We plan our work and work our plan in the produce aisle.
Sometimes nature interrupts. This is one such time …
I was leaving my last Denver store visit on a cold, winter day — Tuesday, March 6, 1990. Produce supervisors (or specialists, as we were called) such as myself reviewed multiple stores each day, working with produce managers. I tried to map out my route so that, with luck, by the time I finished I'd be close to home in time for dinner. I figured on this day I would just make it.
I figured wrong.
Snow was beginning to fall hard. Sideways, in fact. No problem, I thought. Being a Colorado native, I was used to driving in the stuff.
Home was 22 highway miles away. At my last stop I called my better half. My ETA was about 5 p.m. “Maybe later,” I added. An ominous caveat.
The blizzard hit and added to everyone's ETA. Visibility was worsening. I did well for the first 11 miles, but just as I passed one off-ramp option from westbound U.S. Highway 36 that might have saved me, traffic slowed, then slowed some more. Ugh.
This alternate stretch normally took about 10 minutes. When it slowed to a crawl, I knew there would be no way I'd make it home anytime soon. I thought, uh boy, our produce trucks — heck all traffic in town — might be paralyzed for a day or so.
Big storms meant trouble especially in retail: increased shopping traffic but with short staffs and limited stock.
Traffic funneled into one icy lane, and there were no exits for miles. All I could see in breaks of the storm were faint, distant emergency lights. A stall? An accident?
I had less than half of a tank in my fuel-efficient Honda Accord. That was plenty, or so I thought.
Towering highway lights illuminated everything in an eerie way. Like in the 1980, frozen horror film, “The Shining.” Something's seriously wrong, I thought. No traffic was coming from the opposite direction. My car's low undercarriage scraped bottom with each icy push forward, following others in the single-file, frozen trail. I was in for a long night.
An hour passed, then more. Thoughts turned to work-related things of course, but my focus soon shifted to snow piled ever higher in 3-foot drifts — feathered walls around me. The storm presented a muffled, yet ominous and hypnotizing beauty.
One by one, I weaved around buried, abandoned cars. I wondered about the driver's fates. Inching forward, I timed it as gaining one car-length per half-hour or so. Not good.
A figure approached. I opened my window a crack. A woman shouted through the howling storm. “Do you have a mobile cellular phone?” I didn't. The then-budding technology was something I'd been lobbying for at our grocery chain. I felt awful. That would have come in handy. She turned and leaned into the swirling wind, heading back to her idling car ahead.
I was less than a few miles from home. I could just make out blurred lights on my street in the distance, across a farmer's field. A shortcut to the ordeal? I considered ditching my car and making a beeline for home.
That meant traversing barbed wire fences, berms and deep ditches — with me in my Dockers and dress shoes. I envisioned the headline: Produce man found frozen 100 feet from back door. I reconsidered. “I'm safe. I'm warm. Just gotta stick it out.”
Radio news updates offered little help.
Being on the road as a produce specialist, I was at ease with extended travel periods. I tried to settle in. To pass the time, I tuned into the Denver Nuggets basketball game. The entire game. I didn't follow the team, but the radio sportscaster was a pro. I could see the game in my mind. The sounds of the official's whistle chirps and shoes squeaking on the court punctuated the broadcast.
It reminded me of my teen years, lazily watching high school games with my pals on nights that I didn't have to work the closing produce shift.
Nearing 11 p.m., with maybe a mile to the exit and an access road home, I held out hope.
Another figure and knock on my window. It was a young guy who had to ditch his fresh juice truck somewhere behind me. Like so many, he ran out of gas. Could he join me?
Of course. It was nice to have the company, I told him — so long as my own fuel held out, that is. I peeked at his jacket to see if we carried his juice line. “I'm so hungry,” he said shyly. “Do you have anything to eat?”
“No, but … .” I reached for my glove box, remembering that after each of our weekly, produce staff lunch meetings, I pocketed a handful of soup crackers to stash in the car, just in case. To our surprise, out they spilled. This was the just-in-case moment. I ate a handful of packs. The young truck driver devoured the rest.
I wished I had stashed a couple of pizzas.
After midnight, my bladder was about to burst. Meanwhile, my car was running on fumes. The highway was closed ahead. No matter, as I followed the single lane crawl through the ice ruts down my exit.
I eased my car into an all-night gas station. No working phone, of course. At least the blizzard had nearly subsided, and one main road was plowed. I dropped my rider off at an intersection, not far from his friend's house.
Around 1 a.m., my car slid into a deep drift. I trudged the last few blocks through the snow in the quiet night. My worried wife met me at the door. She had seen the distant, snarled traffic from our kitchen window and guessed that's where I probably was.
For some crazy blizzard phenomenon, that particular 11-mile stretch of highway got a whopping 36 inches of snow and stranded over 200 vehicles.
The following morning, I managed to dig out my car. My produce director told me to stay home and rest. I didn't argue. Such is the life of an on-the-go (and sometimes not) produce specialist.
Nature especially dictates, as we've all experienced, that some days are indeed better than others.
by Armand Lobato, Jan 09, 2025