It was dark and the snow was coming straight down in big "goose feather" clumps. We had been indoors and preoccupied and had not seen the snow start or we might have left sooner. As it was, there was at least three inches on the ground and building fast. I had to get from where I was in the little town of Weilimdorf to Patch Barracks in Vaihingen. Not a great distance, but the route I usually used involved a short stretch up a tall hill with a winding road. Looking at the snow, I chose the longer route, west to the autobahn, then south to the Leonberger interchange and southeast to the Sindelfingen exit. Longer route, but on a night like this I felt the roads would be in better shape. They weren't.
Back in the day, as the kids say, all the Autobahns in Germany had names. Usually destinations determined the name: Frankfurt-Nurnberg Autobahn or Karlsruhe-Munich Autobahn, etc. It was easier to keep track that way, but you kinda had to know which larger towns were in the direction you wanted to go. European efficiency took over in the 70's sometime and all the major routes got numbered. So the Heilbronn-Leonberg Autobahn got stretched all the way to Nurnberg and became the A-81 with a European designation as E-41. Easier, huh! And sometimes, just like in the good ole USA, routes combine for a while and you get two or three "A" routes combined, with their "E" designations and you better be able to read fast because you pass those signs at 100 mph!
Told you all that so I could tell you this: We jumped up on A-81 southbound just north of the interchange where it "T"s with A-8. This interchange is a monster; it sits in a low spot and the two major autobahns that intersect there come in off high ground so you can see it for miles before you get there. It twists and wiggles to get all the traffic smoothed together...at 100 mph. If you are southbound on 81 you pass under 8, and if you are to continue south onto 8, you curve left and start up a steep hill where three or four lanes meet up with three lanes of 8 and for a couple of miles going up the hill the autobahn is six or seven lanes across...in each direction. At the top of the grade it gradually sloughs off the right hand lanes until there is only three in each direction. It is always busy.
At the time we were about to get into the acceleration lane to get onto the southbound A-81, I heard a rattly sound under the hood. I pulled off on the shoulder to investigate. It was the fan belt which had snapped in two, slapped around under the hood, then disappeared. It was a pitch black night. The only illumination at that point was the reflection of cars' lights off the solid wall of falling snow. I decided that I could make it to Patch if we could get a straight shot without too much delay; the car would run on the battery for a little while and I could get a new belt and jump start the car in the morning. I had to make it work, though, because once committed to the autobahn, the next exit was the one I needed to get to anyway. So off we went.
A couple of miles later, as we came out from under A-8 and started up the grade to the merge, traffic came to a slow crawl. It was snowing so hard by now that you couldn't see the lane markers, in fact, there were no lanes. Some cars were skidding and sliding around; big trucks were moving out around other trucks that had lost traction only to start losing traction themselves. If you could keep moving you had a chance, but slow and slipping cars and trucks were all over and the people who could keep moving were weaving in and out around them. There were hundreds of cars and trucks on that hill. We joined the snowhill grand prix. The little Sport LeMans had snow tires on the back and we were able to keep moving fairly steadily. Several times we saw cars that had been moving along pretty well have to stop when someone swung out in front of them and then they couldn't get going again. We determined that we couldn't stop, no matter what. This vehicular ballet/road race continued on for some time. We would sometimes be moving almost perpendicular to the traffic to get around stalled vehicles.
And all the while I was sweating bullets waiting for the tell-tale chug-chug
of the engine dying out for lack of electricity. The headlights and dashlights began to get noticeably dimmer and my nerves were getting more frayed by the second. It seemed like forever before we crested the hill. When we did, things began to thin out and we were able to speed up. I didn't know how long the car would run on battery alone, especially with the lights on, but we got to Patch Barracks that night with very dim lights. When we pulled up into our parking place and shut the car off, I tried to start it again to see if it had enough juice to do it. The starter didn't even click; the interior lights just went almost totally out, not a sound.
The next morning I went out to get a fan belt. The parts store was within walking distance (everything was, at Patch) and just for grins I opened the car and tried to start it (this involved the removal of over six inches of snow from the car) and LO! It started right up. I drove it to the parts store, bought the belt and installed it right there in the PX parking lot. I was amazed. I knew a good battery could regenerate itself if it rested awhile, but I didn't expect it to be able to come back to the point of starting the car.
Every good tale has a moral...what is the moral here? Wanna help me out?