DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Happy Anniversary to those who made it thru the 78 blizzard

I was 19 at the time. I considered it more of an adventure at that age than a challenge.

I was not yet a teen. Our driveway - long, with 4 other homes - was drifted 10 feet deep. Dad was the CEO of a business, and felt he needed to be at work. Called some friends with snowmobiles to come get him. They lived about 6 miles away. He packed a bag, got on a snowmobile, and took off. Didn't see him for about 4 days.

One neighbor was in the sand and stone business. After a couple of days, he brought home a payloader and cleared the driveway/lane.

Brothers and I had fun, digging tunnels, jumping from the drifts onto the roof of our house. Sledding down the drifts. Apparently we had enough food, as mom couldn't leave for a couple of days.

I was working at Strathmore and Euclid Ave that day. They closed/locked up the shop and sent us all home

Took me 6 -6.5 hrs to drive/get home(Grandma and Grandpa's) in what was usually a 20 min drive.

No doubt an adventure.

https://www.weather.gov/cle/event_78blizzard

Was 17 a junior in high school

Like Pit said " it was an adventure "

Could watch the snow accumilate as we were out in it

Bumper skiing all around town, well the roads that were travelable

Drinking little kings, bud as in not the beer and just having a great time

I still like lots of snow to this day

Better than this warm rainy weather that just makes mud and shows all the dead grass

2007 there was 2+ feet of snow

Cleveland Press didn't get the newspapers out of the warehouse the day the mess started.

So they brought us both papers to deliver the second day. I got to carry double the weight through all that snow.

Wow forty six years! Hope you never have to go through that at all. As really you did survive it. So sorry you all had to go through that!

The Blizzard of '78... I love telling this personal story to anyone to anyone who is willing to listen.

It was my very first year at SOHIO Lima refinery.
I was hired in Sept of '77, after stopping out of college just before my Senior year as a MusEd major. Thank God, I was raised by Af/Am family who stressed the importance of "hustling for that American buck".

My first paying job came to me at the age of 9, when I assisted My Pops and my Great Uncle Babe in hauling pianos & organs for our local music store to rich suburban Whitefolk who'd been sold The American Dream of music in the home as a means to upward mobility. "A piano in every home"- it was a huge '60's thing... and Dave+Mary Porter were on the front lines of that movement. Work was steady during those years, and 3 Aces Moving had the contract with Porter's Music Store. As a result, I was intimately acquainted at an early age with hard, physical work for monetary recompense. When other kids of my age were watching cartoons on Sat mornings, my young azz was on a truck, hauling new musical toys to rich folk who could afford to indulge their privilege. I've often wondered how many of my BGSU classmates hailed from such humble beginnings- and how many would have risked their music-making hands in service to their family's well-being. For me, it was just how the Clems lived their lives. After that, I held a number of gruntwork jobs that taught me the importance of honest work for honest pay.

____________________


I'd just gotten my first placement on a processing unit: Coke Drum Cleaners. My work shift: 7AM-3PM. I was 22 years old.
Living at home with My Parents after stopping out of BG, this was the first full-time job in my life. Welcome to adulthood, Newby.

I'd barely made it home from my first shift job, when the phone rang. All hands on deck.

"We're sending out drivers to bring all employees in to the plant. Be ready to report when they get to your house."
I was off-duty for about an hour before I was called back.

When I reported, I was sent to the Rec Center, just outside the gates. Big, open space (think basketball gymnasium, with adjacent rooms nearby). Lines of army cots arranged in rows across the gymnasium floor. That would be my home for the next 2-3 days.

I found my cot, settled in for the long haul.

At about 2 AM, my unit foreman came to the Rec center, and woke me up.
"We need you to replace 2 FAA beacons on the coke drum towers that have stopped working."
"WTF? Ain't no planes flying in this s#!
"Doesn't matter. We need to stay in compliance. Get yer azz up, and get yer azz to work."

I'd changed one FAA beacon once before- in the fall, early in my stint as a coke cleaner... during good weather conditions. It was a 15 min task, up & back, at best.
The beacons were approx 2 ft tall, and weighed approx 20 lb, as I remember... glass is heavier than s#! I crawled up the catwalk with both beacons in a canvas backpack.

This is what I climbed to do that job (the four drums are 3-4 stories high; the towers extend upward another 2-3 stories from there).




That job took approx 1.5 hours to complete. Visibility: zero. I had to break icicles the size of a man's forearm to clear the receptacles that allowed me to remove the dead beacons, before I could replace them with the new lights.

I was numb, dumb... and a scant removed from succumbed, when I got back down to Ground Zero. It was, and still remains, the most difficult job I've ever performed in my life.

Dawgs: when I returned to that army cot in the SOHIO refinery Rec Center on Metcalf Avenue, it was the closest thing to My Momma's Womb I ever felt in my life.

__________________

That was the downside.
The upside:

I spent 3 days in that Rec Center during the Blizzard of '78 .. and was paid double time+half for every 24/7 hour I wasn't resting at home.
The next two paychecks I received from Standard Oil Lima Refinery were the fattest skrilla I've ever reaped from having a job of any sort. Easily 1/4 another's yearly pay at that time.


Crawling to the top of an industrial superstructure in an historic blizzard to swap out FFA beacons?
BLINK, BLINK, BLINK...

Who's your DT badass now?

I was living in Jacksonville, Fla. at the time. I remember it being cold and actually seeing a few snowflakes hitting the ground. Nothing stuck.

I had to call a few friends up in the area, some's phone service was out. I had to share the news about seeing a few snowflakes in Florida.

Most cussed me. Good naturedly... I think.

In YTown, we got about a foot of snow, but wind chills hit something like -70.

The memory that comes to mind for me was a photo of a stranded car that had the word "HELP" scratched into the frost on the windshield from the inside of a stranded auto half buried on the road. 4 men died in that car from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Wow. I don't recall ever hearing of that!

The dude (cop?) stuck in his car for days surviving on "snow and cigarettes" was pretty famous.

I was 13 at the time and still liked the snow, it was an adventure and fun to play in. Now, as an adult? No thanks.

Exactly.

20 years ago, even up to 5 years ago, I love plowing snow. Lawn tractor with a blade, and chains on the rear tires. When we'd get snow, I'd plow it off the drive, then plow it back on so I could plow it off again. (unless it was so cold my beer would freeze - then I wouldn't plow it back on, just off once)

I loved it. Wife thought I was really working, so she was happy. "Yeah, hon, took me 3 hours to plow. Promise."

Recently, I wait to put the blade and the chains on. It's a "it's only 5 inches, and it should warm up in a week and melt. Why should I plow?" kind of thing.

I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad ran around on a backhoe with no cab for three days helping people dig out and he also did grocery runs for all of our elderly neighbors. I got stuck digging our house out by hand. I was a teen, had to belly crawl out the kitchen window and navigate the drifts to get our doors dug out. They both were under drifts that covered them completely.

As soon as I got the back door dug out my dad was on his backhoe and gone. My friends and I got together and made bank shoveling snow for days. Then when most of the removal was done, days later, we dug out a giant pile of snow and ice to make a giant snow fort for my little brothers. They thought it was so cool they wanted to camp in it. As kids, we had no clue how dangerous the blizzard actually was.

That's borderline child abuse. You would have thought someone would at least have given you a shovel.

damn.

Sad story.
When we hear of storm-related fatalities, I find myself wondering about the circumstances. With tornadoes, it's easy to imagine. With winter storms, it's a little less obvious.
This puts a face on it, for sure.
Tragic, to say the least.

You sound like a union worker... or a city employee.

I was 11 at the time and we had no power so we stayed with a woman and her family that my mom knew who had a wood burning stove for 3 or 4 days till the power was back on. I remember a country road a few miles from us that they had to dig out with Front end Loaders and dump trucks because the snow was over 12 feet high. Our local rescue squad company did calls on snowmobiles.

That is a pretty important story. Especially for you folks who live in a snowy climate. My dad had to travel by car up there the for his business. He taught me something that I still do and the only snow I ever really see is when I go up to a Browns game.

In the winter, toss a good blanket and some warmer shoes and socks in the trunk. Takes up very little room.

Also get a metal can and stuff it with 5-6 tea candles and fire source for heat. The can becomes a vessel for melting snow and or containing the burning candles. You also stuff the can/cans with things like smalls bags of nuts, candy, jerkey, etc....anyting you think you might need for a few days.

A couple of coffee cans and a blanket and such won't stuff the trunk, but will come in handy if you end up having to hunker down for several days the side of the road.