Snowbound, 1978

You can’t really ask “where were you when the Blizzard of 1978 happened?” Not in the same way you ask “where were you when JFK was shot?” and “where were you when the lights went out?”

For the record, on November 22, 1963, I’d just gotten out of homeroom and was heading to Freshman Glee Club rehearsal, when a nun came streaming down the corridor, transistor radio in hand, screaming that the President had been shot. Despite how distraught we all were – can you imagine a bunch of overwrought 14 year old Irish Catholic girls from Massachusetts on hearing that JFK was killed? Other than Genevieve G, who sat there stoically saying something along the lines of, ‘well, now this will keep a Kennedy oligarchy from forming’, everyone was hysterical. Sister Marita urged us to soldier on, telling us that “The President would have wanted it that way.

As for November 9, 1965, when the entire Northeast grid went out, I had just gotten off the bus at the Sunoco Station on the corner of Winchester, and had climbed the little dirt hill next to the Clark Manor Nursing Home, heading for the family manse. It was about 5:30, and I was coming from driver-ed at Carey’s Driving School (Motto: Drive with Care-y’s), where I’d sat through a boring class with a guy named Terrance O’Hara. I remembered him as a moonlighting Worcester firefighter, but he was in fact a moonlighting schoolteacher who died last July at the age of 80. His driver’s ed credential was mentioned in his obit, and other than the gray hair, he looked exactly liked I remembered him. Anyway, as I crested the dirt hill, I happened to look back on the panoramic City of Worcester at the exact moment the lights went out. It was a crisp, clear November evening, and I must have made it home by moonlight. We dined by candle light, my parents congratulating each other on having a gas range that didn’t go out. We had gas heat, too, and maybe that didn’t go out. I don’t remember being cold. And I have no memory of what my family did after supper. Sit around and tell stories? I guess we all just took to our beds. The next morning, the power was back on.

And then there was the Blizzard of 1978…

The night before, my then boyfriend (later husband) and I ate out in the North End, at an Italian place on Fleet Street. I think it was called Teresa’s, and I’m pretty sure I had Chicken Francesca. It was already snowing a bit, and each time the door opened to this tiny little restaurant, some snow drifted its way in. We had a nice walk back to Jim’s, and the next morning, when we got up, it was snowing pretty hard. And it kept on snowing.

By the end of the work day, it was pretty clear that if you weren’t already home and hunkered down, you were stuck where you were. For a lot of people (including some who died) that was in their cars on Route 128. For my sister and her husband, then living in Hull, Massachusetts, and likely commuting in by boat, it meant staying at my apartment.

It was kind of fun, at first, even when the lights and the heat went out for a while. We went back and forth between Pinckney Street (Jim’s place) and Lime Street (my place). I remember eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking a lot of rum and cokes. And I remember one memorable communal meal made from the hotdogs I had in my freezer at Lime Street, probably the last time I ever had hotdogs in my freezer. But they were a tasty godsend at the time, as the stores were closed and you were stuck with whatever you had on your shelves.

The power wasn’t off for that long, and when we weren’t out walking around, watching skiers schussing down Pinckney Street and National Guard at the corner of Charles and Beacon taking care of snow removal, we watched endless news reporting on the blizzard, which often featured Governor Mike Dukakis in a crew neck sweater telling us the Massachusetts equivalent of Keep Calm and Carry On. (Preach, brother.) So we knew that a whole bunch of folks had been stranded at the rathole Boston Garden, where they’d gone to watch the Bean Pot Hockey Tournament. And that a lot of houses on the South Shore were washing away, including in the town where Kath lived. (Her place weathered the storm.)

I can’t remember how long the shutdown lasted – a few days before things got moving again?

But I do remember a pervading aura of good-feeling and friendliness, with occasional jags of panic and siege mentality.

When the banks finally reopened, you were limited to a $50 withdrawal. (This was before ATM machines, and when you needed cash you went to the bank or cashed a check at the grocery store.) When the stores finally opened, there were signs asking people to voluntarily restrict their purchases to one loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a gallon of milk. As I sanctimoniously waited in line with my loaf of bread and quart of milk, I observed a frantic woman – a fur-coat wearing Beacon Hill doyenne – careening around the store, her cart overloaded with bread, eggs, and milk.

Since that day, whenever an inch of snow is predicted, people around here go into panic mode, and store shelves are wiped out of bread, milk, eggs, and any perishables. The news always shows folks with laden carts, shrugging it off. In real life, of course, there aren’t many middle class folks who probably couldn’t shelter in place for a good long time, surviving on what they have in their cupboards. But panicking about bread, eggs, and milk is just so much fun.

Could it happen again? As we’ve seen with recent hurricanes, bad weather stuff can and does happen. But probably not with big snow storms, what with the better forecasting we have – when the mega-storms are predicted, whoever the governor is comes on and asks businesses to let people stay home – so there are fewer folks out and about. In 2015, we got about 10 feet of snow over the course of a month’s time, and, while there were incredible piles of snow, and houses that washed away, there was less loss of life and things weren’t shut down for anything much beyond a day per storm.

Anyway, I remember the Blizzard of 1978 pretty fondly. I was 28. It was fun.