Jan

28

The Blizzard of ‘77

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The cold grey sky combine with the wind whipping the snow past the window has put my co-workers and I in the mood to talk about snow storms. What we’re getting here is mild compared to the experience the people north of us are having, but there have been periods where the falling snow and blowing wind have been enough to prevent us from seeing the building across the parking lot. Ah, to be a kid again praying for a snow day!

Somewhere along the way, our conversation turned to the Blizzard of ‘77. Although most of the people I work with have heard of it, very few of them experienced it and I had that momentary feeling of a tribal elder telling a story of long ago to wide-eyed children hearing it for the first time. There are two simple factors as to why my co-workers and I didn’t share the same memories: The first being that some of them are younger than I am, and the second is the fact that I grew up in a town that was much closer to where the storm hit than where I am currently residing.

I grew up in a small, rural town and my brother and I were at school the day the storm hit. Yeah, snow was falling and the wind was blowing it around, but that was typical for the area in Western New York State. It got worse and worse as the day went by, and I don’t think anyone really realized the magnitude of it until it was too late to do anything.

It was around one or two in the afternoon when the principal made the announcement over the intercom that school would be closing early because of the storm. Being kids, we were totally thrilled to leave the establishment of education and head home to start the weekend early. We were told to stay in our classrooms until the buses arrived to take us home. I was in seventh-grade at the time and our teachers had to shuffle us around a bit as our lockers were located in our homerooms. (The high school kids could stay in their classrooms because their lockers were in the hallway, and the elementary kids didn’t have to move around because they were always in the same classroom.)

Eagerly we waited for the announcement that the buses were there and we’d soon be on our way. At first the time seemed to drag because we were just anxious to be gone, but as the minutes grew longer a sense of trepidation started to fill us. It shouldn’t take the buses to go from the garage to the school. It was only down the street—approximately a football field and baseball field away. The more minutes that passed, the more we got worried.

Suddenly, the intercom came to life and the principal addressed the students and teachers. The blizzard hit so hard and quick that the bus drivers were having a hard time getting the vehicles out and the roads were treacherous because the snowplows weren’t able to keep the road clear for any length of time.

Two buses had managed to reach the school and they were quickly trying to rearrange to routes to get as many kids home as fast as possible. They started loading the buses with the students who lived the furthest away from the school. My heart sank a bit. I wasn’t one of those students. With my parents house only three miles from the school, I was considered to live closest which meant I’d be stuck in the classroom for a while.

Time passed. More buses managed to make it out of the garage and more students were on their way home. Eventually the whole fleet was out on the almost impassable roads, but there were still many kids left in the school. (On an average day, there would two bus runs—an early one for the high school students and a later one for the elementary students. We had enough buses for that usual routine. However, there just weren’t enough buses to take everyone home at once if the situation arose, which it did that day.)

My homeroom teacher did her best to keep us entertained while we waited for the buses to return and take us home. One or two would come back to the school, the principal would announce who should get on the bus, and off they would go again. The room started emptying out as my classmates left to go home.

It wasn’t until around 5pm that the principal announce there was a bus ready for our street. I quickly grabbed my things, bundled up, said goodbye to the few remaining classmates left in our homeroom, and headed for the driveway circle where the bus was waiting. I climbed aboard and took a seat on the nearly packed vehicle and looked around for my brother. He wasn’t there yet. Anxiously I waited for him, afraid that the bus was going to leave without him being on it. A few minutes later, one of the elementary school teachers led some children through the harsh winds and blowing snow to the bus and my brother got on. Once everyone had a seat, the driver closed the door and we were on our way.

On a normal day, the trip from the school to my parents house only took a little over five minutes. On that day it was almost a half-hour of travel on extremely nasty roads with practically zero visibility with nighttime starting to fall. Our bus driver made sure to drop every kid off at the end of their driveways. (Many times during better weather, my brother and I and our neighbors would get off at one drop-off point and walk across the yards to get to our houses. This was not one of those times.)

We entered my parents house all covered in snow even though our driveway was not that long. My mom was anxiously waiting for us and quickly made some hot chocolate to warm us up. My dad still wasn’t home yet. It was going to be another two hours of nervous waiting before he made it home.

My mom kept herself busy during that time by making and feeding us dinner. That’s when I learned that my brother was pissed off that they forced him to leave school and get on the bus. It seems that the cafeteria staff stayed to make dinner for the students who were still at school. (I think some of them didn’t leave until 6:30 or 7pm that day.) Dinner was going to be pizza and my brother didn’t want to leave school because of that.

Eventually dad made it home and we were all safe and sound inside the house will the blizzard raged outside. That would be a good ending to the story, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way. Some time during the middle of the night the storm knock out the power. We had no lights and we had no heat for the four-to-five day duration of the storm. (It was actually seven days before we got power back to the house.)

Luckily for us, we loved to go camping! Our stove/oven was gas so we could still cook food and we periodically used it to heat the house. Even though the refrigerator wasn’t working, we had lots of ice chests so all the perishable food went into them and outside in a snowbank to stay cold. We had lots of candles and flashlights and lanterns to use for light. We took our sleeping bags and put them under the sheets, blankets, and comforters on our beds. (Mom had lots of those.) We had a battery radio for music and news and lots of games and books for entertainment. All-in-all, we had a blast waiting out the storm!

My co-workers were amazed by my story of the blizzard and began searching online for more pictures and information about it. That was when one of them made a startling discovery. The Blizzard of ‘77 began it’s fury on January 28. That was today’s date. It seemed to be a strange coincidence to have a minor snowstorm which prompted me to tell my experience of the Blizzard on the anniversary date of its occurrence. Just weird.

Happy 33rd anniversary Blizzard of ‘77 survivors!