The Blizzard of 78 anyone?

[luvsmickeymouse]

I know this is Superbowl sunday but I am watching the special they have on about the blizzard of 78. Anyone remember it? Remember where you were? I was a senior in high school and I remember not having school for a week. We couldn't drive anywhere, and my mom and us kids would walk to the store everyday for the paper and anything else we needed.

 

[tiggersmom2]

That is actually my VERY first memory. I was a wee toddler and my mother put bread bags on my feet so I could play in the snow.......yeah, I'm from the deeeeeep south.

 

[JR6ooo4]

In chicago I think the big ones were '69 (I was 4) and '79

Mikeeee

 

[mom2cinderella]

I remember it! I was in 5th grade - Lexington, Ohio - and we didn't have school for a week! (So we did not get a spring break that year. )

Michele

 

[cccm]

Oh yes, I remember it. The piles of snow in front of our house, were taller than our house.

DF who was an EMT/Police Officer at the time. The ambulances were done by the police department. They sent him and his partner to a remote part of the city he worked in, which the road/bridge was flooded. So they stayed out there for days providing the only medical attention. Some lady kept bringing them Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

The neighbors would help us shovel out the driveway, in case he came home. No school for a week, then February vacation. So two straight weeks with no school.

The forts we built in the piles of snow were amazing. I can remember getting the Red Ryder sled out and walking to the food store for milk.

I was 6 1/2 years old.

The memories.......I have to find some of the pics, because they are funny.

 

[jonestavern]

I was a slim, young wild thing...

I had recently been shopping & had food, recreational beverages & a new pair of cross country skis. Our building had a generator, I was all set!

Four friends, who had been w/o electricity for a week (there was a wicked ice storm in RI the week before the blizzard) came to stay with me for 5 or so days.

I went out in the cross country skis and fetched groceries for people. We all got together to dig out cars.

I worked with people who got stuck at work & had to eat out of the vending machines--yech! Since our numbskull boss didn't call off work until 30 minutes before shift start (the snow had been over 6 inches & still falling hard), loads of coworkers got dangerously stranded on the roads. These peopkle slept in hotels or schools or restaurants. Some never saw their cars again~


Jean

 

[momto2girls]

I was a little girl and lived in Columbus, Ohio. I remember that the snow was almost up to our second floor windows. We had to dig a tunnel to get out the front door.

 

[CathrynRose]

In chicago I think the big ones were '69 (I was 4) and '79

Mikeeee

I have the 1979 Newspaper. It was with all my Mom's stuff after she died.

 

[solferino]

I remember the fire dept having to come to our house because my mom put the bucket of woodstove ashes too close to the garage and caught it on fire. Nothing like a bazillion inches of snow to make a bad situation worse.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Yes, I remember it well. Two of my friends and I trudged all over the place in the snow - why, I have no idea. Nice to have all that energy when you're young. Oh yes, I got really sick after that day. DH, who I hadn't met yet, helped drive hospital staff to their jobs in his Jeep which I guess was kind of ironic since he later married a nurse who has to drive to work in every snowstorm in her Jeep too.

Let's hope it's a long time before we have another one like it.

 

[Dismom+two]

I was 12 at the time and was living in Dracut. One thing I really remember is walking down to Alexanders (now Hannafords) with my mom and I thought it was so cool that in the parking lot were snowmobiles instead of cars!

 

[UrsulasShadow]

I was 17, newly licensed, and was given the task of shoveling out the driveway...which was an old carriage circle, and could park 7 cars easily. I also kept losing my 10 year old brother in the backyard...he'd dig tunnels, then they'd collapse on him and I'd have to go find him and dig him out. Great fun for him...lots of work for me!

 

[Jpgirl]

I was at Miami University in Oxford Ohio-it was the first time they closed the campus in over a 100 years. I went across the street to the Rez (about 100 yards from my dorm) and nearly froze to death-just to get cigarettes. I was with a friend and we found this big curly haired dog who was sitting in the snow howling. We snuck him up to our room and found his owner's number on his collar. He ran away in the middle of the storm and got lost. That was such a cool storm-but then I was young and didn't have to deal with it.

 

[LaraK]

I remember my girl scout troop went up to the senior housing in our apartment complex and bought groceries for the seniors who were house-bound. There was a grocery store only a couple of blocks away, so they gave us the money and we walked over with our sleds, picked up the groceries and took them back.....I can't believe they just gave us cash like that. Different world back then.

 

[solferino]

my mother put bread bags on my feet so I could play in the snow

oh man, you had to mention that. I remember my mom doing that when I was a kid- specifically for the 78 one. Wonder bread bags with the primary colored dots.

 

[daisyduck123]

I was 11yo...we got to miss a whole week of school.

I remember that when it was almost time to go back to school, my friends & I threw huge snow chunks into the street in hopes that one of the county officials would drive by & think the roads were still too bad to drive on.

 

[olena]

That was my first memory of snow. I remember snow in 78 and I think it was the same storm. We had snow in Georgia and there are snow pictures that my father took with the year written on the back. I was 5 at the time.

 

[CajunDixie]

I LOVED the blizzard of '78!! I was 9 and we lived just off US30 in Northern Indiana near Fort Wayne. Semis on 30 were jack-knifed, on their sides or just plain stuck. Absolutely nothing moved on 30!! My brothers dug a cave into the side of the ditch on the back of our property and of course we had a great sledding hill near the house. My parents have always had tons of food stocked down in their basement including a full chest freezer so groceries were no problem.

There are a few old pics of the blizzard on one of the FtWayne TV stations website of people walking down the middle of a street with sleds to the grocery on West State Street in FtWayne.

I almost wish we'd get another blizzard like it.

 

[ctinct]

I had just had my first child on the 26th of January. I used cloth diapers, and my washer broke. I remember my ex trudging uphill over a mile to his parents' house, carrying a garbage bag full of dirty diapers to wash.

 

[LindaG4458]

I was living in Billerica, MA and working in Lowell. The governor had shut down the state and only certain public service people were allowed on the roads. My boss called me and ordered me to drive the back roads to work. I did it once and said no more. I quit the following summer. There are pictures of my car in the parking lot with the snowbank overwhelming it. A coworker lived in Cambridge and had to take the train out of Boston because the city was closed longer.

DH worked for Mass. Electric and had a permit to go back and forth to work and go out with line crews for power restoration. That was when he was out with a crew from Canada amd they were threatened by customers who didn't have the power back yet. Guys came at them with clubs. The didn't see how big the head lineman was at first. When he stood up they had second thoughts.

It was an adventure, but I hope to not see another like it soon.