by Pat Laster
Guess I’m gonna have to quit writing columns, like I’ve quit directing music groups: I can’t seem to get things right. No sooner did my email dissemination of last week’s column hit the recipients’ computers –and my blog--than one of them sent me a note: “FYI: Phil is not from Philly!” Drat, and double drat. Phil is from Punxsutawney, PA. But why is his name Phil? Isn’t Phil short for Philadelphia? My word!
And for punishment, I read every site involving groundhogs, learning way more than anyone except zookeepers would likely want to know. Unless it was a student in the 1980s having to do a paper on the woodchuck/groundhog rather than take a whipping from a teacher.
Last week’s stories of snow (or rain) that shut down cities begot two others from readers. Here is one from Pat in Bismarck.
“We have pictures of the snow of 1979 in Illinois. It was quite an experience. I was teaching when the message came over the intercom that school would be closed, the buses were ready to run.
“Everyone left except a few teachers who felt like it was a holiday. They took their lunches to the lounge, made fresh coffee, and enjoyed a leisurely lunch. By the time they decided to leave, it was too late. They were stuck there until the next morning.
“Cook County had adequate snow removal for most occasions, but this was just too much--and it caused quite a scandal. I was lucky. I got home in about two hours. I was driving a VW Beetle, which I loved, and while I could hardly see the road, I made it.
“Fred was driving a Ford sedan and got to Steger (about 7 miles from his school), but got stuck before he got home and had to walk to the house--he was as strong as a mule. I don't think very many men could have done that.
“The next morning the wind had driven the snow almost to the top of door. We lived across a city park, and there wasn't any shield to slow the snow. I have pictures of that - makes us so happy that we're in the south!”
Dot from Beebe told this story: “In 1967 (I'd have to research to be sure but Steve was about 3rd grade) we lived in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City. One day in March the weathermen predicted ‘overnight snow flurries’.
“No Doppler radar back then. About 1:30 in the afternoon it began to snow so hard the schools decided to send the children home. Mine all got home safely, we lived only a block from Steve's school and the girls rode the bus. I think I may have left work early but my trip home, one-mile-straight-shot, was uneventful.
“However, people got stuck downtown, on the freeway, wherever they were. The school buses got all the kids home safely, some of them hours before their parents made it. I had a friend who taught 2nd grade. Her fourth grader in another school went home on the bus, down their unpaved country road.
“By the time she got all her little ones at school taken care of, she could not get home, nor her husband, who worked at the air force base on the other side of the city. So her little boy spent the night alone in the house. She told it in a calm matter-of-fact way, but I wonder how she was when it was happening.
“I would have been a crazy person, probably dying in a snow bank somewhere trying to get home.
It was a big event for us and spawned many jokes about 'snow flurries'. I wondered if it made your almanac.”
No, it didn’t, but it should have. Thanks to Dot and Pat for these shivery stories.
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