carrie’s warning was well taken, so we took off into the early evening.

Iowa is flat, and even a slight wind can carry snow long distances. Once we were out of town headed north we noticed to our dismay that the road disappeared: it hadn’t been plowed. So now we didn’t know where the road was. What I’m going to tell you next may sound totally unbelievable, but it’s true.

Linda and I were trying to drive north. If we could get to the interstate we could probably outrun the storm. The problem was that we couldn’t see the road. But about 30 feet to our right was a line of telephone poles that went straight to the horizon. We guessed that the road went straight, too, so kept the car about 30 feet to the left of the poles as we drove into the snow. After a while, however, the poles made a 90° left hand turn in front of us. Did this mean that the road did, too? If so, which side of the road was the road on? Or did the road go straight? We guessed the road turned with the telephone poles and were still be on our right side so were turned accordingly. We lucked out and were correct on the guesstimate, and when the poles turned and went north again we turned according to the poles again. This routine never being able to see the road continued for the entire 80 miles up to the interstate entrance.

The snow was increasing and the wind was picking up. It was also after dark: we were into the night when we pulled into a gas station and filled up. A truck driver stopped and looked at us, incredulously.

“Hey, are you guys actually thinking about getting on the interstate?” he yelled through the wind. “If so, get on it right now: the police are shutting it down…”

We roared out onto the highway and were sliding along in the wakes of the 18-wheelers. Slush came down on our windshield by the dump truck loads, and our poor windshield wiper motor was once again pressed into duty beyond compare.

“How far is Chicago?” I yelled through the roar to Linda. She whipped out the map.

“Maybe 300 miles,” she yelled back.

At least we didn’t have downhill trucks spinning out of control this time, but the driving was brutal. Slowed by slush, snow and ice, trying to keep the tires in wheel marks from the trucks, trying to keep the front end pointing forward, and constantly watching for spinning headlights in the rear view mirror was a drain on my strength and energy. We pressed on into the night.

“Where should we stop,” asked Linda. “It’s getting close to midnight.”

“Look at this,” I said, pointing to the windshield. “The snow is turning to water. We're outrunning this storm!”

An hour later the snow was gone and we were driving at good speed. Yes, it was raining, but the storm was still behind us and we were speeding east. We roared through Chicago at 4:00 in the morning, then drove the remaining five hours to be home by 9:00. We crashed into bed and I don’t think I got up until the following day.

In those days we didn’t have a television set. We’d been too devastated by the sawmill horror show that had bankrupted us to ever be able to afford a TV. So Linda came back from town with a bunch of medicine, groceries, and whatever else we needed following a month or more out of town.

“Look in the newspaper,” she pointed out. “Chicago is closed down from the storm. It's buried in ice.”

We had spent the last forty days and 6000 miles outrunning or out-lucking disasters. We had fled the drunken iron worker in De Tour Village, we were missed by the 18-wheeler that went through the median on I-94, we somehow got over Lookout pass, we missed the sinkhole on I-5 by an hour, then outran a huge storm all the way from California, Salt Lake City, Nebraska, Iowa, and now finally by barnstorming through Chicago. All this we did with a broken leg, a wheelchair and a walker. Linda’s knees and legs hurt for months from the schlepping. Not at any time during this tour did we have time to actually rest.

Chicago remained shut down for the next four days. We would later learn that what we'd just survived was a nationwide blizzard that eventually became known as "the blizzard of the century." If we hadn’t outrun the storm we’d have arrived at home four days later. Unless something had spun out of control and run over us, of course.

We owed our credit card $3500 for this trip, so decided to start thinking of better ways to go on tours. Eventually we did, two years later when we got a small motor home. But there was more: 

After a few days at home we started packing for the next tour. 

Addendum: we would later learn a book, Ice Storm '96, was published about this storm which had followed us through Chicago, swept past Michigan, and went on to paralyze the east coast. It became known as "The Storm of the Century," and we had outrun it all the way from California to Michigan, even stopping to play a gig in Iowa. This trip from Hell was over, but unbeknown to us there would be more to come.