It was Friday, July 24th, 1987, and I was stuck in traffic.

Everywhere.  Every road I drove on, whether a freeway or a side street.  And it’d been like that for about the previous 18 hours.

The previous night was supposed to have been a busy one.  I’d signed up for a video production class at Saint Paul Cable Access, and we were having our final shooting session at the Longfellow Community Center, before going downtown for next week’s session to learn how to edit tape. 

Before that, I’d gone over to the band’s practice house and filled up the Jeep with the guys’ gear.  We drove to Fernando’s – a crappy little dive bar at 15th and East Lake Street – and loaded in for a gig that was planned for the evening.  My plan; load in, go to class, leave class at the crack of 9PM and race over to ‘nando’s for the gig. 

As we stood outside the community center, black clouds roiled in the west.  Someone flipped on The Good Neighbor, and heard reports of tornados in Maple Grove – an impossibly distant ‘burb to me, at that time – and warnings being tossed about for the rest of the metro. 

Class let out early due to the weather.  As the first drops started dribbling down from the darkening sky, I rolled over to Cretin Avenue, intending to jump onto 94 and whip over to Minneapolis, getting to the gig a little early.

The weather had a legendary change of plan for an awful lot of us who were in the Cities that night, of course.  “The Storm”, along with the “Halloween Blizzard”, is one of those two-word icons that everyone who’s lived in the Twin Cities in the past couple of decades remembers and has in common.

Me?  Well…

As I rolled past the Highway 280 exit, the sky closed in.  Roiling cumulus clouds resembling gray grapes advanced overhead, until they were blotted out by the most intense cloudburst I’ve ever experienced, whipped by a fearsome wind.  In moments, I could barely see the car in front of me; just their tail lights.  Stopped.  Cold. 

It was then that I discovered that the rag top on my jeep had a leak.  A couple of them, in fact.  A steady stream of water poured down on my head, as I scannned for a break in the traffic that never came.  Another leak coursed water into the back seat, and I silently thanked God that I’d left my guitar with the guys. 

It’s hard to remember, 20 years later, exactly what happened.  I know that I sat, soaking, in the jeep from about 8-ish until maybe 10, wondering (in those pre-cell-phone days) if the gig was going to go ahead or not, gradually giving up on being anything like dry.  I kept the radio on WCCO, which spoke of torrential downpours (duh) and flooded roads (ibid) and calls from people talking about wind and water damage all over the metro – but no word about I-94 Westbound through Saint Paul.

Eventually – it had to be close to 10PM – I saw people walking in the downpour around up ahead.  Hours after the storm started, the rain was still a cold, drenching cataract, and the wind, while it’d died off a bit, whipped it into my face as I climbed out of the Jeep’s meager shelter – but by this point, I was more interested in information, even rumors, than the dubious comfort of my ragtop.

I walked a couple of cars ahead to a group of guys, a couple of whom had come back from farther west along the freeway.  “I heard that the road is flooded four or six feet deep at the U of M Exit” said one of the guys, soaked to the bone like all the rest of us.  “There’s cars stuck in there.  We aren’t going anywhere”. 

I walked back along the line to pass the word to the people climbing out of cars – or gingerly opening windows – farther back along the freeway.  I kept checking west along the road to see if the endless stream of red taillights were moving even the slightest.  Not a bit. 

So I kept walking.  I probably went a quarter-mile east, from car to car, spreading the “news”, watching for changes, seeing nothing.  My clothes – an army-surplus olive-drab shirt over a “Clash” T-shirt, black jeans, cheap sneakers – were soaked and soaked again. 

And still, nothing moved.

It was probably around 11, and probably 5-600 yards from my car, when I ran into a familiar face; a medium-height, husky guy with curly red hair who looked like a young Gordon Lightfoot.  I recognized him as a floor director at KSTP-TV; we’d run into each other at a few Hubbard Broadcasting events and one time when I’d gone to a taping of the loathsome Twin Cities Live With Bob Bruce.  We could see Highway 280 from the small rise where we stood, exchanging weary, sopping pleasantries. 

“Hey”, he said, a sopping light flashing above his head, “nothing’s moving on 280.  We can start people going back that way…”

We – “Gordon” and two other guys and I – jogged through the slop, back to the 280 ramp to 94, to start talking to drivers, getting them to turn around and head back, the wrong way, up the freeway to the exit to (actually the on-ramp from) University Avenue.  A cop was at the top of the onramp, keeping people from going onto the freeway, so the “plan” was falling into place.

Car by car, the four of us knocked on peoples’ windows, and got them to start turning around and, counterintuitively, driving the wrong way up the freeway.  It’s been twenty years, so I don’t know if it took me half an hour or two hours to get back to my jeep – but when I did, I climbed in, sat with an irrelevant “splorch” on the sopping seat, and got turned around. 

It was somewhere between 11 and midnight when I got off the freeway.  The rain was only letting up a bit.  University Avenue was dotted with small floods, where overtaxes storm drains gave up the ghost.  I pulled over at a gas station and ran to a pay phone to call Fernando’s; the first good news of the night was that the gig had been cancelled when the roof started leaking all over the stage and the audience. 

My guitar was the only dry thing in my life by this point.

It was after midnight when I finally picked my way home, changed into dry clothes, and flopped into bed.

The next day – Friday the 24th – I had an appointment for some freelance work in Eden Prairie at 9AM.  I got on the road at 7. 

By 9, I’d made it to the Minneapolis border, and had called and rescheduled the appointment; they told me that I494 was still flooded and impassible, and if I made it at all it’d be a miracle.

By the grace of God and Jeep and a decent memory of South Minneapolis’ back streets, I made it.  At noon.  It took me until after 5PM to get home. 

But if you were there, you probably had about the same kind of time.

———-

Apropos not much, the KSTP-TV floor director who led the evening’s amateur traffic-coppery eventually became known to the Cities as Rusty Gatenby, who got promoted off the floor and started his long career as Channel Five’s Traffic and Entertainment reporter not long after that, as I recall.