I am sure anyone around at the time has their own “Blizzard of 78" story. I hear people reminisce about how wonderful it was. I didn’t see it, I mean it wasn’t that way for me. I’m sure it was great for those lucky enough to be at home: an excused week out of work, what’s better than that.

My wife, Katherine and I moved to Rhode Island a year and a half before from Southern California and it was her first experience with major snow. She thought it was great. With the pantry shelves stocked she didn’t want for food. Anything she lacked, she borrowed, what others didn’t have, she leant.

After the storm ended, I recall other people in the apartment building talking about everyone pitching in and helping each other out. They loved the comradery and sense of community.

Buy Snowscapes Art Prints At AllPosters.com

For most people the world slowed down to a reasonable pace. Life returned to the centuries old way of working, before technology and modern conveniences. It gave a taste of what things were like back in the old days when getting around meant walking and expectations in life were lower.

But my world didn’t slow down. I had no taste of “the good ol’ days”.

Earlier in the fall, Katherine and I decided to install a snow plow on my 4 wheel drive Scout to supplement our income. To tell the truth, I thought it would be fun, riding around in the snow, making a few bucks along the way, and not having to shovel. Did I mention not having to shovel? In my mind I wasn’t supposed to have to shovel but as the Rolling Stones say, “You can’t always get what you want.”

In the world of snow plowing, no one is ever 100% prepared when a storm hits. At least I never was. Having the time to make sure everything on the rig worked prior to the snow flying never seemed to happened for me. I worked during the day, so the little details of preparation took place at night, in the dark, in the cold, and generally without a great deal of enthusiasm.

Like all good procrastinators I saved some chores for last minute. Little things like installing lights front and rear, making sure my chains actually fit my tires, testing the defroster, hydraulics and plow lift. It was the consequence of living hand to mouth and piecing machinery together on a budget more suited for building a Testors plastic model of a plow than the real thing. It took predictions of snow to inspire me into action, feverishly attempting to complete the items on the list.

Buy Snowscapes Art Prints At AllPosters.com

The next morning the storm set its teeth early. Noon came and went with me still under the Scout doing electrical work for the rear lights. Not to worry, I had my trusty Radio Shack Weather Cube. The NOAA guys, with there nasally voices sounding like off duty bus station announcers, continually reported on the storm. So many isobars, tracking such and such a path, total accumulation 3 to 6 inches. No problem, it must be almost over.

3:00 pm. I was still under the truck. The engine heat melted the snow on the warm hood funneling a steady drip of icy torture onto my exposed midline. I was just happy I didn’t have an exposed plumber’s crack pointing to the heavens channeling the ice water into my drawers. I had already done that earlier in the winter and it wasn’t nearly as fun as it may seem. Anyway, the NOAA guy was still on the radio calling for 3 to 6 inches. Hmmf, looked like more than that piled on the fence post but, oh well, it’s probably almost over.

3:45 pm. Done, well close enough. I figured I’d just keep a good thought and hoped everything worked. Besides, I could make some adjustments while I was there. I grabbed my thermos of hot coffee, some chicken legs out of the fridge, and I was off to meet Herb, the guy I was plowing with.

We had a contract with the Pojac Point fire district; a cluster of high end homes serviced by a mile long paved road with 28 mostly dirt driveways of mixed length connected. The two of us were contracted to plow them out. Paid by the Storm, not by the hour.

I had made notes of each driveway’s quirks during our dry-run in the fall. Thank God. When I arrived to plow, six inches of snow lay in the woods with higher drifts mounded in the open areas of the driveways. All landmarks were gone. At least I had my notes although they seemed a little cryptic.

The first note was, “Don’t touch the crown.” I didn’t remember writing the note let alone what I meant by it? How do I get the driveway clean without dropping the blade low enough to touch the ground. Skid pads were installed to keep the snow blade just above the driveway but these were on each end of the plow suspended in the air above the tire ruts. To get them low enough to do any good the top of that crown would need to be scraped down which was just what the note said not to do.

I decided to ride with left tires on the drive’s ridge extending the plow blade little past where I thought the edge of the driveway to be. I was feeling pretty smug about my resourcefulness until my plow hit some frozen obstruction hidden beneath the snow. I felt the impact right down to my molars. Every inch of my body ached.

I stopped the Scout in the middle of the drive and got out to inspect for damage. The shear pin was gone but that’s why it was there and I had spares. All else seemed ok. I replaced the bolt and climbed back behind the wheel. To hell with the English crown, I dropped the blade in the middle of the drive and took off.

Each drive had its own challenges: expensive shrub beds, cobbles lining irregular circles and parking areas, hidden obstacles, one place had nowhere to pile the snow. I took each one in stride but they were taking longer than planned and the snow was mounting.

Buy Snowscapes Art Prints At AllPosters.com

I turned on the NOAA radio to see what was going on. This was definitely more than 3 to 6 inches. What I learned was that NOAA was normally updated once every three hours. They were now calling for 10 to 12 inches but again it looked like it was close to that with no signs of letup.

For all those who have never plowed, it probably looks pretty easy. Just sitting in the car driving around drinking coffee. Well it ain’t exactly like that. Going in a straight line on pavement is the easiest but it still isn’t any picnic. There is a constant noise and vibration that takes its toll. You are always tense waiting to hit that unseen object that will send you through the roof. You can’t see because the windows generally fog and clog, and then there’s riding up on a pile of snow and getting high centered and having to dig yourself out. By midnight I had done all of these and plowing had quite assuredly fallen out of the fun category.

The snow was steadily mounting. I changed my tactic. I made a pass through every driveway doing just the basic long runs first and then returned to clean up the parking areas. It was the only way to keep up with the storm.

I grabbed snatches of sleep by just stopping in the middle of somebody’s driveway until the cab cooled off and me waking with chattering teeth.

The storm had stalled. NOAA had added words like “two feet or more” and “in excess of” to their accumulation estimates. They didn’t have a clue.

2:00 am. I was trying to clear a drift I thought I could move if I got up enough speed. I charged the drift which turned out to be a pile I had made in an earlier pass. My plow blade tripped acting like a giant sled leaving the Scout high centered with all four wheels spinning. Great.

I called Herb on the radio. No answer. I shut down the engine, dragged my shovel out of the back, and stumbled out to start digging.

The night was black as a panther. I was on my hands and knees digging the packed snow from under the Scout when the entire woods lit up like a strip mall parking lot. I stopped digging and looked around. The light slowly went out as if someone had shut it down with a dimmer switch and the woods returned to darkness.

Now to truly understand my state of mind, understand that I was in the middle of nowhere alone, sleep deprived and body exhausted, and to top things off, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was in the theaters and I had just seen it a week before. All I could think of was Richard Dryfus sitting in his truck at the railroad crossing with the UFO light shining on him and everything shaking.

“Easy.” I thought. “It was only a movie.” Maybe the lack of sleep was playing tricks. I continued digging. A few minutes later it happened again. The same milky light illuminating the woods. Again the gradual fading into blackness. I looked around for someone playing a trick. Right. It was 2 am and no one in their right mind was out there. “There must be a rational explanation. Maybe it’s a transformer exploding on a power pole. No sound though. There would have been sound.” I started digging again, only this time a little faster.

I had nearly cleared the snow when it happened a third time. I threw the shovel in the truck, started the engine, spun my way into the open road, and I was off to find Herb. I finally found him on the main road fixing a sheared plow bolt.

I hadn’t even pulled to a stop when I yelled through the open window, “Did you see that?”

He leaned back against his truck. ”What was it? I figured it was something you were doing.”

“What would I be doing that would light up the whole damn woods? I don’t know what it was.”

We talked about it, complained how tired we were, shrugged it off and went back to work.

Daylight brought better visibility but had all the qualities of the night before: more challenges, more getting stuck, and more snow. We were now on the second or third time of doing each drive increasing in difficulty as the storm progressed.

The storm petered out on Tuesday evening and even with the clearing weather, the next night was worse. Although we had kept the main road and driveways open, we couldn’t get out. The state plows hadn’t cleared the public roads. There was nowhere to go.

Our only choice was to keep working. The wind had blown severe drifts with some as high as the roof of the Scout. Each one took a tremendous number of passes of the plow to clear. My brain was numb and eyesight blurred. Everything had the surreal qualities caused by sleep deprivation. All I wanted was to slide into bed and sleep for a week.

It was a constant battle to find places to push the huge piles of snow now obscuring the drives from the houses. We no longer cared about crowns and plant beds, we were operating in survival mode.

The town road was finally cleared by Wednesday morning. I drove home in a stupor concentrating on trying to keep my eyes open until I could crawl into bed. Along the way people attempted to wave me down trying to get me to stop and plow them out. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, I couldn’t do much with the mounds of snow.

It was 8 am when I pound what was formerly my driveway but was now a huge pile of plow wake left by the massive state plows. I had nowhere to park.

Buy Snowscapes Art Prints At AllPosters.com

I couldn’t leave the Scout in the street. I had no choice but to chisel out a place in my driveway to park. Again, it took a zillion passes but when I got an opening just large enough for the truck I shut it down and stumbled through the snow to the house.

Katherine was happy to see me and eager to relate all that had gone on. All I wanted was to go to bed. I decided on a quick shower because I really wanted to enjoy this sleep, right out of the shower into clean sheets. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The telephone rang as I was walking to the bedroom. It was an old high school buddy whom I hadn’t seen in five years. “Hey Dave. It’s Bud-tox.”

“Hey Bud, how’s it going?”

“Hey, I’m living down in Charlestown on Long Pond. We’re on a long driveway and can’t get out. I heard your plowing.”

“Yeah but...”

“Hey listen, I don’t have any money to pay you, but I’ll give you a six pack if you’ll come down and plow me out.”

“Bud,I can’t. My rig won’t even touch this stuff.”

“Some friend you are, you @#$%$#! @##$%&*&.”

About the third expletive I hung up the phone and continued to bed.

“Unless it’s Herb or the house is on fire, I don’t want to talk to anybody,” I said to Katherine. “Just tell them I’m not home.” I went to bed.

It wasn’t until the tenth anniversary of “The Blizzard of ‘78' ” that I finally found out what happened that night in the woods. We were watching an anniversary special on TV and they reported that a freak occurrence of lightning took place during the blizzard. No thunder just lightning. Although the mystery was solved, I still prefer the image of Richard Dryfus with the UFO coming out of the darkness.

The only thing missing was the music.

Readers Comments About This Page:

Be the first! Add Your Comment!