Thirty some years ago, my wife, our infant daughter and I piled into our 1986 Volkswagen Golf and drove from our home in northeast Ohio to the Kent State Folk Festival. The plan was to hear some good music, amuse our daughter on a gray and raw Sunday, and be back by suppertime.

We weren’t surprised that snow was in the forecast. Spring in northern Ohio can bring some unpredictable and miserable weather, but even so, the snow wasn’t due to arrive until early evening. We planned to be home by 6 p.m. No worries, right?

Wrong.

Around 4 p.m. the snow began to fall, lightly at first, but hard enough so that we decided to head home. Just fifteen minutes later, by the time we were all swaddled up and getting into the car, it was snowing heavily.

As we left the campus, we found ourselves in white-out conditions. We managed to creep our way up Route 43, but as we approached the Ohio Turnpike, we learned that the highway had been closed due to unsafe driving conditions.

As a local, I knew that there were alternative routes, but as we turned onto our last, best hope, we found ourselves driving headlong into the teeth of a major storm. We couldn’t see past the blowing snow in the headlights. We were then 10 miles outside of Kent with 20 more miles to go.

We looked at each other and we knew that we had to stop. But where?

In desperation, we pulled into the driveway of a modest house with its lights on. Sharon went to the door and said, “We can’t get home. We have an infant daughter in the car. Can we sleep on the floor of your home tonight? We’ll be gone first thing in the morning.”

The family welcomed us with open arms, and we shared a simple dinner of chicken noodle soup and buttered toast. We watched “America’s Funniest Home Videos” together. Their kids gave us their bedroom. We put the baby on warm blankets on the floor and fell fast asleep.

The next morning, the roads were clear. After a simple breakfast, we were on our way. We’ve never forgotten their kindness.

Now, you might say, this would never happen today. Today we have cellphones, the internet, weather updates in real time and so on. Pretty unlikely we’d find ourselves stuck in snowy Streetsboro, Ohio, on a Sunday night. But another reason this might not happen today is that, today, people tend not to be so welcoming to strangers.

Pulling into someone’s driveway can be life-threatening today – and not for the homeowner. The risk is highest for the innocent teenager picking up his siblings, or for the food delivery person who has the misfortune of pulling into the driveway of an angry, gun-toting consumer of alarmist cable programming.

I’m not so naïve or nostalgic to believe that the good old days were entirely good. After all, we were a young, white family with a car seat. What’s more, we were lucky. The kind neighbor who took us in told us it was good that we hadn’t stopped at the house next door. The homeowner there “wasn’t too friendly.” Suffice it to say, things could have gone very differently.

Nonetheless, I think we’ve lost something.

Technology has given us up-to-the-minute weather reports, but it has also created a disinformation superhighway along which hatred and suspicion travel faster than any snowstorm.

I hope we can be both kind and vigilant as we navigate this brave and often inhospitable world.