These are my reminiscences about a business trip involving planes and automobiles. The trip destination was the Goodyear Tire Company in Akron Ohio, flying from O’Hare. I accompanied three other Caterpillar colleagues; Marve Byers, Fran Kronenberg and Bill Olson; we drove together to O’Hare from Peoria on Monday, January 23,1967. We parked the car in the short-term parking since our plan was to fly back to O’Hare Thursday the 26th and drive home late that afternoon. The trip was very different from past trips for me when I was usually sent to fix a problem or run a test. This time I was simply to accompany the other three colleagues who asked all the questions about tires. We were challenging Goodyear Tire Company to make even larger tires than they had ever made for anyone. Caterpillar was intent on building larger and larger mining trucks and the limiting parameter had become the size of the tires people like Goodyear could supply.
The opportunity to watch and listen and stay in the background was certainly different than most trips when I was under some duress to produce results; to fix something that had broken or conduct a test to define the performance of a vehicle system like brakes or suspensions or steering systems. This time I got to watch and listen as the people at Goodyear hosted us very graciously – they wanted our business.
I went along because Marve Byers wanted to conduct tests of scale model tires for impact resistance and I had created an impact test machine that we could use to study the many variables like inflation pressure, shape of penetrators, penetrator speeds on impact, temperature of the tire, and different tire ply configurations. There were many variables affecting impact resistance, and my job was going to be to devise a series of tests to identify which were the most critical factors... but enough of that. A couple of days out of the office were a treat and being immersed into Goodyear’s environment rather than the research department at Caterpillar was also a good change of scenery.
On our return trip we experienced a slight delay in our flight departure out of Akron because it was beginning to snow in Chicago. The weather in Akron had been especially balmy and spring-like; shirt sleeve weather, which delighted all of us. So here we were traveling into Chicago on the afternoon of January 26th – the local forecasters in Chicago expected about 4 inches of snow. When we landed that afternoon, it was snowing steadily but the worse part was the wind conditions and the snow crews had been caught by surprise at the amount of drifting. We retrieved our car and started out of town but made the decision before we had reached Joliet on old route 66 to stop and rent rooms at a holiday Inn just off the highway. We were pretty tired from the trip from Akron so no one had any objection. Let the storm pass and tomorrows clear roads would make the trip home in the morning easy. After a surprisingly good dinner in the holiday Inn dining room and a couple of drinks we were ready to collapse.
When we awoke the next morning, we were in immediate shock and panic! It was still snowing, and the wind was blowing, and the snow had drifted halfway up the windows of our rooms! We must have all arrived in the lobby at about the same time and made a collective decision to get on the road as quickly as possible. The snow was still coming down and the wind was making enormous drifts, although we could determine that the highway was still open and we assumed that the farther we got toward Peoria the better it would be.
If you Google The Chicago Blizzard of 1967 you will find that it still remains the largest snowfall recorded in that short an interval of time; starting about 6:00 am Thursday and finishing around 10:00 am Friday morning for a record amount of 23 inches in just over 24 hours! Everything was shut down in Chicago that Friday morning as we headed for home!
We crept along as we ventured down route 66 toward Peoria. This was in the days before cell phones and we did not let our wives know where we were – a mistake! I don’t know why to this day we didn’t give someone in Peoria a message about where we were. We became so preoccupied with the task of staying on the highway and avoiding other cars and trucks that our judgment must have been partially paralyzed; we were in some kind of survival mode. The number of semi-trucks and cars that had been abandoned was disconcerting, but we pressed on. By the time we passed Joliet and had reached Dwight it was after 1:00 pm; almost three hours to go that distance! The snow had let up but the blizzard –like wind kept the snow drifting across the road and our main focus was to identify the lane we wanted to stay in. There was no passing - only one lane was open.
We finally passed Pontiac and reached Chenoa and decided to strike off across the prairie on route 24 toward Eureka. I know it was beginning to get dark by the time we got home; the tension of the trip never let up until we were able to see the lights of Peoria! I no longer remember exactly how I got home except that the car had been rented by Marve Byers and he delivered me to my home on Rohmann avenue in West Peoria about 4 or 5 o’clock and Jan was very distraught not knowing what had happened or where I was. The relief of being home offset the anxiety pretty quickly but our travel experience that blizzard of ‘67 was long remembered by all of us.
I don’t have any kind of dramatic summary or closing. I was just one of those experiences that you know will always be part of our family history. The total snowfall in Peoria set records also but not quite as much as Chicago. We survived the big blizzard and that will always be the storm against which subsequent storms will be compared. No special ending except that writing about it brings back a tightening of my stomach and the sense of fear and tension that accompanied us driving in that blizzard almost 53 years ago!