Just north of the home where I was raised was a road that ran from St. Louis to Clayton, Missouri. It is naturally called Clayton Road. West of our house was a road that ran north and south; it ran from Clayton, Missouri to Brentwood, Missouri and it was called North and South Road. As you can see, mid-Westerners are not given to fancy titles but tell things as they are. In recent years, however, the North and South Road has been dubbed Brentwood Boulevard. But I regard that as an avant garde designation and I continue to call it North and South Road.
On North and South Road as it approached Brentwood, Missouri, there was a winding curve that was widely known as Dead Man’s Curve. People who used North and South Road knew that they had to approach Dead Man’s Curve with a great deal of caution. If they failed to do that, they would wind up in the leaves after falling down a steep embankment.
I tell you about Dead Man’s Curve and North and South Road to set the stage for an essay about skid chains. Those of you with long memories in the automobile business will recall that as a general principle, in former days, most cars were driven by the two rear wheels. In recent years, since about 1970, front wheel drive has come into vogue. I have nothing against front wheel drive. There are times when I yearn for the drive wheels to be located in the rear. Other people have the same desire which has led manufacturers of high-priced automobiles to have drive wheels in the rear. But in ordinary automobiles the front wheels are the driving force. If you want to get fancy about this subject, these days there are vehicles that have four wheel drive.
So the era on which this essay is based would certainly be pre the 1975 models. The problem seems to be that I have never seen skid chains on front wheel drive automobiles. I suspect somehow or another that it has to do with the ability to turn the car. But that is just my supposition. Let’s go back to the era of this essay when skid chains were attached to the rear wheels in icy weather such as we are now experiencing.
Skid chains were attached to the circumference of the rear wheels which could best be accomplished by jacking the rear wheels up and strapping the skid chains around them. Fastening the inside clamp on the skid chains was a work of art. The outside clamp gave no problem but the inside clamp almost invariably had to be fastened with the workman lying on his back to make the connection.
As the youngest member of the service stations where I worked, it nearly always fell to me to fasten the inside clamp. That was dirty work in that rain and snow drops from the wheels were a constant companion. I can assure you that after nearly four years in the service station business, I hated to see a driver come in asking to have his skid chains attached.
Skid chains were exactly as they are described. They were chains that provided traction to the rear wheels. Because the chains, which were of metal, rubbed against the pavement, they soon wore out. When that happened, you could hear a person driving toward you several blocks away because of the clank clank clank as the worn out chains would strike the fenders. But in the old days of the 1950s and 1960s, nearly every motorist would place a pair of skid chains in his trunk. Tires in those days placed much less of their surface on the road than the tires we now have.
As you can tell from this brief account, skid chains were not a device that could be depended upon. They wore out and drivers were reluctant to install them because of the trouble involved. To alleviate this situation, in the 1950s or thereabouts, we had tire manufacturers introducing snow tires which had large cleats which theoretically would grab the snow and throw it behind the car. Snow tires were fine except that they made a large noise.
Then there was a later development involving studded tires. Tires with metal studs in them were embraced by only a few drivers and were banned not long after they were introduced, as I recall it, because of the damage that they were doing to the streets.
But skid chains have a special place in my memory. I can remember wrestling with the clamps on the inside of the tires while hoping that the chains would last so that the driver would never come back.
Today we are getting some 50,000 miles out of our tires, whereas in those days, the tires would be worn out after 20,000 to 30,000 miles. Tires these days put a lot more of their tire surface on the surface of the road than the old ones did and with the advent of front wheel drive nobody gives a thought to skid chains anymore. But in the weather that we now find inflicted upon us in December of 2009, my thoughts wander back to the days when skid chains were in vogue. I suppose that skid chains probably prevented hundreds of accidents on Dead Man’s Curve on North and South Road. To that extent, I salute skid chains and hope to never see another one in my life.
E. E. CARR
December 26, 2009
Essay 427
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Kevin’s commentary:
I’d wager that Pop indeed has not seen any such chains in the past few years. It seems like a safe bet to me, albeit one that is in poor taste.
Growing up in Austin I didn’t really ever get to see chains on tires, but I thought for some reason that they were used all the time in the north. I thought come November, everybody just slapped on chains for four or so months. Alas, going to school with Northerners taught me that the chains are rarely broken out, and when they are it is for extreme conditions like mountains.