Some of Us Were There

These grey, flat skies are reminding me of snow. I know it's not that cold yet but the evenness of the cloud layer we've had reminds me of what the sky looks like in December when a storm first sneaks in. When I remember that, I see the eastern sky in my mind and no other direction. I guess the memory is fixed due to my house being buffeted by those East winds when a storm arrives.

I enjoyed snow up until I was sixteen and then learned what it meant to drive in it. Snow was no longer fun because digging your car out after you've buried it into a four foot high snowbank became real work! I didn't mind snow past sixteen when it closed my highschool down though. Those free days to sleep in and make a little money shoveling other people out was a nice diversion.

The absolute best, A-1, Blue Ribbon storm was 1978. I was fourteen then and it gave me two weeks out of school. By the third day I was bored silly. You couldn't go anywhere as the snow depth was four feet and drifting to twenty. Even if I could manage to get off my street there was nowhere to go as everything was closed. So I was stuck at home with the TV. How many daytime TV soaps can you watch without pulling nose hairs out to distract you?

In January of 1978, we had two monster storms that I swore, everyone swore, would never happen again. We had one good 15 incher come though which was surprising as we hadn't had something like this in a long while. Then a nice ice storm came to cover that snow and everything around us in glass. The morning after the ice storm pulled out, the sun shone and you saw a trillion diamonds in the trees, on the houses...everywhere.

Sunday, February 5^th came with a forecast of a maybe, perhaps a large snowstorm for Monday morning. “Well, that can't be.” I thought. We just had the two largest storms I could ever remember. How can a third one show up? I wasn't alone in that thinking. Everyone blew it off. I didn't even hope for it and beg the Snow Gods to shut down school the next day. I knew school would be open.

The snow arrived that Monday but seven hours late. After our lunch period we were sitting in history class when the principal announced that he was closing the school due to getting reports that it was starting to snow one inch per hour. In my head I think, “Well, that's all well and good. We get a half a day when I thought we were getting nothing.” The let us out in under twenty minutes after the announcement.

I remember walking down Armistice Blvd., with Pat and Jimmy saying, “Ah, this is nothing. We'll get ten inches at best.”

The afternoon spent itself out and night came in, and the snow just kept falling harder and harder. I started to think I may get Tuesday out of school too. After dinner, I thought it odd that WJAR had kept interrupting my shows with John Ghiorse blaring warnings. I began to see he wasn't screwing around at all.

“I'll be smart!” I thought. “I'll get a jump on the shoveling now and there will be less to do tomorrow!” I was out there, till around 10pm at night shoveling our walkway and driveway. I'd turn around and see the top of the driveway already had another four inches in it.

“Sonuvabitch! I just shoved that!”

Randy, an older guy happened by and told me, “Hey, don't bother. I saw the forecast. They're calling for two feet by morning.”

“Ahhh...that can't happen.” I tell him.

By 11PM, my mom stuck her head out the front door and wanted me to come in as the temperatures were diving and the wind was starting to howl fairly high. I told her I'd be in in a minute and dragged the shovels to the backyard when I saw this, lightning flashes in the sky. A few seconds later, thunder.

That was enough to get me inside.

I stayed up till around midnight, watching it all,  before I went to bed. I can remember lying there hearing the house getting thumped a bit by the wind and our maple tree smacking the side of the house. What was weird, the house was getting colder too. All that wind helped to suck out that wonderful oil heat we had.

The next morning, we discovered a fifteen foot drift had covered the south side of our house.

 

 

Not my house, but it sure enough represents what was around here after that storm.