Snow stories

Last week’s snowfalls, so massive or unusual that roads, schools and even governments were shut down, recalled several years ago when two others wrote their remembrances. Here is one from Pat who now lives in Durham. 

             “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!” (They lived in Bismarck AR when she told me this story.)

                Dot from Beebe had this memory: “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 perhaps it will in future editions.  

Thanks to Dot and Pat for these shivery stories.