Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the great blizzard of 78. I was 24 years old at the time, single, teaching high school in a Toledo suburb, and living with one of my old friends. The blizzard struck on a Wednesday and I remember staying up quite late, drinking beer, and playing backgammon with another one of my friends, The Wench. I started getting nervous about 1:00 am because it was raining quite heavily and everybody knows school is not canceled because of rain (well, it was one time but that is a different story). The Wench told me later that after she went home she stayed up and watched the rain turn into snow later that morning.

I awoke the next morning and have never seen it snow and blow as hard as it did that day (I guess that is why they call them “blizzards”). When it was all over, we had over two feet of snow with drifts much, much higher. I have never seen as much snow as I did that day. We lost power for a short time in the afternoon but fortunately it was restored quickly. Others were not so fortunate and were without power for days; I doubt those folks have very good memories of the blizzard. We were literally snowbound for days and I recall that we were out of school for about a week and a half.

Several days after the blizzard, Mikey, my old roommate who was later killed in an automobile accident along with the rest of his family, put on his cross country skies and skied up to the grocery store that was about 2 miles down that road. We had run out of the staple of life, beer, and so off he went to procure that precious commodity along with some cigars because we were planning to play cards and needed these essentials to help us do so. Ah, the wisdom of 24 year olds… Mikey eventually made several skiing trips to the grocery and so we not only enjoyed an extended vacation but also had heat, shelter, food, and drink. There by the grace of God, even stupidly.

There were a bunch of us living in the same apartment complex—fondly dubbed “The Projects”—who hung out regularly and so we took turns going to each other’s apartments. The women cooked a lot (the men were generally useless, but what’s new?) and we played a lot of bridge and backgammon. It was really quite an experience. Being 24, I guess I really didn’t comprehend the potential danger we were in except for one time. We had a big old tons of fun guy living in our complex and the first day of the storm we all went out to see how much snow had fallen. This guy actually fell over into a snowdrift and he was so heavy that Mikey and I were barely able to help him up, there was that much snow. It took us several tries to lift him up and at that point I started to get scared because if we weren’t able to get him out of that drift, he would have frozen to death. Help was not on the way; not even emergency vehicles were on the road. In fact, there was so much snow that year that there were still big piles of plowed snow left standing in parking lots and on the side of streets in May!

So my memories of the blizzard of 78 were generally positive. We made do and enjoyed each others company. I’m not sure I would have such fond memories if we had another blizzard of 78 today. Being 56 gives you a wee bit different perspective on things, although I am sure my wife and I would make do and enjoy each others company, even without someone to ski to the grocery store to fetch staples.

What about you? If you were old enough to remember the blizzard of 78, share your stories with us.