I Remember.
The Blizzard of 78.
For me it started it started at noon at work… Wow! It is coming down hard and is piling up.
Boss I’m taking the afternoon off.
It is a normal half hour drive to work but it was really slow going, the wind was howling and the snow was coming down with vengeance. It took well over an hour to get home at my parents’ house. At the time I was living at home with my parents and when I got home I went out and stocked up the firewood, I figured that we would need it.
The weather forecast that morning was for snow flurries and possible a little snow. By nightfall it was a full blown nor'easter leaving in its wake 30 hours latter two feet of snow. Of course I had to do the driveway but it was way over the top of the snow blower, so I parked the blower and shoveled the snow into it to throw up over the drifts on the side of the driveway. The governor shut down the roads for 3 days to let them clear the streets. But the top of the hill on our street they brought a bulldozer to clear the road. The husband of the couple at the there had a heart attack and died, they had to use a bulldozer to get the ambulance there. He was actually frozen stiff. He was one of four that died in the state during the storm. On the last day of the governor’s order I put on my cross-country skis and went over to visit a friend, I was getting cabin fever being stuck home with my parents, so I went out skiing on the empty roads.
When the ban was lifted I went to work and it turning out that I was very lucky that I left when I did, many didn’t make it home. They were one of the thousands of stranded motorists and there were even a couple of people stayed at work.
My desk was the first one by the door into the room and the HR director came in asked me if I called in to work or not, and I said “No the state was closed down!” She replied “Well the employee handbook says you have to call in, so we are going to dock your pay.” WTF! I’m salaried I’m suppose to get paid no matter what! Those cheep b****d! I was mad but I had already given my two weeks notice that I was leaving.
Of course the other engineers all said that they called in but no one answered and they all got paid.
My grandmother always used the Blizzard of '88 as her benchmark and I use the Blizzard of '78 as my benchmark; "I remember back in '78 we got..."
You can read about it here.
Ah, the Blizzard of 78. I lived way out in the Catskill mountains in an elegant shack. When I woke up in the morning there was snow in my house. Yes, it came in through the boards, rolled up newspapers stuck in the cracks and cardboard for inside insulation. I started a fire in my stove, looked out and said oh my, got dressed and shoveled a path to the outhouse. Snow=water so I gathered a whole bunch, takes a lot, melted it on the stove, and then took a nice bath in my portable bathtub. 1820? No 1978 in the wild woods outside of Woodstock NY. I don't remember what else I did that day after the snow fall but I know I tried hard to remember where the drop off cliffs were so I didn't end up getting buried.
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