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Sunday, December 31, 2006

Couple ends up with 44 house guests in storm

By Sue Major Holmes/
Associated Press
      Christine and Randy Glover had a full house — 44 sudden guests stranded by a blizzard along a rural highway in northeastern New Mexico.
    Fortunately, they also had food, thanks in part to a food delivery truck that also was stranded.
    Motorists from Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas descended on the Glovers' three-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot home after their vehicles became stuck in 3- to 4-foot deep snowdrifts on U.S. 56 highway between Springer and Clayton.
    ''We just were in the right place at the right time,'' said Christine Glover.
    The stranded motorists spent Friday and Saturday at the home. Most left Sunday as the highway was cleared, but as of late Sunday afternoon, 14 were still with the Glover family, ''which seems like nothing,'' Christine Glover said.
    She and her husband realized motorists were trapped only 150 yards from their home in a whiteout Friday afternoon. The Glovers use two-way radios to communicate when Randy is working in his workshop away from the house, and the radios picked up transmissions from a couple of the motorists.
    ''They could not see our house and we could not see them because of the whiteout,'' Christine Glover said.
    The motorists the Glovers talked to by radio left their cars and walked to the house. On the way, they told everyone in the stranded line of half a dozen or more vehicles ''that there were people here and everybody could come in,'' she said.
    Christine Glover had no idea how many people she was inviting.
    ''But that was OK because there is nothing else out here,'' she said. The Glovers live about 40 miles west of Clayton, a tiny community in far northeastern New Mexico near the Texas and Oklahoma state lines.
    Their unexpected house guests ranged from a 4-year-old boy to a woman in her 70s, Christine Glover said. One man, from Louisiana, was a heart transplant patient and was airlifted by helicopter to Santa Fe on Sunday afternoon, she said.
    ''It wasn't that he was sick or that he was in any kind of trouble,'' she said. ''He was going to run out of his medication tomorrow morning.''
    Another stranded motorist was the driver of a food truck, and raided his cargo.
    ''God works in mysterious ways. ... The guy that drove the truck is a great guy,'' Christine Glover said.
    The driver let his company know what was happening, and it was declared an emergency situation, she said.
    Since the Glovers live in the country, they try to stay stocked up on essentials, but Christine Glover wasn't prepared to feed so many people.
    ''It was our lifeline, was that truck,'' she said.
    It carried all kinds of nonperishable food. ''We had cereal, ate a lot of Pop Tarts, chips, a lot of canned soup,'' she said. ''We were able to feed everybody. Nobody went hungry.''
    Debbie Shumaker of Miami, Okla., her four teenagers and her best friend were on their way to ski at Angel Fire in northern New Mexico when they became stuck.
    Randy Glover ''kept telling us, 'Hang in there, hang in there,''' Shumaker told the Albuquerque Journal on Saturday. ''We all bundled up, got out of the car and walked to his home. It was a fabulous feeling.''
    Christine Glover said the adults in the group passed the time telling stories, playing cards and dominoes and visiting with each other while the children played video games and watched movies.
    ''It was a pretty good little reunion, is what it felt like,'' she said.
    The house has only one bathroom, but ''everybody was very courteous and tried to keep it clean,'' she said.
    They didn't worry about showering until Sunday, however. The Glovers filled the bathtub with water to be able to flush the toilet in case the electricity went off — which it did, several times, Christine Glover said. The outages never last more than an hour, she said.
    Her own children, 9-year-old Lance and 3-year-old Linzie, were in heaven having other children to play with, she said. Two other 9-year-old boys were among the stranded travelers, and in one, a child from Edmond, Okla., ''my son has a buddy for life,'' Christine Glover said.
    She called her guests ''a very good bunch of people.''
    ''I think anyone would do what we did,'' she said.

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