The Unforgettable Night

My obsession started in fourth grade my dad introduced me to the band Led Zeppelin by practically forcing me to put the whole box set on my iPod. I was reluctant at first but I finally became attached to them and they became a part of my daily play lists. I would delve into the deep Led Zeppelin history and watch movies like The Song Remains the Same over and over, mesmerized, absorbed by their immense talent and wishing that I could have seen them live. It was the winter of seventh grade when that dream finally came true; I was going to go and see the front man of Led Zeppelin's band, Robert Plant and the Band of Joy. While it might not have been Led Zeppelin it was close enough for me, but as usual there was one "minor" problem the concert fell on a cold day in January, in which they were also calling for a nor'easter with up to two feet of snow falling within a few hours. I didn't really feel like suffering through a long cold night just to go see a concert, especially because I had school the next day. But then there is my dad. A long haired, ponytail-ed to be exact, 70's kid who practically lived in the front row of Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers concerts. He wouldn't miss a concert for anything.

Even though I knew what his response would be I asked anyways, "Are you sure we should go?".
"Yes." He said with complete conviction and no hesitation.
That was that we were going whether I liked it or not. We left the house t was about 5:30 P.M., it was only lightly sleeting and the blizzard had not really started yet. The first leg of our journey was fine until we crossed over to I-95 where there was a fine sheet of ice glistening like glass in the headlights. The clock ticked by until it was about 6:30; we were making good time considering the horrendous conditions. Sadly that was when the real snow started, thick, heavy, wet, large flakes that pounded the road and car relentlessly. The snow was falling so hard at this point that plows could not keep it off the road. When we finally got to West Philadelphia we were rapidly approaching our destination, The Tower Theater, that is if you consider ten miles per hour rapid. 

As we drove the final stretch through Philadelphia I sat back, the seat heat radiantly warming my body like the sun on a hot summer day. It was like a winter wonder land outside but it felt like a tropical island inside. The scene from inside the car was quite deceiving, it looked like a winter wonderland in the quiet warm car, but it was really a frozen hell outside. At the time we were completely unaware of what a trip this would become. In fact nobody seemed worried, there were people out walking around and stores were open. It was not until about 7:30 when it seemed like all of a sudden all the stores were shuttered up, which was very out of the ordinary considering we were in Philadelphia. Eventually we arrived (sadly the only parking was a few blocks away) and trudged two blocks through the snow. When we got to the Tower Theater it looked like a scene from the Immigrant Song, with all the ice, snow and even the midnight sun.

Robert Plant, vocals of Led Zeppelin

As the lights dimmed and The Band of Joy came on stage the crowd erupted with a sound like no other. The opening song was my favorite, You Can't Buy My Love and Their encore performance was a classic Led Zeppelin song, Dazed and Confused. All in all it was an epic concert or as better stated by the man next to me who was obviously under the influence of some kind of drug, "Man, that was like awesome; it was like Led Zeppelin got back together again." 

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy performing

The concert ended right around midnight. We went out the back exit and it opened right by the tour buses. In that alley, people were rolling in the snow and having snowball fights. At that point there was over a foot of snow on the ground. I got an eerie feeling when I walked out into the winter wonderland, it seemed like the middle of a winter day, but it was really the middle of the night.

The winter wonderland I bared witness to

We got to the car, and it had been blocked in by the snow that was plowed up against it. So we got out the shovels and started shoveling. Finally when we finished we tried to pull out, but we were still stuck. So a few people came stumbling over and started knocking on my dad’s window.

My dad rolled down the window and said, “What?”

One of the stumbling drunks said with very slurred speech, “We’ll rock the car then you try to pull out again.”

“Okay,” my dad sighed.

It was the funniest thing I had seen in a while. They were all stumbling and falling while trying to rock the car loose in a foot of snow in the middle of the night. They finally got us free and we were off, thankfully. It lightened the mood a great deal but we soon remembered the hard journey we had ahead. 

Common sight on the streets

Our drive got off to a good start, with a wrong turn because there were taxi's obstructing the road everywhere. When we finally made our way back to the main road, Market Street, it was not much better. There were homeless people wandering the street, and taxis at obscure angles blocking the road. On top of that the roads were almost completely unplowed. When we got on the Vine Street Expressway we realized that our whole drive would be like this. Daringly, we proceeded ahead on to the treacherous unplowed roads. As we were slowly creeping along the stretch of road we came to a sudden standstill because of the plows that were just attempting to clear the road. The plows weren't doing any better in the snow than the cars every once and a while we would see one flipped over on the side of the road, and when the police tried to come and help they just got stuck. At one point we came to a complete standstill so we pulled under an underpass and took a nap. When traffic resumed the plows led us off the Vine Street Expressway and onto city streets which eventually took us to I-95. It was encouraging, but at the same time frightening because it meant the rest of our journey would have the same unplowed roads. Along I-95 there were more overturned plows, trucks, and anything with wheels. We continued along at a crawling pace in the icy, horrible road conditions. Finally we got to Route 29, almost the end of our journey, but it was the same as I-95. We powered through the rest of Route 29, as we got to the end of Route 29 that meant our journey was nearly over.

What the highway looked like

We neared our road. We broke through the snow bank with our car, and it was the same as every other road. It had been plowed earlier with little effect, and our house was just a few miles away. Our house was so close, but so far, and I could just feel my warm bed beckoning. We got to our driveway, but the snow was too deep to drive up. So we got out, left the car, and walked to the top of the driveway in the cold, icy snow. The snow was filling my boots and by the time I got to the top my shoes were packed full of snow.  We went inside, looked at the clock: 3:30 AM, It was a long night. I went straight to bed, but as I was falling asleep I heard a rumbling. I looked out my window and it was a plow: the plow that could have helped us out anywhere else.