'78

 

 

I love it when you tell kids stories from your own youth and they doubtfully look at you. “Google it.” I tell them and still they don't really grasp it. As I have said before and it applies to us oldies too, if it happened before you were born, then it's a rumor, a fuzzy black and white photo of an event that had nothing to do with you whatsoever.

“The winds were pushing 100mph, I saw green lightning and when it was over, I saw my friends house had a drift up to it's roof.” I get the looks...”Green lightning? There's no such thing!”

“Yes there is.”

“No...there isn't!” they say.

**

We had been warned of a big snow storm would occur but it had started late and because of two blown forecasts in the weeks prior, no one believed this current one would be bad. Also, there was a big snow storm and ice storm in January and the odds didn't favor a third major one, or so we thought.

It had started to snow where I lived in Pawtucket around lunch time and it picked up it's pace pretty quickly. By 1PM, our principal at Goff, Mr. Forrest (aka “StoneFace”) was on the intercomm telling us they'd be letting us out in twenty minutes. You could hear the muffled cheering from the other classrooms all down the hall when they heard it.

Pat and I were walking home and I think we both didn't think too much of this storm. Sure, it was snowing pretty heavily but how could we outdo that one in January that dumped 20 inches on us? That one was a “every 10 year” variety storm. I had told him that we'd probably just have one day off at best, then back to school once more. We had both gotten home and then met up again with Jimmy,  by Zuba's house to fuck around. We watched it snow and after a while, we all looked at one another and admitted we were starting to freeze to death. The temperature had dropped steadily.

“You sick of this cold?” I asked

“Yep” Jimmy said and that was all I needed to wuss out and go home.

That rest of the afternoon I watched lousy soap operas and my brother had finally arrived home from Providence College and told us he had to weave in and out of stranded cars on 95. He was driving a 14 foot long Chrysler Impala that weighed as much as a tank so he could manage it home. He then took off to meet up with his friends at McManus's restaurant on Armistice for coffee and bagels. He came back in 20 minutes after the manager at McManus let his people go home too and closed the place up.

That night, I had kept going outside to get ahead of the snow piling up by shoveling and as I cleared the driveway, I'd look behind me and see a fresh inch had covered it. A friend of Zuba's, a Randy Grenier, was walking down our street and told me not to even bother. He had heard an update that we were getting over two feet. No I told him, we already had that kind of storm and the odds weren't favoring it at all. So I kept shoveling. Though I kept noticing my good work was being filled in as fast as I was clearing it.

After a while, I gave up. Why work so hard no avail? Randy was right.

Being 14 you still have a lot of kid in you. I had gone into the backyard and noticed some parts were already deep with snow from the wind piling it up. I had moved a five foot step ladder near one, climbed the ladder then hurled myself off it into the drift, knowing it would cushion my fall. It did. Yeah, dumb...but when your bored, cheap thrills work.

While I was doing that I can remember seeing some quick green flashes in the southern sky. What the hell was that? A few seconds later and the whole area around me lit up greenish again.

“Weird” I thought. I have never seen nor known of thundersnow. Let alone green lightning.

**

My Mom's story is a long one but I won't get into it here but only touch on it. It was 10:30 at night, I was passing through the kitchen when we both heard that weird swirling woosh in the sky above our house. You know that cheezy sound effect of blizzard winds you hear in some hokey Disney film, “Bounder the Wonder Dog of the Yukon Saves the Day?” Well, guess what, it does sound like that. It's very real.

To me it was exciting! “You hear THAT?” I told Mom. The look on her face wasn't of elation at all, but fear.

“I haven't heard that since I was a kid” she said. I knew what she was referring too, she had lived through the '38 hurricane. After that she just became real quiet, except to openly worry that if the power went out, so would our heating system.

After we went to bed, that wind just kept climbing and roaring. There were times when it would slam the house and you could feel it shake, like a low grade earthquake bumping into it. For some reason, I slept like a log throughout the night.

**

That next morning, I got up, tried to look out my bedroom window but it was pasted with snow. I went downstairs and tried to look out our picture window but that too was splattered. I went to the kitchen one and shouted out,”Look! The snow goes over and past our fences!” My brother had came by to look and he too was astonished. The snow was this flat blanket that went from our house, straight across and over our six foot fence into the neighbor's yard. There was no sign of the fence at all.

Being a kid, I just had to get out in it. So I suited myself up and opened the kitchen door and nope...you couldn't see out nor open it. I tried the front door and that too was buried. My brother had suggested that I climb out my mother's bedroom window.

“Why don't YOU climb out of it?” I told him.

“No, you're smaller, you'll fit!” he barks back.

So, we open the window and luckily the wind had bored out an area of less snow below it. I started to climb out, and with my brother shoving as hard as he could from behind, with some enjoyment, crammed me out till I fell into the snow below. POOF! Even though the wind had cleared a spot, it was deep enough still to soften my landing.

You can't walk through snow that deep, all I could do was fall forward, get up, and fall forward again. He kept yelling at me to find the snow shovel to dig out the kitchen door and surprisingly enough, I did find it, after digging down in the spot I knew I had left it. I made it to the kitchen door and started digging. I had that excited energy to really go at it but after a minute or two I tuckered out. Even then at 14 I was huffing and puffing.

I manage to dig out enough space so the kitchen door could be swung open and when my brother did just that. I told him, “Where are we going to go? Why shovel anymore?” From our small vantage point, all that was there was a field of static undulating snow. Acres of it from what I could see...and it started snowing again. It snowed for two days straight and a little on the third. A day later, I had shoved a yard stick into it and it sank below the grade. There was another half foot above that. Three and a half feet!

**

For two and half weeks, I was out of school and eventually so incredibly bored that I wanted it to start up again. I had my fill of daytime TV game shows, soap operas, awful British political shows on PBS that sitting in Mr. Doyles's history class seemed like a reprieve. Though I did enjoy sleeping as long as I could those days though. Finally the Army Corps of Engineers came through with one of the most massive front end loaders I had seen. It was painted Army olive drab with a big white star on the door and looked like the cab was 12 feet off the ground. It made only one pass down our street because that front bucket was wide enough. We were free to travel once again.

That was 43 years ago starting this afternoon...shit..43 years! I am sure if I told this same story to the 20 Somethings around here, I'd get....”Phfffff! Tell us another one old man!”

 

 

 

 Mr. Doyle, Great guy.  Some of you guys remember him. 70's turtle necks and greasy hair. Bit like Abraham Lincoln we all thought.