It was a dark and stormy night; the Cerulean blue Dodge Neon slowly plied its way along incredibly narrow mountain roads, the only light coming from the headlights and the brief splashes of lightning that occasionally illuminated treacherous, rocky walls that met the serpentine road from above, or sheer cliffs that seemed to drop off into an abyss in the darkness.
In popular culture, "It was a dark and stormy night" is most often associated with Snoopy, the comic strip character made famous by Charles Schulz. Snoopy sat atop his doghouse with an ancient manual typewriter, trying many times to write his novel. I don't recall him ever getting past those first few words, but he was persistent over the years.
Actually, the line was first written in 1830 by the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton as the opening to his novel "Paul Clifford." It may have been a serious attempt on his part to be dramatic, but the style is fraught with redundancies and run-on sentences that never seem to end. Was that redundant?
There is even a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest sponsored by the English Department of San Jose University in California.
In this narrative, however, it is just a statement of fact. I just couldn't seem to resist using that opening line because for my story it seemed totally apropos.
So the tale continues in a less "extravagant" manner:
The headlights tried heroically to penetrate the raven night, but the incessant rain obscured all but a small cone of visibility in front of the car.
But the three passengers in the little car were optimistic. They were heading to a ski resort in the mountains of West Virginia for a summer archery contest. The older passenger, who would be participating in the competition, put on a nonchalant air, philosophically describing how important it was to drive slowly and just to be careful. The passenger was her daughter, who had also brought along her five-month-old baby. The daughter was much more apprehensive.
Some stretches of road seemed to slope downwards at a 45-degree angle, and several times on the hairpin turns the car skidded slightly, momentarily terrorizing the two older passengers.
Although a distance of only 10 or 12 miles, the journey that evening took over two hours. The travelers arrived at the ski resort much later than planned, but were able to check in and get a room.
The weather cleared up that night, and the archery tournament went forward as scheduled for the weekend. The next evening, after another relative had arrived to join the group, they decided to go over to the next town for a meal. The trip involved retracing the route taken the previous night during the storm.
What a shock? Broad daylight revealed a mountain road that only Marco Polo with a string of yaks would dare to traverse. On one side of the road were sheer cliffs with overhanging rocks that appeared to be waiting for any excuse to come tumbling down in a mini-avalanche. For the most part, the opposite side of the road remained a sort of bottomless canyon. The trees angling up along the steep sides had given a false impression of solid ground in the darkness of the storm.
I was the foolhardy driver of that car one August day in 2000. At the time, I did not know I was foolhardy; the darkness hid the truth. Even though I had moments of apprehension during that drive, if I had known what the terrain was really like, I probably would have been paralyzed.
I suppose I plagiarized the first line of this story, but I couldn't resist. Snoopy rarely got beyond the first line; at least I managed a brief story.
T&D Correspondent Loretta Demko can be reached by e-mail at eeshtenem@yahoo.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.