I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas, at least not like the one (and only one) I’m bemused to know.
Being a New Orleans native and a longtime resident of Alexandria, my first and only legitimate white Christmas was 19 years ago. Yes, it happened on the 25th of December in 2004, during an ill-fated family trip from Alexandria to New Orleans to visit with family at my parents’ home.
The only problem was, we never made it there.
We packed up the car and left at 9:30 a.m., and little did Janet, Matt, Sally, Chris or I know then that we would be on the road all day.
Trouble began when we were diverted off an iced-over I-10 at the Prairieville-Geismar exit and directed, along with throngs of other cars, to Airline Highway. Then we crawled down the road in in bumper-to-bumper traffic, only to have our dreary, gray day brightened by falling snow. For a while, it was hard snow with big flakes flowing almost sideways from the south into the windshields of all the south-bound cars.
It happened on my 54th birthday, to boot.
Curiously, it wouldn’t have happened if we had not made the trip because it didn’t snow in Alexandria. That’s a rarity when south Louisiana shuts out central and north Louisiana on a snow day.
We got as far as LaPlace as a link in a chain of slow-moving, single-file cars, when a policeman drove slowly by, calling through a bullhorn that the bridge ahead was closed and we must make a U-turn.
By that point, we were in no mood for another potential encounter with Miss Adventure. We declined to search for another route to New Orleans, which, we heard, was closing more and more bridges. Being hungry, we decided to go north again to find a place to eat. Do you know how difficult that is on Christmas Day, when even converted Scrooges give their employees the day off?
We spotted a cheap hamburger joint open but nixed that, since we weren’t starving yet. Then, driving back through Baton Rouge, we figured the Great Wall, a China restaurant, would be open. But no, it was closed, too.
Finally, we hopped around enough to spot an I-Hop and agreed to eat there, although we didn’t have pancakes or waffles or eggs. Two hamburgers, one monster cheeseburger and a grilled chicken sandwich made up our order. And, evidently, there were enough other stranded travelers there that we had to wait 45 minutes for our Christmas meal.
On the drive from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, we did see a terrific sunset, which seemed like a providential sign that all things – even wild and crazy things – can have happy endings. We did miss a great Christmas meal at the New Orleans homestead, and my mother asked if we might just get a room in Baton Rouge that night and drive to New Orleans on the 26th. But, with both of the boys having colds, and all of us eager to cut the duration of trip, we opted to head back home to Alexandria.
And home never seems so sweet as when it is the end game of a rough journey.