A Very Long Day

I apologise for writing an adverse number of travel stories, but to be honest these stories most easily come to mind.  This story took place 49 years ago on March 27th, 1975, so it seems appropos to write about it now.

On the Tuesday before Easter that year, once my father came home from work, we three kids were loaded into the car about four in the afternoon, bound for California.  My sister, Lani, named after a Hawaiian girl my mother had looked after when she worked in a hospital in Weyburn Saskatchewan, was 18 months older than me; my brother, nicknamed Terry, was 5 and a half years older.  As the youngest, I was 11.  The plan was to see Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Seaworld in San Diego and then drive up to San Francisco.  My father had to be back at work on April 7th.  I'm not going to talk about the whole trip with this post; just the beginning and our first full day on the highway south.

That first leg to Great Falls, about five hours and some, was no pleasant trip.  After flurries all the way to the U.S. border, Interstate 15 through Montana was covered with sheer black ice.  My father had driven on such stuff most of his life, but it took all his concentration to keep our station wagon on the road — while we in the back were made to keep absolutely silent.  I remember only the blowing snow and that all was pitch black except for our headlights, with the road a band of jet below the front hood.  I don't think I fully understood how dangerous a situation we were in, but my father's tense grip on the wheel remains in my mind.

Great Falls itself was utterly without snow at all; we rolled into a Best Western — those were everywhere in those days — and spent an easy night before getting up the next day, Wednesday the 27th.  We were supposed to sleep the next night in Salt Lake City, and since in those days I saw much of the trip with a big red Colliers atlas on my lap, I marked every town as we passed through it.

Our target was Monida Pass, 6,870 ft. above sea level, in the Bitterroot Range; that would take us through the Rockies and down into Idaho.  We passed through Red Rock and it began to snow a little, and when we reached Dell, about 24 miles from the pass, my father inquired at the Sheriff's station there and confirmed that the pass was open.  But as we went south, starting the climb at the little burg of Lima, the snowfall got thicker and the snow deeper.  Sure enough, we encountered a roadblock, only to learn that yes, the pass was open, but only to cars with chains.  We didn't have chains, so we turned around and went down again.

My father couldn't find a place in Lima at the time that sold chains, so it was back to Dell.  He loaded the chains into the back of the car and we started up again towards the pass.  It was still snowing.  When the road was snow-covered, we stopped at the side and with some help from my brother, my dad got the chains on.  It wasn't his first time; growing up in Alberta, working on oil rigs and for a time as a firefighter, he'd encountered most things like this.  He just hadn't thought we'd need chains, as it was late March.  As I write this in 2024, here in Calgary, there's a foot of snow on the ground — but this, too, is unusual.

So, up to the pass, where we found out that the pass had been closed completely, chains or no.  So we turned back again, took the chains off, and got back onto dry roads by the time we reached Dell.

Things weren't going very well; we only had so much time to get to California and hours were slipping away.  There was talk of going around through Wyoming, or maybe getting across into Idaho somewhere by Missoula, but either pretty much meant our losing a whole day.  We went past Red Rock and north all the way to Dillon ... and there my father learned that Bannock Pass to the west was still open.  Bannock is 7,684 ft., in the Beaverhead Mountains, and this sounded uncertain.  And we headed south, then west on 324 for about an hour, and lo and behold, the road over Bannock Pass was dry.

We descended into this beautiful, wide green valley in Idaho, where we picked up Highway 28 at Leadore.  This is the Lemhi river valley, and after all the snow and difficulty we'd had with it, the March emerald grass was a most welcome sight.  My mother remarked on it more or less continuously, while we listened to the local station on our way to Idaho Falls.

Then a news report interrupted our reverie, warning travellers to stay away from Highway 28.  A state-wide notice told us that some dam was in danger of breaking and that it was, in effect, the last place anyone wanted to be.  I never could figure out which dam it was supposed to be; the Lemhi is only 60 miles long and a look along it on google maps shows no such dam.  Who knows what was really meant by that report?  It was repeated periodically, though, and when we looked up the valley, darned if the fluffy clouds on the horizon behind us didn't look like white water.  My mother, more apt to worry about such things, stayed unhinged until we got out onto the flat where we linked up again with Interstate 15, all hunky dory.  We had lost time, though, and reaching Salt Lake City that day was out of the question.  We found a place in Pocatello and sorted ourselves out.  My mother expressed a desire for a sit-down dinner rather than fast food, so we changed our clothes and walked a couple of blocks up the street to a really nice place — velvet table clothes, wineglasses for water, chandeliers, the whole works.

During that walk, as the tale would be told hundreds of times in years ahead, my mother remarked about the day, "All we need now is an earthquake."

The answer is Yes.

On the evening of March 27th, 1975, about 63 miles south of Pocatello on the Idaho-Utah border, a 6.3 earthquake occurred at 8:31 PM mountain daylight time.  We were in the restaurant, waiting for our food.  That would suggest that the earthquake hit us roughly 12 to 18 minutes after my mother made her remark.  Our first hint of it was the jingling of the glass in the restaurant chandeliers.  After that was a most uneasy feeling of the table and glasses moving; I clearly remember reaching out and snatching my glass before it fell over.  And then, queerly, as my mother put it, the building seemed to "get up and dance a bit, before settling down again."  Then it was over.

My mother was roundly accused of causing it, but we were all too tired to press the point — that would come later, when for the next thirty years my mother was firmly told not to say any bad thing that might happen out loud.  As I remember, the restaurant was practically empty; it was nearly nine o'clock on a Wednesday, so that more or less fits with my own restaurant experiences as a long-time cook.  We were served; there was no evidence of damage.  Placidly we returned to our hotel and settled down to sleep, all exhausted.