Life Beyond the Grade
July 1st, 2009 by Grandpa OddballCopyright © GetOddNews and Grandpa Oddball July 1, 2009. All rights reserved.
Yes, life did go on beyond the grade – the Lewiston grade that is. At the time I wasn’t so sure. It was early in our married life and we’d recently moved to Northern Idaho and believe me that was a cultural shock for a city boy like me. Communication didn’t always proceed smoothly despite the illusion of a common language. My wife on the other hand being an old Minnesota farm girl fit in like a custom glove except in one particular. She never got used to driving mountain roads. Fortunately, or so I thought, for some reason I had no such trouble. In fact, I rather enjoyed the challenge.
One road in particular sent shivers down my wife, the Lewiston grade. Now, back in those days (yes, we’re that old) the Lewiston grade was something special and not anything like the multi-lane high speed freeway it has since been transformed into. Pretentiously called the “Old spiral highway” now even the old road has been vastly improved where previously it was a steep, narrow, winding two lane road with no guard rails and little or no shoulders. Meeting another vehicle on the grade was not just an adventure but if that vehicle was a truck or bus it was downright dangerous.
I understood and sympathized with my wife’s reluctance to drive the grade. To be honest, I was a little concerned myself probably because my introduction to the grade was something less than auspicious. Traveling up the grade in a Greyhound bus I was sitting at an outside upper deck window peering down at the Clearwater river flanked by the towns of Lewiston and Clarkson far, far, far below. The hill was so steep that I couldn’t see the road but only a vast empty space below me with an occasional spray of gravel streaking past my view as we turned from one switchback to another. It seemed like we were balancing on the edge of a cliff that was liable to give way at any moment. Higher and higher we climbed until the valley below was barely visible then finally relief flooded over all us passengers when we reached the top and spied the Palouse wheat fields. It always made me nervous when I was a passenger rather than the driver on the grade.
Things came to a head when we decided to visited my wife’s parents in California. Usually we headed east then south thus avoiding the grade but on this particular trip we decided to be adventurous and drive south through central Idaho. This required that we travel the grade. Knowing my wife’s reluctance to driving the grade I magnanimously offered to drive the first leg and navigate the grade.
Brimming with confidence we set off. Initially all went well. I successfully drove the grade and once past Lewiston we stopped and checked the map again. The map showed highway 95 as a fairly smooth looking well defined road so I turned the driving over to my wife for the next leg of the trip. Unfortunately, the map lied!
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