Alan Liere: Drivin’ scared

Sadly, there are no huntable populations of pheasants, quail or ducks in my back yard. For this reason I am driven numerous times each winter to creep south on the snow-covered streets of Spokane toward I-90 and Moses Lake.

I have a lot of relatives in Moses Lake. As a kid, my family would go there often to visit. My Uncle Carl used to always warn my father about treacherous road conditions when we were preparing to make the 110-mile return trip home after dark on Sunday night. “Watch out for black ice,” he’d always whisper. As he gave this warning, he would look about furtively as if he expected a ninja warrior to jump out from behind the couch, and he would make the words crackle and hiss: “Bul-llackkk Icccccce.”

I still hunt in Moses Lake, and I still encounter black ice on occasion. But these days I’m more cautious, the freeway is better maintained, and I can afford better tires. Mostly, though, it is the image of what happened one night in 1972 that keeps me out of trouble.

My Uncle Verlyn had a ranch outside of Moses Lake that had become my private hunting preserve. It was loaded with pheasants, and a friend and I made the trip nearly every weekend in my orange Volkswagen station wagon – not only the ugliest, but the squirreliest vehicle I ever owned. The back end of the vehicle was too light and it made the car difficult to manage on a slippery road. One night, just this side of Cheney on my way to my Uncle Verlyn’s house where we would spend the night, I hit a patch of black ice. The fear generated has not been matched to this day.

My friend, Budd, and I were zipping along at about 70 mph on what appeared to be wet pavement, when my vehicle began to fishtail. As I attempted to correct, the rear swapped ends with the front. This was a very curious feeling, as I was then facing east while traveling west.

Swapping ends this way resulted in a good deal of commotion within the vehicle, as Budd attempted to keep us on the road by shouting instructions. “Right, right!” he yelled, indicating the way I should turn the wheel. Then, “Left, left,” he screamed as I overcorrected. “Right! Right! Sweet Jesus, right!” I was still going sideways. “Left! Dear God, left!”

Budd’s shouted prayers went on for what seemed like an hour as we executed at least five 360-degree turns that covered a good half-mile of icy freeway. Miraculously, we stayed out of the ditch and avoided oncoming traffic, and when the car finally came to a stop facing the wrong direction, an obviously shaken Budd mumbled “Far out.” Then, he opened the door and began to retch.

I wanted to get out and put my feet on solid ground, but I couldn’t seem to move. I needed a cigarette, but after fumbling around in my shirt pocket, remembered I’d quit several years earlier. I sat there in a daze watching Budd emptying his gut, my head flooded with a jumbled torrent of thoughts about Uncle Carl and black ice and pheasants and fear. We were very late getting into Moses Lake that night.