In the span of approximately 30 hours, my small Massachusetts town was hit with almost 3 1/2 feet of snow. We lived on a main road in town, but our house was set back on a hill. We watched many a car try to get up the hill, to no avail. As a result, my parents opened their home to many of the stranded folks while waiting for the roads to be successfully cleared.
I don't remember too many of the people that stayed at our house overnight, but I do remember that my mother made hot cocoa in a huge, electric pot to warm them all up. I also remember that my Dad took me and my older sister out with him the day after the snow ended. He was a supervisor for a local chain of convenience stores and many of them had not been shoveled out. We spent almost 6 hours out there going from store to store and shoveling out the doors in the front and the back.
The following week my Dad told my sister and I that the company wanted to pay us for helping out shoveling. We were so excited - even more so when we got $21.00! That was a ton of money back then for a couple of young teens. Looking back after I became a parent, I realized that the "company" didn't pay us for anything - it was my Dad who provided our payday. For a man with 5 kids, that had to have been a lot of money. I can remember pretty much every hour of that day, probably because even though it was a lot of work, I got to spend it with my Dad.
Here are some shots from that storm.
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13 comments:
Unreal, it's like you live on a different planet, not a differnt country.
love the pics...and that closing sentiment about getting to spend the day with your dad. i would love to have all that snow, i imagine it would be fun to spend that time with my little ones. happy tt! great post!
Great post for snow, without a doubt! And heartfelt and personal, to boot!
Oh, and Happy Birthday! :)
I was NOT old enough to remember! Nor was I even in New England, but such point is moot.
I love that second image (the blue one).
We had a terrible storm here in Ohio that same time...probably hit us on it's way to you! :)
Thanks for sharing these photos. Wow! I hope you enjoy your birthday.
I remember this well. And the ice storm of '79. And the blizzard of '82( tho' I was in Jersey for that one ). The superstorm of '93 had all us National Guard on full alert( we got to babysit the Worcester P.D., when we weren't getting ourselves stuck, heh, heh )...blizzard of '95; April Fool's storm of '01( or was it '03? ) But it always seems to come back to ol' '78, doesn't it?
Brutal storm. I was living in Hawaii in 1978. That Halloween it rained 11 inches and 13 inches the next day resulting in flash floods and uprooted trees. It rained so hard the rain wasn't slowed a bit by the fabric on my umbrella.
Sounds like you have a really wonderful dad, Ravyn. Those pictures are awesome. Way too much snow for me (I'm from Florida - originally)
That's a wonderful story.
I remember that year, it snowed a great deal in NYC too, I believe.
Heavy Snow Changes Things Both Inside & Outside .
Greetings To New England from tony.
Great pics and story. WOW!! that is a lot of snow. must have been quite scary for some--especially the elderly trapped indoors. your dad was a good man to do what he did there. Great TT.
Remember it vividly! If I remember correctly, one of the things that made it so bad was that about a week or two before, we had 20 inches of snow in a separate storm.
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