His car broke down on Thanksgiving 1980 and he entered an empty house. Then the occupants came home

John Morris took this photo of the farmhouse at the top of the hill on Thanksgiving 1980. (John Morris via CNN Newsource)

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 OK, 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 Kansas. He’d had to work until noon that Thanksgiving Eve. He’d mournfully watched all the students head off a day or two before, while he had to wait to load his backpack into his car and start his holiday road trip.

The journey was set to take about four hours. John stopped off midway to visit some old friends in Warrensburg, Missouri, then got back on the rural roads.

That’s when the snow started falling, thick and fast.

“It was a heavy, wet snow. This was highly unusual… It hardly ever snowed in November in Missouri,” recalls John.

As the snow got heavier, the roads got more slippery. John drove as slowly as possible, but when his car hit a slick spot on the road, he immediately lost control.

“The back end of my car spun around to my right side, and continued to spin until the car went back first into the ditch on the left side of the road,” John recalls.

“It’s a very unsettling experience to not be in control of the vehicle that you are driving… I was just really, really fortunate that there was no oncoming traffic.”

After John had calmed himself down, he took in the realities of his situation: “There was no way that my car was going to climb out of this ditch without a tow truck.”

It was 1980. John couldn’t call the tow company from a cell phone. He couldn’t text his grandparents. His options were limited.

But John was a teenager. He recalls being simultaneously “young and naive” and “pragmatic.” He figured it would be dangerous to stay in the car in the ditch as the snow continued to settle.

“So I thought, ‘What do I do now? What are my options? What are my possible resources?’” recalls John.

The highway was surrounded by farmland, with few homes in sight. But right before he’d gone off the pavement, John had noticed a house set back from the road. He figured that was the closest shelter.

“So, I trudged through the sticky wet snow, and knocked on the door,” says John.

A man answered. John explained what had happened, and asked if he could use his phone to call the tow company. The stranger obliged, but said John wouldn’t be able to wait inside his home, as he was about to head out.

John entered the number into the landline. The tow company said they’d send someone over, but couldn’t promise when they’d arrive — the unexpected holiday snow was causing chaos across the region.

“There were a lot of cars that had been run off the road,” says John. “ I couldn’t wait at the house where I had made the phone call from. So I trudged back to my car and said, ‘I’ll just have to wait.’”

The light on the hill

John stood by his car for a while. He was dressed for chilly weather, but not snow.

“No heavy coat or scarf or boots,” says John. “Not even sure if I had gloves.”

Meanwhile the weather was worsening. There was no sign of the tow company. It was getting dark.

“And the snow was heavy and wet, and I was cold, and so I started looking for other options,” John recalls. “I was uncomfortably cold, and my preference was to find shelter in a warm environment…Even though I’m very close to Jefferson City, I’m still on a rural highway, and so there are not a lot of houses on the road.”

John glanced around, trying to work out where he should try next.

“I just started looking around,” he recalls. “And in the other direction, to the south, on the opposite side of the road, there was a light up on a hill.”

John started up the hill, hoping the light indicated the occupants of the home were inside. As he got closer, he saw the outline of a clapboard farm house. The light he’d seen from below was an outdoor porch light.

The driveway was some “1,000 feet long,” recalls John, and felt longer, especially in the cold, wet, dark conditions, his vision obscured by the heavy snow. But eventually, he made it.

“A dog came out to greet me, wagging his tail. And I’m pretty good with dogs, so we made friends pretty quickly,” recalls John.

This felt like a good omen. But when John knocked on the door, no one answered. He called out a greeting. Still, no one answered.

Instinctively, John turned the door knob. It opened. The door was unlocked.

Figuring maybe the house’s occupants were just upstairs and out of earshot, John entered the house. He called out another “hello,” only to be greeted with silence.

He’d entered the kitchen, which was dark until he fumbled around for a light switch, and flicked on the overhead light.

There was clearly no one home. John spotted a phone on the counter, next to a phone book nearby, and decided he’d call the tow company for an update, then leave the empty house and retreat back down the hill.

The tow company line rang out. There was no answer.

“I surmised that they were out pulling cars out of ditches…maybe they would reach my car soon,” recalls John. “So I turned off the kitchen light and started back down the driveway.”

To his delight, John arrived at the bottom of the hill to see his car retrieved from the ditch and parked on the opposite side of the road. Relieved, John got back behind the wheel.

“When I attempted to move the car, it started up OK, but when I attempted to move it, as soon as the wheel started spinning, it just slid back down in the ditch,” he recalls.

John later discovered that when his car had skidded backwards off the road, the battery had been damaged. He didn’t know this at that moment, but what he did know was the car wasn’t drivable.

And meanwhile, just up the hill was a very warm and welcoming unoccupied farmhouse.

So John returned to the empty house. He picked up the phone again, called his grandparents and let them know what had happened and where he was. His grandma told him his parents and his younger sister had also got caught in the snow storm while driving over. They’d decided the roads were unsafe and stopped in a roadside motel for the night. John’s grandma urged her grandson to stay put.

John hung up and surveyed his surroundings. By then, he’d made up his mind: He was going to stay in the farmhouse for the night. He felt only slightly guilty about this decision — it definitely wasn’t safe to wait inside his broken-down car. And sure, he was breaking and entering, but he meant no harm. Maybe he could even do some good while he was there?

He glanced around the kitchen, and his eyes settled on a pile of dishes stacked by the sink, in need of washing. Figuring the least he could do was assist with some household chores, John finished up cleaning and drying these dishes. Then, he found a pen and paper and wrote a note explaining who he was and why he was there, just in case he fell asleep on the couch before the owners returned. He fished out some cash from his wallet and placed it next to the note on the kitchen table, as a thank you.

“Then I made myself at home, settling into a sofa and watching some television,” John recalls.

The stranger in the house

An hour or two passed. John had settled in for the night, but he was starting to get hungry. He debated whether helping himself to the house’s food was a step too far. He’d just ventured toward the fridge and tentatively opened the door when he heard the sound of voices on the other side of the front door.

“I could have sworn I turned all the lights off when we left,” a woman was saying.

John’s heart started beating faster.

“So I closed the refrigerator…and just kind of braced myself for whatever was to come,” he recalls. “Then the door opens and a woman appears first and then behind her, a slight fellow, he wasn’t very tall, maybe 5’6” or 5’7”, kind of peering over her shoulder. We just kind of blinked at each other for a few seconds.”

For a moment, all parties were in shock. The moment seemed to last forever, but then John got up his courage to speak.

“I quickly introduced myself and explained why I was there,” says John. “They chuckled and said, ‘Yeah, we saw your car down on the road, but never expected to find somebody here…’ And that was my first encounter with Virgil and his girlfriend.”

Virgil Schmitz, it transpired, was the owner of the farmhouse. He was warm and welcoming, instantly trusting John — despite the strange circumstances.

Before long, the threesome were sitting around the kitchen table, tucking into strawberry rhubarb pie with ice cream.

John told the couple about his day: the car breaking down, the tow company, the false start, entering their house. The couple laughed along, explaining they’d been at Virgil’s son’s house around the corner, and insisting John was absolutely welcome to stay overnight.

“What was going through my mind, while we were having our pie, was how lucky I was to have stumbled into this home, with people who were so understanding and so accommodating,” says John.

After pie, Virgil’s girlfriend went upstairs, found spare bedding and blankets and set John up in the guestroom.

“They put me up for the night, gave me hot breakfast in the morning, on Thanksgiving day,” recalls John. “I slept very well.”

John says concerns for his safety never crossed his mind.

“The folks were so friendly.”

‘Thanksgiving hospitality’

The next morning, the snow had stopped. The sun was peeking through. After the hearty breakfast, John called the tow company, which promised to come around again and take him and his car to a repair shop.

As he waited for their arrival, John did a once-over around the farmhouse yard. He pulled his Lomomatic pocket camera out of his backpack and took a few photos of the snow, piled some six inches high on Virgil’s garden furniture.

Before long, his rescuer arrived from the tow company, and John prepared to leave the farmhouse.

“I said my goodbyes and thanked this wonderful couple for their hospitality,” he recalls.

At the auto repair shop, the battery issue was detected and John’s car was written off.

“I was never very fond of that car, it had a lot of electrical problems,” reflects John. “But every time I see one today, I practically drool.”

His grandparents came to pick him up from the car lot. And over Thanksgiving lunch, John told his family about his gracious hosts.

Later, when John developed his photos of the snow piled on the farmhouse picnic table, he wished he’d taken a photo with Virgil and his girlfriend. They hadn’t exchanged contact details, but it would have been a nice memento.

“It was more of just a ‘Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for your hospitality,’” says John of their farewells. “We lived in a different age, we didn’t have social media. We didn’t have email in 1980. No contact information was shared.”

The next time John visited his grandparents, the following spring, he called by the farmhouse to drop off a gift. No one was home, but he left a box of chocolates on the front step. He decided not to open the door this time.

“That was just a thank you again for their Thanksgiving hospitality,” says John. “But I never saw Virgil again after that.”

An epilogue four decades later

Four decades later, in the fall of 2021, John was driving from southwest Missouri, where he now lives, to Kansas City to watch a Chiefs football game with his brother.

He realized, midway through the journey, that he was traversing the same route he’d driven all those years before, only the opposite way around — and, fortunately, minus the snow and dodgy 1960s car.

On a whim, he decided to take a detour.

“I had some spare time, so I returned to the house that had provided shelter 41 years prior. I drove up the long driveway, and the house was still there,” he says.

He spotted a sign, “Schmitz Farm,” that confirmed he was in the right place. He felt instantly comfortable. Then he spotted something else: “The porch light that I had seen from the road so many years prior was still on, and it was that little thing that really kind of melted my heart.”

There was no one home. So, after taking a moment on the driveway, John went on his way.

About a month later, not long after Thanksgiving 2021, John found himself in the neighbourhood again. He was driving with a friend, and he started telling her the story. They decided to make another detour up the long driveway.

The two sat there for a moment, as John noted the porch light was still glowing. And then a man appeared from around the back of the house and approached the car.

“I pulled down my windows and here comes this tall fellow with a blue work shirt on, with the name ‘Vernon’ stitched to the front of the shirt,” recalls John.

“He asked, ‘Can I help you?’ I said, ‘Well, not necessarily, but this house, means a lot to me, because I found shelter here Thanksgiving of 1980.’”

The stranger’s face broke out in a smile.

“He told me that he had just been talking about me the week prior at a Thanksgiving gathering.”

This man, it transpired, was Vernon Schmitz, Virgil Schmitz’s son. His father had passed away years before, and now Vernon owned the farmhouse, though he lived down the road.

He knew who John was.

“He had heard the story from his father of this boy he and his girlfriend had met on that night so many years ago.”

John got out of the car, and Vernon shook his hand. Vernon offered to show John and his companion around the farmhouse.

It was empty, but instantly recognizable to John.

“I could still see in my mind’s eye the sofa from where I had watched television, the refrigerator that I had opened just prior to his father’s return home, the kitchen table where we enjoyed pie and ice cream…” says John.

This time around, John didn’t let the moment pass without taking a photo with the farm’s owner. He and Vernon posed for a few on the steps by the door to the kitchen, and a couple by the gate with the “Schmitz Farm” sign.

Vernon told John that the story had become legend in his family. The Schmitzs often recalled the story of the lost boy found in the kitchen, looking for shelter on Thanksgiving Eve.

For John, too, the story had become a defining one in his life. Neither of them could believe they were meeting the other.

“It’s one of those life moments where you feel like these things happen for a reason. I don’t know why, but I’m convinced that everything, everything was as it was supposed to be,” says John. “The story had come full circle.”

Before they left, John and Vernon swapped contact details. And four years on, they remain in touch and always swap seasonal greetings.

“Just sending out a greeting saying, ‘Just wanted to let you know we’re still thinking about you,’” says John.

John’s also in contact with Vernon’s sister, Virgil’s daughter, Nadine. Vernon was unable to speak to CNN Travel for this story, but Nadine says the tale of her father welcoming John into his home epitomized his kind and caring nature.

“It does not surprise me at all that the door was unlocked and that Dad befriended John,” she says. “My dad never knew a stranger…My brother doesn’t live on the farm but still leaves the porch light on.”

For John, who is now in his early 60s, the story of the couple who welcomed him on Thanksgiving remains one of his “favorite stories to tell people about my youth.”

Connecting with Vernon and Nadine created the “epilogue” John never knew the story needed.

Today, John says he feels an overwhelming feeling of gratitude, “about how fortunate I was to have had this encounter with this family in 1980.”

“There are so many variables that could have changed the outcome of the story,” he reflects. “And would I go back and change anything? No, absolutely not. Every year, when I think about this at Thanksgiving time, I’m so so happy. I feel so blessed that I had that encounter.”

By Francesca Street, CNN