My Late Eighties

There is a car with chains on the front tires parked outside my house this morning. Awesome.
Chains on tires make me think of the late eighties when all six of my family would pack into the suburban and drive to the mountains where we would be stopped by the R.C.M.P. and told we could go no further until we chained up. We stood by the side of the highway, groggy from the long drive, bundled up in our puffy, fluorescent ski jackets, swaying with the rush of passing semis, while my mom fearfully drove the suburban forward, inch by inch, and my dad fumbled with the chains in the cold, temper snapping, me sick with the certainty that his head was about to be crushed into the packed snow that was causing us so many problems.
He always made us listen to George Thourogood as we drove up the steepest part of the mountain, all chained and invincible, about to slide off the side into evergreen eternity.