(CNN) — It was the night before Thanksgiving, 1980. An unexpected blizzard had coated central Missouri in inches of snow. And John Morris’ car had just spun off an icy road and into a ditch.

John was still sitting behind the wheel of his 1969 Chevrolet Nova, in shock. He tried to stay calm, taking deep, long breaths. He slowly processed that he was safe, unharmed.

But his car was another story.

“The car had died,” John tells CNN Travel today. “It restarted okay, but with the snow, there was no traction at all…I was stuck.”

Stuck on the way to Grandma’s house

John was 18. He was driving solo from his base in Olathe, Kansas, to his grandparents’ home in St. James, Missouri, for the 1980 holiday weekend.

Since graduating high school, John had been working as a caterer at a college in

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