MICHAEL J. LACIVITA A winter month to remember

January 1978 was one of my toughest winter driving months. At the time I owned a rear-wheel drive 1975 Monte Carlo, which I considered one of the best cars I have ever owned. As corporate safety and security director of Commercial Intertech, Inc., I was making a safety inspection of our Berkeley Springs, W.Va., plant. It was a Friday, and I was hoping to come home, but I learned that the Ohio Turnpike was shut down due to a winter storm.
I decided to come home on Saturday and had a tough time on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and was about to get off at the New Castle interchange when the toll taker told me they had just reopened the Ohio Turnpike. So I re-entered the turnpike. It was dark and only one big truck was ahead of me. I had snow tires on the Monte Carlo, and I had made this tough drive to the bottom of the hill, one block from my home on Eldora Drive.
I wasn't able to make the Mount Eldora Drive hill. This had happened to me many times before with rear-wheel drive cars, so I walked home. I did not have the steel studded snow tires, nor did I have the single-strap chains or full wrap around chains of the good old days. Today I rarely see any of these winter time assists, mainly due to the advent of front- wheel drive cars.
The Mount Eldora Drive hill challenge has not conquered me for the past 20 years, because of my front-wheel drive cars.
Gift for daughter
And now for the rest of the story. In 1982, I gave my daughter Sandy the Monte Carlo, after I had it repainted and it looked like new. The odometer showed 4,000 miles on it, but actually it was 104,000 miles. It was stolen from a parking lot never to be seen again.
The thief got the car, plus two snow tires in the trunk. Sandy commented that she hoped the thief ran out of gas, because the tank was almost empty. I hoped he got stuck at the bottom of a steep snow-covered hill somewhere.
X Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and an inductee into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame.