Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2021 13:49:41 GMT
As we anticipate Snowmageddon, I started thinking about the Blizzard of 1978. We lived in a subdivision. Pops had grown up on a farm, so my parents had been working toward the move out to the country. Pops had bought a Ford 9N tractor to use at the new place. Our garage had started filling up with cabinets, plywood and other construction materials for the new house. Then the snow started falling....and falling. School was out except for the one day a week where they bussed us over to the junior high to pick up assignments. Weird memories - I remember my parents had to get their taxes done. On the car ride to the accountant's, my brother and I looked in awe at the mountains of snow where vehicles used to be. Momma fussed the whole way because we didn't have any business being out in the snow. (I think Pops just wanted to go out of curiosity more than worrying about the taxes...) Everything was white. It even burned our eyes to look out the car windows, but we just couldn't stop. Snow plows had done their best to clear roads and parking lots - so much so that you couldn't even see the doors for some of the businesses. The snow just kept blowing back into the streets, so there really weren't clear paths.
When we got home, Pops went out to the garage. The garage door went up and we could hear the raffling noise coming from the tractor. He looked at us and said, 'what are you waiting for? Better get some snow clothes on. I'll be back in a bit.' My brother and I had always lived in the city and had no idea what he was talking about or doing. Pops drove off on his little tractor clearing out every driveway on our street. He didn't ask for anything in return, that's just how he was. (There were people who did come over and drop off everything from beer to cash to Momma because Pops wouldn't take it.) Understand that no one in a neighborhood is used to seeing a tractor with a blade on it making a couple swipes to clear off a driveway....people were coming outside to move cars, thank him, etc. Then it was our turn to be the cool kids.
Pops took rope and tied half a dozen sleds to the snow blade all at varying lengths. Any kid that had a sled was standing there in anticipation of what was going to be the best snow day ever. He pulled us all over our little subdivision on our sleds right down the middle of the road. If a car was coming, he did NOT get out of the way. He motioned for THEM to move. He spent hours pulling sleds making sure every kid who wanted one got a turn. We had the coolest dad on the block.
This was one of the first indications we had of how awesome it was going to be to have a step-dad. The following spring the motorcycles came, and so it all began. Back then, Momma had to take a back seat to all the coolness Pops brought to the neighborhood. She was just known for her daily screaming of our names at dusk to make sure we came in before the street lights came on.
I can only imagine what it would be like if some cool dad pulled this stunt now. Jail time? Lawsuits? I will tell you one thing - if Pops was still alive, this would be the beginning of an incredible memory for his grands and great-grands. No screaming Momma would be spared as he mounted up her kid's sled to play in the snow....and they could join the cool kids. Man I miss him!
|
|
|
Post by daw on Feb 13, 2021 14:13:03 GMT
Thanks for sharing such awesome memories!
That must have been the year of the snow in Missouri. A friend who lived here said Hwy 13 which at that time was 2 lane was only one lane open and turnouts ever so often. Depending who was the closest if meeting one would have to back to the nearest turnout. All were required to have a red flag on the radio antenna.
|
|
|
Post by mzgarden on Feb 13, 2021 20:59:57 GMT
@farmchix , cool stories. DH took our 7yo DGD on the tractor as he cleared our driveway with the blade. He piled it up to make her a little sledding hill and left her home to play so he could clear our neighbor's driveways and parking pads. Came back and hooked her snow saucer to the back of my little tractor and pulled her up and down the driveway -- oh the giggles and screaming with fun.
|
|
|
Post by tabitha on Jul 15, 2021 19:06:32 GMT
it's hot and I am sweating like a pig. Good time to reminisce about snow.
Yeah, I remember. It started in 1977, on Jan. 8th. The weather report said a blizzard was on the way. WE went down to the creek and got a load of flagstone for the hearth DH was building. Nice weather. at 5PM, as if a switch had been turned on, it started. Snow was blowing in horizontally. I had never seen anything like it. We were low on heating oil, the delivery man stopped at the neighbor, but our drive way was more difficult to get in and out so he just passed us. OUr house did not have wood heat yet.
Next morning, when we opened the door the snow was three or four feet high. I closed the door so the snow did not fall into the kitchen. Everybody with any equipment was out clearing roads. No fence posts could be seen, telephone posts were sticking out and the next day or two, some roads were like tunnels. And we ran out of oil right then. Down in he village, Jim Hale had a Jeep with 4WD and it was an adventerous drive to get to a place that sold heating oil. the guys made several trips. Then things calmed down. We lived on hilly terrain. we had a big bank by our drive way that was covered by a huge drift, the boys dug a tunnel through it and slid down he chute. Up above there was a big field going down hill. Can't remember where we got them from but we had a bunch of inner tubes, including a couple of big etruck models. Old and young alike, for weeks, would show up and we would go tubing. You could hear us holler down in the village. It never went above freezing until March 11th. It was cold alright. when it first got above 32 it seemed so warm DH went out in a T shirt.
Things settled down, we got used to snow walls left and right of the road. Only schools stayed closed. One day I went shopping. when I came home the living room was full of boys from 7 to 11 years old. All in their underwear. Steven Hale, who spent a lot of time at hour house anyway, told me they got wet while sledding and he put their wet clothes in the dryer.
1978 gave a repeat performance, but by then DH had made the hearth and set up a woodstove and we were set for it. One thing though, there used to be a lot of partridges/Bob Whites over in the pastures. Since those two super heavy snows I have not heard a single Bob White.
|
|
|
Post by tarbe on Jul 15, 2021 23:42:45 GMT
Snow was a big part of my growing up. I loved winter...even in Wisconsin.
I have been in the south for the past 35 years....but God willing, our house will be on the market before the end of the month and we will at least be in southern MO soon! At least a slight chance of some snow (we've had a few relatively minor snow events in the 11 years we've had our MO property...even a couple inches on the ground changes everything!).
The snow stories above almost choke me up...such great memories. Thanks for sharing.
|
|
|
Post by Ozarks Tom on Jul 16, 2021 13:20:34 GMT
Having been born and raised in Minnesota, and not knowing anything else in terms of weather, it was just a matter of dealing with the snow and cold. Walking backwards to elementary school in the snow as the wind was whipping from that direction. Starting out with a regular shovel until I was big enough to handle a snow shovel. Mounding the snow all around the back yard so the volunteer fire department could come by with the water truck and flood it for a neighborhood skating rink. Taking my drivers test on icy roads.
Then, joining the army at 17 and spending almost two years in Georgia, and a year and a half in Vietnam. After that a year in Mississippi before moving back to Minneapolis. When the winter hit that year I jumped at the first opportunity to get out of there and move to Dallas.
Before I joined the army I thought everyone lived like that. Here in the Ozarks we get all four seasons, but none so severe or long lasting as to bother a person.
|
|
|
Post by tabitha on Jul 16, 2021 20:03:18 GMT
Ky has four seasons. I would like the timing, but winter just is not much to crow about.
As far as I am concerned, I would like for it to snow around St Nicholas, stay on the ground until the middle of FEb and from there off and on. It does not need to snow anymore on the first of May!
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 20, 2021 2:47:35 GMT
I prob'ly won't get far into this tonight, but I can make a start.
I have my own multitude of tales about the winter of '78, because I was running a truck stop garage and a fleet of big wreckers and a couple of smaller wreckers just about 250 miles south of Chicago that winter. Every few days, another big storm would blow through and Interstate 57 would be closed again, usually for a minimum of 3 days...and the truckers, knowing it was coming, would pull off at the Tuscola exit and park our 40 acres of concrete parking lot full to the brim so they did not have to wait where they could not get food or services in a ditch somewhere.
Every time, I had my guys patrol the lot, making sure they left us access to the interstate when they parked the big rigs, because in defiance of the law, we would be towing in big rigs all through the storm as long as we could see to drive. A few times they gave my guys the finger and shut off their engines in the middle of our access route, but then I pulled the Mac wrecker in front of their rigs, hooked a chain to the front axle, revved up my engine and prepared to dump the clutch. They knew that since they had locked the trailer brakes that would jerk the whole front axle out from under the road tractor and that I would prob'ly dump it out in the middle of a soy bean field someplace, so they were really quick to find a new parking place.
The luckiest drivers on the lot were the ones who had trucks and trailers in my garage for repair when the storm set in. Those rigs were soon unable to leave the heated building because others were blocking both doors, and they would spend the storm days either in the restaurant sipping coffee or in their sleepers, nice and warm, dozing until it was all over.
While they were catching up on their rest, the remainder of the truck stop was a mad house!
OK, that is it for tonight....Joe
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 20, 2021 17:17:02 GMT
Off and on that winter, we were seeing rigs wearing the name "Chemical Leaman", always as clean and shiny as the weather allowed, always running only in daylight hours, nothing casual nor sloppy about the trucks OR the drivers. I mentioned to Bod Dodd, my big wrecker operator that whatever they were hauling must be some serious stuff. He seemed surprised I did not know... He told me that "hardly anybody knows what is in those trucks when you see them on the road, but just about EVERYBODY knows that whatever it is will kill you deader than a hammer and twice as fast! NOBODY will pay the rates they charge unless nobody else will haul it!" Later, I asked around a bit and got conformation. Below is a link to records of some agency trying to get one of their sites cleaned up. Hardly anybody was bothering with stuff like that in 1978, though. www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactionsites/hazardous-waste-cleanup-chemical-leaman-tank-lines-incorporated-also-knownThe winter dragged on just that way, interstate 57 open for a few days while we hauled in the stuff that had went over the edge during the last white-out and got it running and on it's way, then another storm would blow through and bring us a new crop of problems and a new crop of stranded drivers which often represented their OWN set of problems. One guy, driving an insulated van full of PBR, would bring in a can of beer, open it and insert a thermometer every few hours, read the temperature of the beer, then call his dispatcher on the pay phone, hang up, go drink coffee for a few hours and do it again. After the second day, he hung up in disgust and inquired if anybody wanted a free beer. The load was too cold to deliver and be assured of it's quality. He opened both rear doors on that enclosed straight truck and walked off towards the restaurant. Word got around and those drivers drank a hole in that load of beer the size of a pickup truck. Next morning, the place looked like the OK corral with guys passed out anywhere they would not freeze to death, and wouldn't you know it? THAT was when they opened the interstate! We had to find all of the drivers, make sure they were sober enough to drive, get them paired up with the right trucks and get them the heck out of there before the snow began falling again! The lot was so packed with trucks that they had to be moved in the right order to open up the exits and a couple of them were not in such alert condition. Normally, if one tried to take off in those conditions and the truck did not want to move, the driver would crawl under it with a big hammer and break the frozen brake shoes away from the drums with a big hammer. NOT this crew! A couple of them were out there revving the engines and dumping the clutches, and before we could stop them they twisted off drive shafts, and the rig was out of service for days on end waiting for parts to be machined and shipped in by bus or picked up by our parts truck a good distance away. We had a week or 10 days easy sailing after that adventure, and we dang sure needed it. During interstate closures I slept in my office when I could sleep, but I was also the guy who was supposed to make sure the drivers did not get too far out of line in the middle of the night when they had nothing much to do, so I never got all that much sleep when I was there. The next storm that blew through was the big one.... Later....Joe
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 21, 2021 2:49:35 GMT
It was perhaps a week later that the weather report made it clear we were in for a bad week or so in the near future. This one was going to be a LOT colder, higher winds, a LOT of snow over maybe 4 to 5 days with little letup in store. It felt like we had done all we could to prepare ourselves over the past month or so in terms of equipment and the wreckers were all in top shape with the exception of one huge old Hendrickson twin screw wrecker that ran well enough but had winches that were barely serviceable and we were not using that for anything but dead weight to chain the front end of our other big wrecker to. I had bought insulated coveralls and felt lined "mickey mouse" boots for everybody who would be running wreckers or working outside, then submitted to the nasty looks by inside mechanics and went ahead and made sure EVERYBODY that worked in the garage got the same. It was costing me a fortune to keep the inside of that building nice a warm with the roll=u[ doors going up and down in that weather, so I felt like the inside crew had already "gotten theirs", but frankly the place was rolling in the money and had been for months, so keeping them all happy and feeling appreciated was a dang fine investment in my book, and the general manager was not about to argue with me. We were two days into the next storm when things started going out of whack. The lower temperatures than the previous storms were adding some new problems, in that the brake air lines on the semis were beginning to condense moisture and freeze it inside the lines, so the rigs were starting to either lose brakes or have parking brakes lock up and not release when they needed to. Interstate overpasses were beginning to drift closed with cars in them, and that meant when the snow stopped, snowplows would not be able to just charge under the bridges full tilt for fear of hitting stalled vehicles and killing the occupants, providing they were still alive. It would have to be a slower process, dragging stalled cars out of the drifts, checking them for signs of life, dragging them out of the way. Now, during the night shifts, we were getting prank calls on CB radios that we had in all of the wreckers and the garage and control center. People claiming to be "in the median at mile marker 880 and the engine died...we are freezing...please tell my wife I love her and I am sorry, her number is..." Same kind of ankle-holes who send out virus emails today, just for the thrill of it. NONE of the calls were real, but we did not ignore a single one...just couldn't. We made a number of trips to places the state cops could not reach in their cars to check for reported stranded motorists, but the CB calls asking for rescue were all phony. The ones from truckers asking us to rescue their rigs were all real, though A good sized crowd of drivers who had encountered white-out conditions and "parked it in the median or the ditch" had made their way first to the control center and then to the garage, and by sunup were all "jockeying for position" on the long list my parts department lady had made on the blackboard we had standing by the office door. Loosely, I had told them the first requests for tows would get the first service and so on. There were about 30 requests lined up and numbered by name on the blackboard when the bad one came in...by telephone; "This is captain" (I forget his name) of the Illinois state police here at the Pesotum headquarters and we need you to make a wrecker call and extract a huge tanker from a snow drift and get it under way." I told him "Yeah, you and a lot of other folks, but you will have to wait your turn." Giving him credit, he did not bluster a bit. He just told me "This particular tanker is full of something I cannot call by name for you, but the staff at Chemical Leahman assure me that if the load falls below a certain temperature, it will detonate, destroying a circle about 12 miles in diameter, and both you and I are inside that circle. The only way to maintain the load temperature is to get the truck back on the road and moving under it's own power. You, my friend, are elected to make that happen." I told him to call the front office and the General Manager would deal with him. I was still not sure it was not a prank to move somebody to the front of the line. About 15 minutes later, the GM showed up, hands shaking, eyes about to pop out of the sockets. That told me it was real, all right. The General manager was sober as a judge, and that just did not happen for anything less than a life-or-death emergency.....later........Joe
|
|
|
Post by cccindy on Jul 21, 2021 12:53:15 GMT
Joebill, you sure do know how to make a story interesting--thanks! And eagerly waiting for the next installment...
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 21, 2021 17:57:22 GMT
At the time, I had to accept the general manager's word that he had checked the situation out completely and that the tanker was a potential bomb waiting go go off, but I have to admit that even then I had my doubts. On the one hand, we were only a few miles from Chanute air force base and Interstate 57 was a true mad house, providing primary access to that plus every heavy industry in the Chicago area, so if such a chemical existed, we were sitting in the right spot to have it in our laps. On the other hand, I had never heard of a chemical that got less stable as it cooled...not that I had ever had a chemistry course, but I HAD done a lot of studying on explosions, just like most other lads of my age and interests. Through high school, my friends had purloined LOTS of chemicals from the high school chem lab, and we had made a LOT of them explode over the years. I finally concluded that business was business, and we had what amounted to a blank purchase order signed by the state police captain, so even if the tanker was full of Kool Aide, we could charge whatever we wanted to, and actually get paid without having to go to court, so dragging that tanker out of the median was MANDATORY, if at all possible! If I was being played for a sucker by the trucking company so they could jump the line and be first to get towed, so be it! I had some pretty high ranking fellow suckers falling for the same BS. It wasn't like we were going to have access to any help if we got ourselves stranded out there. The wind was howling at prob'ly around 40 MPH+ and it was pushing powdered snow in front of it, both snow that was on the ground and the snow that was still falling by the bucket load. Huge drifts were alternately forming and being eaten away by the wind to form again elsewhere. We were taking every vehicle on the lot that had duals on the rear axle, so there was nothing left that could come to our rescue if we needed rescuing. We had food, blankets, water (seemed a bit silly with all of that snow handy) and shovels, lots of chain, and of course the many layers of clothing on our persons. Fuel tanks all filled to the brim, and it was time to take off around mid-morning, so we did. At the last minute, the old Hendrickson started slobbering at an idle and belching black smoke, and I was pretty sure it had water in the fuel and could not think of much use we could get from it anyhow, so I told young Del to leave it sitting in the lot and jump in the Mac wrecker with Bobby Dodd.....the man who could do the impossible with a wrecker of any kind, and often did throughout that winter. Bobby led off with the Mac, I followed with a 60 series Chevy wrecker we often used on mid sized loads and a young guy named Ralph something followed in the 1 ton that was mostly used for passenger cars. Bobby very much led the way. None of us could hold a candle to his skills nor experience. I was lucky to have him that winter, and the only reason he was not driving a OTR rig cross country was because he had got so many speeding tickets over the last few years that some state had figured out he had a half dozen different driver's license under slightly different names he had accumulated and had multiple tickets on each. The only place he could count on driving and getting paid that winter and never have to worry about a cop asking for his license was driving that red Mac wrecker for me. We had worked it out with local law enforcement...the General manager had a knack for that stuff.. He started us off driving north up the southbound off ramp because it was less burdened by drifts than doing it the "right way" and there was no chance of meeting any kind of traffic no matter where we went. The medians were pretty shallow and we could steam across most places to the other set of lanes by taking a bit of care where we did it. Bobby had a great eye for snow drifts, slowing down just enough to be sure of getting through, then speeding up again. I dropped back far enough so the explosion of loose snow every time he hit a drift had cleared somewhat by the time I got there, and I noticed in the mirrors that young Ralph had stretched the convoy even further for the same reason, I assumed. We must have gone a couple of miles or more when Bobby declined to smash through one of the drifts in the southbound lane and we bounced through the median to the northbound side where the drift was not nearly so high. The prarie was almost as flat as a pol table thereabouts, but a very slight rise in elevation put us where we could see what was coming, and Bobby braked to a stop and clicked the mic on his radio. "THIS is where we find out if we can do it or not" was all he said. I pushed the mic on my radio, could not think of a single thing to contribute, hung it back on the dashboard bracket and began pulling forwards until I saw Bobby's backup lights flash on. He was backing up for a run at the snow drift! For the first time, his driving seemed a bit uncertain, and I understood why right off the bat. LOTS of dynamics were about to combine in a split second, and nobody could know what the results would be. Just how loose WAS the snow, and had the temperatures warmed enough so that a hard impact from a steel bullet that weighed in around 10 tons pack it into something resembling a brick wall, or would the Mack spear through it like a lance tipped by a chrome bulldog? Nobody knew, nobody COULD know. Best to slow down on first impact and just give it a nudge, which he did. When he ground to a halt, he backed up and eyeballed the result, which at first was just a lot of swirling snow, but cleared inside of a minute to show a rapidly filling dent in the side of the drift. Not good. It was going to be like trying to push aside a body of water and expect it to stay where you put it. We talked it over on the radios and concluded that if he could get through the drift, in the worst case he could help the other two of us through it with his winch. The only contribution from Ralph was that we had better not drive off and leave him alone in that mess, and I respected his ability to step up and voice his fears rather than trying to play John Wayne. Truth be told, I was glad enough to be in the middle of the string, myself. Plenty of folks froze to death that winter, alone in their cars, and I dang sure did not want to add my name to the totals. We backed off a ways, and Bobby started hammering away at the drift with the Mack. It was as I feared, and he never made it more than a couple of truck lengths into it, and it was big enough that we never even glimpsed the end of it through the storm. In the end, the last couple of attempts he made got him turned crossways and stuck so he could not back out, and I had to turn around in the road, hook up my winch line and slide him sideways, tow him back out. I rolled down my window, stuck out my arm, thumbs down, and Bobby had Del get out of the Mack, unhook the cable and start helping get it back on the roll in a straight stack. Bobby heard me on the radio calling the state police at Pesotum and requesting to speak to that captain. I told him we could not proceed any further and were still miles from the tanker and he said like he thought I was kidding "YOU MEAN YOU INTEND TO DISREGARD?" I told him I would NOT disregard, but indeed would proceed back to the truck stop and worry like hell until I heard one way or another about the tanker, which seemed to irritate him, for some reason. Fact was, there was nothing we could do about it, and as I told him, the military base no doubt had plenty of heavy equipment that could go through any snow drift that God ever invented, and he had best get on the phone and order some up. The very first time we ever saw that CL tanker, it was being preceded down the northbound interstate in a southerly direction by a huge motor grader operated by a man wearing more cold weather gear than a polar bear. I understand they used some other heavy equipment to pull it out of the drift and onto the highway, but the motor grader had been enough to plow out the drift that had defeated us. They brought the tanker into the truck stop and made a bit of a road for it to steam up and down in the soy bean field next door with the motor grader. I had an old mattress on the floor in my office for sleeping during the long hauls, and told Bobby he could have the other side of it, since we were both so tired no chance we would wake one another up by snoring or tossing and turning, but sometime in the middle of the night, he woke me by talking and shouting to himself something about antifreeze. I got him awake, asked him what he was dreaming about. He told me just before turning in, the driver of that CL load showed up and Bobby asked him if that load was really that dangerous when cold. The driver told him ti could not be allowed to freeze, but if it started to get too close to that point, Bobby should just start dumping cases of anti freeze into the hatch at the top, and no worries after that. OK, that is it. To this day, I have no idea if we were suckered. I know that the General manager made a huge error in the beginning, because he could have insisted we would bill for the work even if we did not make the recovery, but he was hung over and rattled and failed to do that and so did I, so we never got to bill anybody for anything. I also still do not know if such a chemical exists, or if it MIGHT exist as some sort of military secret. Lastly, if it does exist, I dunno if pouring a case of antifreeze into a tanker full of it would cancel the explosion or only let everybody go into that mushroom cloud in a calm and orderly manner instead of making a panic run for the safe zone. NONE of the above is fiction.....Joe
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 21, 2021 17:59:12 GMT
Joebill, you sure do know how to make a story interesting--thanks! And eagerly waiting for the next installment... Thanks for the kind words. Hope the remainder does not disappoint ........Joe
|
|
|
Post by Ozarks Tom on Jul 21, 2021 23:21:22 GMT
Certainly not try to, even if I could, top joebill's story, but thought I'd tell about a time I drove a wrecker in a snowstorm.
I was 15 when I was working at a Skelly station a couple blocks from home. In the winter I turned 15 and got my drivers license I was going in a 4:30am and taking calls from people who'd run their batteries down trying to start their cars. Must have been 1961. The wrecker, really not much of a wrecker although it did have a jib and winch along with dual rear wheels but didn't have four wheel drive. I'd take a half dozen calls and go out to start cars, $10 each. Get them started and go to school.
I also had the privilege of coming in after school and closing the station at 7pm.
When we had a pretty good snow, not a blizzard, but maybe 6" a guy walked into the station one evening wanting to know if I could pull him out of a ditch on a small shortcut gravel road not far from the station, his wife and kids were in the car and he only had a quarter tank of gas.
I closed the station a little early and when we got to the road I realized I'd have to back down it to be able to winch him out. I backed down about a quarter mile, at night, in blowing snow, and hooked on. Pulled him out, and got him back up where he could drive in my tracks.
When we got to the plowed road the station was on I turned for the station, but he turned the other way never to be seen again.
Jerk, not even a thank you let alone payment.
|
|
|
Post by joebill on Jul 22, 2021 1:27:58 GMT
Everybody seems to think wrecker operators are highwaymen and nothing is wrong with cheating them. There is an old expression about being let "off the hook" simply because that is where the car is supposed to stay until the bill is paid I had a guy come in one evening with a ford with the carb running over with gas. Got a kit delivered and overhauled it and it was fine, so he paid and left for his motel. Next morning, it was messing up again...had a little dot of something get into the needle valve somehow, so I went and did a final cleanout on it in the motel parking lot...no charge....but he insisted I had to convince him it would not happen again, SOMEHOW. Well, I was convinced, but that meant nothing to him, and he was terrified he was going to get halfway home and break down again. Finally he asked me again how convinced I was that it would be all right, and I told him "I'd stake my reputation on it!" Strangely, that was all it took to make him happy! My reputation in that large town at the age of 18 was worth about a nickel or less, but the fact that I was willing to stake it on his car getting him home without further trouble was all it took to convince him. Folks sure do have some strange things rolling around in their heads ....Joe
|
|