On the Pocahontas Trail, Part One

Not my car, Christmas 2004

I am a very good driver. This must be distinctly understood. And I understand that by stating this, I have violated the first rule of very good drivers. Because, the conventional wisdom goes, people who are very good drivers don’t have to proclaim it. Like fight club.

Furthermore, I am also aware that very bad drivers will similarly proclaim themselves “very good drivers”. Indeed, some might even say that they are the first to make this announcement. Like when you try to wrest the steering wheel from their icy grip. Or when they begin an essay. Ahem.

It was Christmastime and I was driving my family from Williamsburg to Norfolk. There had been some snow, and the elected officials do not believe in snow. Or if they do, well then they have a strange sense of humour, because they don’t spend a dime of tax money on the removal of it from their highways, especially the one that leads from Williamsburg to Norfolk. Which was why the Interstate was closed a few miles outside of that old capital, and why we caravaned onto a small state road, an endless train of modern-day camels headed east.

Real camels might have been faster. Hell, waiting to die and then having the wind scatter my ashes in the direction of Norfolk might have been faster. I don’t think we broke ten miles an hour the whole time. A tap on the gas, a tap on the brakes. A tap on the gas, a tap on the brakes. Repeat endlessly.

And then we began to slowly slide. So slowly, in fact, that if I had had even an inkling of what was about to happen, I probably could have gotten out of the car and slowed it down myself.

But I didn’t, because I couldn’t believe that we weren’t going to stop. We were going ten miles an hour, for crying out loud. Who breaks free of the manic pull of traction at ten miles an hour? If that’s all it takes we should be floating up to the tree tops on a daily basis!

This was the nature of my argument as we slid. But the tail lights of the car in front of me loomed nearer and nearer still, and the admonitions of my wife were grew louder and of a pitch usually only associated with the finest sopranos or the smallest of small birds, so I pumped furiously on the brake.(As I’d been taught to do in just such emergencies. It should be noted, however, that nowadays the cars will do the pumping for you. So I can only imagine that the crazy samba beat me and the car’s hydraulics were generating that festive day would have made the lads in Rio jealous. But I digress).

It occurred to me that I had three choices. I could either 1) continue straight and hit the car in front of me; 2) swerve left, heading into oncoming traffic; or 3) swerve right, towards the shoulder. I chose option three.

Did I mention there was a ditch? Okay, I should probably mention that. The major drawback to option three was that there was some sort of drainage ditch running alongside the shoulder. Dipped about four or five feet from the road, and then lay fairly flat as it blended into the front yard of the hide-and-seek houses that called this road home. And while I realized that there was a possibility we could slide into it, I was certain that we would stop long before we got anywhere near it, because we were only going ten miles an hour for crissakes.

Which was the argument I made to my wife when we finally came to a stop at the bottom of the ditch.

Before I could launch into a second argument, out from the small house whose yard we had just invaded emerge four men in assorted sizes, come to find what strange present Santa has left them this year. A white man and his family trapped in a blue Volvo? What the hell are we going to do with that?

Now, I was fully expecting them to tell me that I had illegally invaded their property and that I would be required to remove myself, my family, and my vehicle, forthwith, otherwise I could expect the fullest prosecution that the law would allow. I also expected them to explain that if their yard or for that matter their drainage ditch (which had great personal significance) had incurred any damage, they would expect remuneration of some sort, if not actual punitive compensation.

But instead, the smaller of the four tapped on the windshield while the other three positioned themselves strategically around us. “Straighten out” he said, pointing to the front wheels. I did and they pushed. And nothing happened. But in time, after family and other strangers from the caravan pitched in, after much pulling and pushing and after coating ourselves and half the neighbors in mud and other detritus, we managed to move the car out of that little grave, coming finally to rest with thee, Zion. Hallelujah. Hallelujah indeed.

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