I really couldn't believe she was even considering it.

The wife came home for lunch today, and I walked in on a conversation between her and youngest son.

He was planning on going to Central City. With a bunch of friends, on a shopping excursion. For clothes, reportedly.

On a day like this? Are you crazy?

It had been raining all morning, melting away all but the shoveled piles of the snow left from before Christmas. Everything was wet.

And in about four to five hours, everything would be coated with a glare sheet of ice. Including the highways. With a two-hour drive just to get to Central City, it was an absolute guarantee they would be coming back well after dark, well after the wet highways had froze.

In a dinky little red Subaru with skinny tires.

No way!

"That's why he's borrowing the Explorer," the wife explains.

So, now besides placing young lives at risk, he's also going to be risking our only reliable means of transportation?

That's crazy!

I told them no.

But, a half-hour later or so, they left. The wife to work in the little red Subaru, youngest son in the Explorer, off to pick up his fares (one a young female we keep hearing mentioned fairly often, now). Them off to start their afternoons, me to sit down and worry.

And worry.

Keeping the phone line open, and the cellular turned on, just in case.

To my surprise, 90 minutes or so later, youngest son comes walking into the house. Alarm bells go off, and I resist the urge to charge out and check the condition of the SUV. Instead, I surrepticiously peek out a window and see...

A small red Subaru. Seems they canceled the trip to Central City, and he swapped back with the wife. Weather's too bad for the trip.

And it was him who decided not to go. His friends were still eager.

I was so proud.

After work, wife advised us streets in town were getting slick. She slid downhill into an intersection, which was fortunately empty. Highway website reported black ice in the empty, remote stretches between us and Central City. So glad the boy had enough maturity to avoid driving in these conditions.

Near the end of dinner, the phone rings. Wife answers, and I don't like the words I catch from her half of the conversation.

"Where are you?" and "Is any one hurt?" and "Can you drive it?"

Answer to both of the last questions was "No."

Which is both good, and bad.

As we drive into town, I rehearse all the penalties to soon be imposed on wayward youngest son's life. Absolutely no way is he borrowing any of our vehicles. He wrecks his car driving around too fast on icy roads, he'll just have to stay home until it's fixed. If that means we drive him back to college and he has no car once there, so be it.

The wife is silent.

The interstate is wet. Wet, mind you, not a speck of ice, perfectly driveable. Three hours after sunset.

Steets in town are the same. Wet. No ice. Somehow he managed to smack his car into a pole on wet streets, not ice.

My mood is not improving.

We turn up into the residential area where he is, where 15th street curves around the park. The wife makes an obvious, wrong turn.

It's clear you've never hunted injured deer in this part of town, I interject, as she gets us turned around. I've been here a lot.Several times a day in some tough winters. We're only a block away.

Wife gets corrected, and we turn uphill towards the park.

Now, I use that term "uphill" literally, but it's not much of a hill. I just checked the topo map. You climb all of twenty feet in that block.

But in that block, in that twenty-foot increase in elevation, the wet road turns into a sheer sheet of ice. We're still in two-wheel drive, and the rear tires spin half-uselessly as we climb. Get to the intersection, and we coast forward, uphill, like we're on grease.

There's flashing lights on our left.

The wife pulls up onto the park lawn to stop (right next to a hydrant, I might add). As we're getting out, a car comes down the slope and swings sideways as the young woman tries to stop on the sheer, black ice. Mercifully, her car stops before hitting the Subaru. Then it creeps away.

As I step off the park grass onto the street, I fall to my knees.

Yup, it's that slick. Can barely walk on it. From wet to ice in just a block. Black ice with a thin layer of water on top.

The front of the Subaru looks bad, but driveable.

Then youngest son shows us the puddle of oil under the bumper. He and I remarked, a long time ago, about what a stupid place that was to have an oil filter. Sticking out of the engine block, right there behind the bumper.

And we were right.

But no oil, no go.

So, the cops are called. Two arrive in a single patrol car, and park at the crest of the hill, walking down the lawns to the scene. Too smart to step on the asphalt. We're their second wreck of the night, the other at the intersection the wife had fun with a couple hours before. Main cop is the same fellow who helped us with three cowboys a couple summers back. Other is obviously new, getting instructions on radio procedures and paperwork on only his second accident investigation.

Their conclusion? This was a true accident. Nothing youngest son could have done to avoid it. Happens here all the time. That's why this curve has concrete-filled pipes lining the shoulder.

Keeps sliding cars out of peoples' houses.

Then we wait for the tow truck. Whose driver is again someone we know, and cheerful and quick with his work.

Later that night, I walk into the kitchen to find youngest son sitting on the floor in a corner, hugging his masked heeler tight. Trying his best not to cry.

"Stress," he said, but I suspect I know better. Yes, sliding helplessly down the slope was probably scary. And dealing with cops and tow trucks is always stressful. Dreading your Dad's angry reaction is probably stressful, too, but that never came to pass. Not after he couldn't even walk across the street without falling down.

And yeah, although that little red car had seen better days, seeing a big huge crease in the front probably didn't feel good.

But I know what that car is to youngest son.

His freedom.

His means of escape from the doldrum of our lives, and into the comaraderie of his friends'. And maybe particularly that one young female. We only live six miles from town, but that six might as well be 6,000 if you don't have wheels.

I'd cry, too.