No strangers in a snowstorm

The roads were just good enough that I could make it to the bar across the street. It was around midnight and I was drinking beer with a friend when a man walked by the window. He was moving slow and leaning back, precariously. His feet seemed to be a good block ahead of the rest of him, his arms out for balance.

"It looks like something out of a W.C. Fields movie," one guy said.

As he walked through the bar, I had to put my head down to conceal my laughter.

A few minutes later, something caught my eye through the window. Trying to cross Fourth Street, he fell. Face down. He got to his knees, but that was it.

I felt like a jerk. This wasn't a comedy.

By the time I got to him, a woman had stopped her truck. Together we helped him to his feet and up over the snowbank onto the sidewalk.

"I've been drinking" he said. "Can you take me home."

The woman hesitated.

"I'm not comfortable taking a stranger in my car," she said.

He'd been calling cabs, he said, but nobody came. He lived six blocks away. There was a good 16 inches of snow on the ground. It was 22 degrees, and the wind was gusting at 30 mph.

She looked at me.

"Dude, will you come with me? I'll bring you back here."

I pushed him up into the passenger seat of her 4x4 and climbed in behind him.

We motored down Main Street, dodging pedestrians walking in the road, where the tire tracks were a little easier to navigate than the sidewalks. The woman introduced herself as Gina.

"Hi, Tina," he said.

"Gina."

"Thank you, Tina. I couldn't make it home in this if I was sober. Which I'm not."

We fish-tailed onto his street, and the truck bogged down in the snow bank blocking the alley. I got out and helped the man through two-foot deep drifts to the door.

I don't know if he made it to his bed, but at least he wasn't going to freeze to death or get run over.

"Thank Tina for me," he said as he closed the door.

Back in the truck, Gina pointed out the obvious: I was just as much a stranger as he was.

I made small talk and did my best not to seem like a serial killer as she drove me back to the Bodega, where my friend was beginning to wonder if I'd been kidnapped.

I realized this is why I love the upper Midwest.

There are no strangers in a snow storm. 

Chris Hubbuch: La Crosse Tribune