Learning to Drive

Cruising through Gaylord in the 1983 Thanksgiving Blizzard.

For years, our family had the same Thanksgiving routine. We’d attend the morning worship service at Colonial Church, replete with families dressed as Pilgrims and music sans organ (aka, the “Devil’s windpipe” according to the Puritans), then we’d drive directly to the Gaylord home of my paternal grandparents, about an hour from the Twin Cities.

On Thursday, we’d have the traditional, huge meal, followed by overstuffed naps on the couch (which my grandparents called a “Davenport”). On Friday, we’d bake Christmas cookies and have dinner at the Holiday House, a private supper club in St. Peter.

Sometime on Saturday, we’d be forced — usually because of Andrew’s hockey schedule — to depart our idyll and return to Edina. These Thanksgiving weekends in Gaylord were among my favorite days of the year.

On Thanksgiving in 1983, I was fifteen years old. I had a summer of driving on my learner’s permit under my belt, and I felt confident in my driving, as is befitting an oldest child, Enneagram 8.

It had already been snowing for hours when we drove to Gaylord at midday. According to a UPI report on November 24, 1983,

A snowstorm blamed for 27 deaths on its four-day trek across the Rockies into the northern Plains buried northern Minnesota under 2 feet of snow and caused at least 80 traffic accident in Iowa alone. Forecasters warned another storm was brewing.

By Thanksgiving evening, the storm had abated, and my dad said, “It’s time for you to learn to drive in snow.”