Clark: Share your ice storm tales, lest our children never know

I was gazing out my front window, watching the cowardly yellow leaves surrender their grasp on my maple trees, when a thought struck me.

We are approaching the 14th anniversary of the Inland Northwest’s most bizarre winter event.

No, not when I was invited to sing my Spokane Song with the Junior Symphony. That happened just a few years ago at First Night.

I’m talking about ice storm ’96.

Here’s what boggles my mind: The area is now full of homegrown local kids who are old enough to drive cars. Yet they have no memory of Nov. 19, 1996, when the entire region became a weird frozen world of power outages and breaking branches.

For the record, I do know that 16 is still the age to get a driver’s license. But it’s a fact that nobody remembers squat during the first couple of years of existence.

My first retained memory, for example, occurred as a 3-year-old; I almost took my grandfather’s head off with my metal cap gun.

I was creeping along the floor, playing Indian scout. Grandpa was dozing on the couch when I took my Gene Autry six-shooter by the barrel and, being ignorant about the laws of physics, let it fly like a tomahawk.

Fortunately, my aim had not yet developed. You can still see the divot it left in the plaster wall.

But as I was saying …

We ice storm survivors have a responsibility to bore the youth about all the icy excitement they missed.

So help me pass the word. Send me your most memorable frosty moment to: Clark’s Ice Storm Confidential.

I’ll publish the most entertaining submissions in an upcoming column. The winners will be rewarded with hand warmers and some other appropriate goodies.

Send your entries via the contact information below. Make sure to leave your name, a phone number and please, keep it short.

I’m not looking for a diary of the Shackleton Expedition. Just give me the one ice storm vignette that still stands out after all these years.

I miss ice storm. I never felt so alive teetering on the edge of glacial extinction.

I’m betting our TV weathercasters have ice storm nostalgia, too.

This time every year, the weathercasters start gibbering like hyperactive gibbons. They act like nobody around here has ever experienced winter before.

But ice storm was the one phenomenon that actually lived up to all of their hysteria.

Could it happen again?

Ron Miller, a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service, told me although you never say never, the odds are stacked mightily against Ice Storm the Sequel.

It’s not that freezing rain is so special. We get that all the time.

But freezing rain never lasts.

It warms up. The ice melts.

Ice storm was unique. The freezing mist continued, layering everything – branches, wires, power lines – with a heavier and heavier coating of ice.

Something had to give and it did in a singular drama.

One of my most vivid memories came on the first night of the event. I stood shivering out in the yard with my kids, listening to trees and transformers blow up.

The whole South Hill sounded like a war zone.

It was crazy.

My home, like many others, was a juiceless igloo.

We lost power for eight days. It didn’t matter how much wood I burned in the fireplace or kitchen woodstove. You could still sit in my front room and see your breath.

I’d love to say that I’m better prepared should this happen again, but I’d be lying.

I still have the same four kerosene lamps. I got rid of the wood stove in my kitchen. I added a gas fireplace, but I never got around to buying a gas generator.

Heck, I don’t even have a pet dog anymore. You know, to eat when the food finally runs out.

Only my lovely wife, Sherry, has thought ahead and come up with a survival plan for Ice Storm II.

If it happens again, she told me, “We’re checking into the Davenport.”