Alan Liere: Hidden menace of the roads: black ice

An acquaintance of mine rates assorted fearful experiences in his life by what he calls the pucker factor. He is not referring to his lips .

Good bronc riders, he told me, have learned to use pucker power to their advantage as they squeeze small imperfections in the saddle in an attempt to stay aboard.

As a press observer, I once accompanied Penny Berryman, a world-class bass angler, during a competition on the Hudson River in New York.

The weather was stormy and huge barges were using the river, but the turbulence didn’t slow Penny down a bit.

At one juncture, we were slapping off the tops of 6-foot waves as we skipped from crest to crest across 12-foot troughs.

I was trying to hold onto my cameras, so the only hope I had of staying seated was to apply pucker power to the little, padded buttons on the boat seat.

Later, safely back at the marina minus a windshield, I feared it would take a pry bar to break that bond.

I have been in a bush airplane crash in Alaska and three automobile collisions, including a rollover.

I have also been caught in the middle of a forest fire.

I took an unplanned kayak trip through the Eye of the Needle rapid on a swollen Salmon River and hunted chukar partridge by edging along a 2-foot wide animal trail high in the treacherous, steep, basalt cliffs of Wawawai Canyon. With a sheer rock wall on one side and a 100-foot drop on the other, a misstep would have sent me plummeting to the railroad tracks far below.

Of all the fearful situations I have experienced, the most frightening took place on Interstate 90 between Spokane and Cheney when I was in my 20s.

As a kid, I had a lot of relatives in Moses Lake, and my family would travel there often to visit.

My Uncle Carl, who kept a little ranch on the north side of town, always warned my father about road conditions when we were preparing to make the 110-mile return drive home at night.

“Watch out for black ice,” he’d ominously whisper.

It didn’t matter what time of year it was, Uncle Carl was worried about black ice.

Evidently, many years before, he’d had a nasty encounter with black ice – a condition where light rain or fog freezes on the asphalt creating an undetectable ice rink.

The experience so affected him that he never drove more than 30 mph if he thought there might be hidden dangers.

When he gave his warning, he would look about furtively as if he expected an assassin to jump out from behind the couch. And he would make the warning hiss and crackle: “Bul-llackkk Icccccce.”

In the ’70s, the Moses Lake area was in its glory days of pheasant hunting, and my Uncle Verlyn’s farm had become my private preserve.

A friend and I made the trip nearly every weekend in my orange Volkswagen station wagon. It was not only the ugliest but also the squirreliest vehicle I ever owned.

The back end was too light and had a tendency to unpredictably fishtail.

One night, in the winter of 1972, just this side of Cheney on Interstate 90, I encountered my Uncle Carl’s black ice and it caused my vehicle to slide right off the pucker-power charts.

I was young, but the degree of fear from that event has not been matched to this day.

My friend, Budd, and I were zipping along at about 65 mph on what appeared to be dry pavement when the Volkswagen began to fishtail.

I was used to this, but as I attempted to correct, the rear swapped ends with the front. This was a very curious feeling, as I was then facing the wrong way but still traveling the way I had been going.

This was my introduction to black ice.

The car swapping ends resulted in a good deal of activity within the vehicle as Budd attempted to keep us on the highway by shouting instructions, and I attempted to comply.

“Right, right!” he shouted, indicating the way I should turn the wheel.

“Left, left,” he screamed as I overcorrected.

“Right! Right! Sweet Jesus, right!”

“Left! Dear God, left!”

Budd’s shouted prayers went on for what seemed like an hour as we executed at least five complete rotations while we slid down I-90.

Somehow, we stayed out of the ditch and avoided other traffic.

When the car finally came to a stop on the shoulder facing the wrong direction, it was quiet in the vehicle … until I began to retch.

I wanted to 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, I remembered I hadn’t smoked for several years.

I sat there in a daze, vaguely recalling my Uncle Carl and his “Bul-llackkk Icccccce” warnings from long ago.

I hadn’t yet learned about pucker power.

If I had, I wouldn’t have been so puzzled by the fact that I was stuck to the bucket seat when I tried to open the door.