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Among my favorite Christmas memories is one from 1982. My wife and I spent the Yuletide in Denver. At the airport. Stranded in an epic blizzard. Out of money. Out of food. Out of options.
Did I mention that particular Christmas is one of my favorites?
We left Los Angeles just before midnight on Dec. 23, 12 hours late (mechanical issues they told us) on our journey to Nebraska with gifts and anticipation and good cheer, hoping to spend the holidays with family and friends.
You know. Home for Christmas. Snow greeted us as we landed at Denver’s Stapleton Airport early Christmas Eve morning. We checked that our 6:30 a.m. departure was still scheduled … in case the weather was going to be a problem. Gee, ya think?
We had time for an hour of sleep at a cramped hotel room, a shower and a cab back to the airport only to find our flight had been delayed an hour. Then another hour. The snow continued to fall, heavier and sideways, the world turning completely white.
Stapleton closed mid-morning and would stay shuttered for the next 33 hours, stranding travelers, those picking up travelers who were now trapped and unable to get back home, and hundreds of airport workers. Reports put the number at 5,000.
After reassuring our families in Nebraska — our delayed flight was still scheduled to be the first one out — we held out hope that we’d spend some of Christmas Eve with them.
Spoiler alert: We made it for the last few minutes … of Christmas night.
At first the vibe in the terminal was festive, with restaurants brimming and bars abuzz.
But as the day wore on, as hope for reopening dimmed and as the food and drink ran low, anger, frustration and a palpable sadness set in.
In a fit of derring-do — or perhaps complete idiocy — we spent nearly all our cash on a wild taxi ride to the train station. Rumor had it an eastbound was still scheduled to leave late afternoon. After a harrowing hour dodging drifts and plunging through the whiteout, we ended up downtown at a dark, dingy taxi garage, the California Zephyr canceled, our cash nearly depleted, our hopes of getting to Nebraska before Christmas now dashed.
After thanking a couple cabbies for gracious offers to spend Christmas with their families, we arrived back at Stapleton, where the concourse was cold and the benches hard. Our brave driver had the last of our cash, and with the restaurants and bars inside the airport mostly dark, those traveler’s checks — a thing then — were useless.
Meanwhile, thousands of us were looking for somewhere to sleep.
A few airlines opened heated planes for families with young children and the elderly.
We finally found some warmth on the carpeted floor of a small chapel, where we awoke Christmas morning to two feet of snow, deep and crisp and anything but even with drifts well over 10 feet.
And, strangely, a transformed mood among the marooned.
We joined in an eerie camaraderie as the stranded masses shared snacks, borrowed toothpaste and exchanged travel tips. We held babies while parents repacked or used the bathroom. We kept each others’ places in line, where we would spend most of the day. A man, dressed as Santa and there to meet his kids, started handing small toys and trinkets to the little ones from a bag he had slung over his shoulder. Impromptu caroling sessions broke out. Strangers passed the time visiting. While I stood in yet another line, my wife went to a Christmas Mass in the chapel said by a priest who had arrived earlier in a helicopter filled with diapers, formula and some food amid the dissipating snowfall.
We weren’t happy, but smiles and a strange unity wafted through the concourse. Outside, workers plowed and dug and piled and eventually freed one runway from the wintry grip. So much paralyzing snow had fallen that for the first time ever, neither the Rocky Mountain News nor the Denver Post was published that day.
Yet, at the airport, where we were tired, hungry and needing a shower, something resembling hope had returned.
Ours was the first plane to leave that night, filling us with joy and some apprehension. But as we taxied for takeoff between mountains of snow, hundreds with whom we had shared what simple treasures we could spare that cold and chaotic Christmas Day were pressed against the window.
They appeared to be cheering. We lifted off in silence but then broke into a brief but raucous shout as we climbed into the last few hours of December 25, a few minutes of which were still left when we made it to Nebraska, home, finally.
Yep, definitely one of my favorite Christmases.
