A LONG WINTER NIGHT

When Betty Jones my (Belated) first wife and I got married, we never missed going back home to Kentucky to visit with our families at Christmas time, It was one of the things we really enjoyed doing. 

Neither one of us had ever been away from home long at at time, and we got homesick pretty often.

In 1966 we made our plans as usual to go and visit everyone for Christmas, all the weather  reports we'd gotten in Michigan, said the weather should be good all the way to London Ky.

Little did we know that wasn't going to be the case.

Betty, and our young (Belated)  son Ricky and I  left our home in Warren Mi.  on Fri. Dec. 23 around  4 pm.  

The weather was nice  that day and we were excited to be finally on our way, ( In our newly purchased 1966 Plymouth), and we had all the confidence in the world it was going to be a exciting  journey in our new car.

At Lexington Ky we hit our first Snow fall, and traffic was at a stand still  as far as you could see it was lined up, look like for miles, as the ole saying goes things went South in a hurry. 

Hours later at Mt. Vernon KY. We got off interstate 75 and took US 461 to Somerset and then US 80 to London Ky. 

By that time snow on the roads was about 6 to  8 inches deep.

At least getting off at Mt. Vernon we'd gotten out of the traffic jam, but the secondary roads  hadn't  been plowed and were  really a mess and driving on them was at a snails pace at best. 

Finally thanks to the Good Lord's help we arrived at  Betty's  parents Cecil and Hettie's Jones home around 4 pm on Sat. some 24 hrs later.

Everyone was worried about us by then and with no phone to let them know our where about, so were we.

 My brother-in-law Billy Jones and his wife Carol McFadden and their daughter Debbie had left Michigan a few hours after we did, the roads were so bad neither of us thought we were ever going to make it.

 Such a pretty time it turned out to be after we arrived, with all the snow on the trees and the spirit of Christmas in the air,  we just couldn't help having a wonderful  and remember-able time with  family's and friends. 

The weather cleared up by Monday and the roads were good for us to go back to our home in Michigan and settle down for a bit after all that. 

Coleman Schell