Snapshots of 1978 blizzard (01/23/08)

There is simply no way I'm going to be able to top Ron Cole's column in The CR earlier this month about his scary misadventures on a snowmobile during the incredibly harsh winter of 1977.

And I'd have to agree with Ron that the nastiness of 1977 too often gets overshadowed by the even nastier winter of 1978.

But, having said that, I think it's a law in Indiana that any columnist who actually lived through the blizzard of '78 is required to write about it on even-numbered anniversaries. This year marks the 30th, so here are a few snapshots from that bleak season.

As winters go, that one started off bad and just got worse.

The company Christmas party, usually held about Dec. 10, had to be cancelled because of bad weather. And that was before things really turned ugly.

By mid-January, the mood was grim. We'd had snow on the ground for as long as we could remember. And then things went from bad to worse than ever before in local recorded history.

Snapshots. That's how I remember the blizzard days after all these years. Little snippets of memory, frozen - literally - in time.

I remember going out to take pictures the afternoon that the storm really started to roll in. We lived across from Haynes Park at the time, and nothing seemed simpler than walking over to the other side of the park to grab a few shots of traffic and snowplows on Ind. 67.

Except that, once I was by the highway I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it back. Wind gusted like I'd never seen it before, and when it wasn't gusting it was just a constant roar. Snow became a weapon, and anyone foolish enough to be outside - like a guy trying to grab a few pictures for the next day's paper - was a potential victim.

I remember waking up the next morning to the largest snow drifts I'd ever seen and a combination of temperatures and wind chills that boggled the mind. Driving was out of the question. No one could drive that morning. Only an idiot would walk.

I walked. The drifts were waist-high until I reached a street that had been partially plowed by the city.

I remember that the only ones crazy enough to come into work that morning were Chuck Loper, Tony Martyne, Russ Carson, and I. Chuck and Tony printed the Dunkirk News and Sun that morning. The edition would sit on the loading dock for days before it could be delivered.

Russ and I made some calls, wrote some copy, and learned from our bosses that there'd be no newspaper published that day. Key people were trapped in their homes, and even if we'd been able to print, the paper would have been trapped. Travel was extremely dangerous. Delivery was impossible.

I remember walking home that first day backwards down West Main Street. It was the only way to keep from freezing in the constant Arctic wind.

I remember being stupid again the next day as well, walking in through new drifts. While the temperatures had abated, the enormity of what had happened was just becoming clear.

Twenty-foot snow drifts were commonplace. It was as if a Sahara of snow had been dumped on the region. As the sun came up, it looked as if we'd been transported to another planet.

There was no edition that day either, only Russ and I made it to the office.

I remember hiking out, after we'd made our calls and done our reporting for what would eventually be one heck of a story, taking my camera with me through a ghostly, unworldly downtown Portland landscape.

I remember stopping at the old H&F Bakery and visiting with the late Grover Flauding as he baked bread for the hospital and local nursing homes. The lens on my old Yashica 35 mm fogged up the instant I entered the bakery, and I had to wait for it to adjust to the change in temperature before I could take a single picture.

And I remember, later, having made it home and learning that we needed infant formula and Pampers for our six-month-old twins, hiking out again to the grocery.

But, mostly, I remember the hike back from the grocery.

That's when I understood how dangerous nature's fury can be.

I'd been walking around in the cold for hours and was tired. I had a bag of groceries from Ludwig's Supermarket in each arm.

But just a block away from home, the thought occurred to me that I should lie down in a snowbank and take a rest.

I stood there for a long minute - though it probably was just a few seconds - contemplating how easy it would be to just sit down in the snow, close my eyes for a moment, and get some rest.

When I snapped out of it, I hurried on home, happy not to have become a casualty of the blizzard of 1978.

And as to the company Christmas party, that was delayed until March. And even then there was snow on the ground and travel was hazardous.

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