Highway Horror

We were on our way back to college after a fun weekend trip to a friends home. The windows were down to allow at least the breeze in since it was scorching hot outside and this car had no air-conditioning, in fact, we were lucky it ran at all. And with the windows down, we actually had a nice cross breeze with the holes in the floor board.We were singing to whatever song we could find on the stations in the middle of Kansas on some little mostly unknown highway.

It was the quickest route between Manhattan and Wichita. There are many things in life to fear and many things to fear in the flat lands. I had been in Wichita on two separate occasions when there were tornadoes, but this threat was even worse.

On a long stretch of quiet highway we enjoyed the beautiful sights of the pastures and sky. There were several tractors working in the fields and mowing in the ditches. Up ahead of us, there was something covering the entire road for as far as we could see. As we neared, it looked as if all the grass from the ditches has been thrown onto the highway. I glanced into the rear view mirror and could see the blades floating into the air as my 82' chevette cruised through at it's top speed of 45 mph. Any faster and it would shimmy so badly it was uncontrollable. As I glanced in the mirror again, my delight turned to curiosity with the way the leaves were tumbling through the current. Then even more strange was the way the blades were rising in the still air in front of the car before we even got to them. Then my curiosity turned to terror as suddenly one of the "blades" landed on the windshield. It was then that we realized it was too late to turn back that we were in the middle of a swarm of large grasshoppers.

I started screaming, trying desperately to roll up the window that had lost the rotating end to grasp ahold of. "COVER THE FLOOR HOLES!" My arms were literally shaking and my knuckles turned white as I held tightly to the wheel. Soon enough we were on open clean road again. Both of us sweating. The sound of pure silence. Then as we look at each other, I was able to start laughing at our life threatening event was now over. I rolled down the window again. My dear friend in all her wisdom asked me to pull over that she needed to get out for a second. When we stopped she open the hatchback to free about 20 grasshoppers that unknowingly to me, had joined us. I hate to think what would have happened it one would have jumped on me. After all, my dad had placed a bumper on the riding lawnmower when I was young after I had a couple of accidents like running into trees, cars, etc., in pursuit of trying to get them off me or abandoning the mower all together while it was going.