The Blizzard Incident of 1978

One February, when I was 10 this is what happened:

It started out warm, then began to rain which turned to sleet and finally into snow.
It snowed.
And it snowed.
And it snowed.
A lot.
For days on end it snowed.
A lot.
A.  Whole.  Lotta.  Snow.
Did I mention that it snowed a lot?
Because it did.

Then the wind started so we had snowing and blowing and drifting snow. That was fun! Sometimes it was hard to know where the snowing stopped and the blowing started. I'm not sure it mattered.

The drift across the road was probably 20 feet high and there were no snowplows coming anytime soon. In fact, the area was declared a federal disaster and the National Guard was called in to help with the medical and safety needs of people stranded or without electricity and of course, snow removal.

As kids, none of this bothered us because all of that snow meant one thing:
SNOWDAY!
Or to be more accurate, snowdayS.
We missed a lot of school in February of 1978.
A lot.
A.  Whole.  Lotta.  Snowdays.
Like the snow.
Nine or ten days to be exact. It was fun at the time, but the day of reckoning would be upon us and eventually we would have to pay for that fun. It didn't matter right then though, because June was a    l   o   n       g   time from February and we had a lot of snow to play in!

We went sledding off of the piles of snow that Grandpa made with his front end loader and we built tunnels under the drifts. We built forts, had snowball fights and hooked the sleds up to the riding lawn mower and went sledding that way. The neighbors took us snowmobiling. We played morning, noon and night. We were in snow heaven.

Until, it occurred to us that we had simply done EVERYTHING there was to do in the snow. We had played in it, built stuff with it, threw it at each other, made self portraits (aka snow angels), took it in the house and ate it, snowmobiled on it, hiked in it, tunneled under it, tracked it onto Mom's carpet until finally, there was nothing left to do.

Or was there?

The scene of the crime:

It occurred to us that we could probably haul our sleds up to the roof without too many problems. After all, the snow had drifted almost flush with the eaves trough so it would be simple to get up there. This is how the conversation went:
Me: "I   w o n d e r...Hey!  I bet we could sled off the roof of the house."
Mel (my sister): "Yeah, I think we probably could. Do you think Dad will get mad?"
Me: "No, he's the one who built the slope of the roof at the perfect angle for sledding. There's nothing else to do.  Anyway, I think he would probably be proud of us for coming up with the idea. In fact, I think he WANTS us to sled off the roof of the house."
Mel: "Really?  He wants us to?"
Me: "Pretty sure. I sorta think when Dad was building the house he probably pictured us hauling our sleds to the rooftop and sliding off of it don't you?  In fact, I kind of think he would be slightly disappointed in us if we didn't do it."
Mel: "Well, in that case we better hurry and get up there before the snow melts."
Me: "Ok, let's go! You go first."
Mel: "Ok."

So we proceeded to haul our sleds up to the roof.

It wasn't the easiest process to get the sleds up there, since there were about three inches of ice under the snow, which made it pretty tricky to walk on the roof.  Also, there were no handholds.  I guess Dad forgot to put those up there while he was dreaming of us sledding off the roof.  In spite of the challenges, we persevered and eventually made it to the peak, settled ourselves on our sleds and zoomed off the roof, laughing at the top of our lungs the whole time.

It was perfect! We went off the roof, through the yard, across the street and into the neighbors yard before we stopped. That was fun! Let's do it again! This was the best blizzard idea we had come up with so far, so we trudged back across the street and proceeded to head up to the rooftop.

Except for that was when Mom came out and asked us what we were doing. In the vernacular of that day, we were in fact, busted.
Mom: "What are you kids doing?"
Me and Mel: "Ummm...nothing? Playing in the snow?"

In our excitement, we had failed to remember that Grandma and Grandpa lived up the road from us, had a bay window facing our house and routinely spied on us with binoculars. It was their civic duty to report to our Mother, any mischief and mayhem they observed us to be engaged in. To that end, I can only surmise they had seen us fooling around on the roof and proceeded to call and tell on us which made Mom have to come outside in the freezing cold and make us stop sledding off the roof.  Bummer.

Back in the old days, kids were not allowed to have fun because someone was always spying and telling on them.

Now, we were scared. Dad was stranded in Toledo at the time of The Incident, but like the day of reckoning for making up snowdays, we were mildly frightened that all of this snow would eventually melt, Dad would come home and we would have another day of reckoning to contend with.  One that might render making up snowdays seem, well, fun, in comparison to what we might face when Dad found out about the sledding excursions off the roof.  

Here was the conversation:
Mel: "Do you think Mom will tell Dad?"
Me: "I don't know.  Maybe she will forget by the time he gets back home."
Mel: "Really?"
Me: "Well, even if she does forget Grandma and Grandpa probably won't."
Mel: "True.  But I thought you said Dad would be proud of us."
Me: "I might have made that part up so it sounded like a better idea to sled off the roof."
Mel: "Oh."

Sometime around May, the snow melted and Dad was able to make it back home.

I think he mumbled something about "stupid kids" which as adults we came to realize really meant, "Stupid kids didn't think to invite ME to sled off the roof with them." Because if the truth were known, Dad probably would have been the first kid off the roof if the blizzard had hit in 1948 instead of 1978.  Except for he probably would have been smart enough to convince someone else to go down first just in case it wasn't safe.


The only thing I ever really remember Dad saying was, "You kids better not do that again. The roof will probably leak where you were sledding." 
Me and Mel: "Ok. No sledding off the roof of the house. Got it."

Secretly we were thinking that it probably wouldn't be a hard rule to comply with since most likely we would never get to have another blizzard while we were living there. As for the second part of it, Mel and I weren't overly concerned about a leaking roof since where we were sledding was over Val's bedroom. If it leaked, it would be her room that got wet, not ours.

A few years later, my aunt ended up buying that house and a couple of years ago the roof started leaking just as Dad said it would. It only took thirty years for it to happen.

Last week Val, at age 47, confessed to me that Mom gave her permission to sled off the roof TWICE after Mel and I got in trouble because she, "Didn't get to do it and Mom said it looked like fun."  All of these years later, I was still able to detect the taunt in her voice as she recounted this story because she had permission and she got to do it twice.  As you can see, it was probably Val's fault that the roof started leaking.  Mel and I only got to do it once and the roof was probably designed to only accommodate the stress of sledding three times, not four.

Here's an absolutely horrible poem that I wrote for Sophomore English.  Two things: I couldn't remember when the blizzard occurred and since I had waited until the last possible second to write it, everyone was in bed and I couldn't ask.  So, the blizzard in the poem is set in 1976.  If I had remembered '78, it would have been a whole lot easier to find something to rhyme it with.  As it was, I had to use "picks" as in "ice picks" in order to rhyme with '76.

The second thing is that my English teacher proceeded to read this stupid poem to every single one of his Sophomore English classes as "an outstanding example".  This many years later, I'm not sure what it was an outstanding example of, but I'm going to guess really, really, bad poetry, even though I got an "A+" on it.  The rest of the Class of '85 should have been ashamed of themselves if this was our outstanding example!

"The Blizzard"
I'll never forget the blizzard of 1976.
You couldn't get through the snow,
not even with great big picks.
The drifts were gigantic,
twenty feet in height
and all around lay a blanket of white.

The snow was piled three feet from the roof,
and all it would take was one little goof.
For we had climbed to the housetop
with our old, trusty sleds,
and slid off of the roof,
risking our heads.

'Till Grandmother called and spoiled it all
saying, "Go yell at those kids before they all fall!"
So out marched our Mother in her trusty, old slippers.
(in spite of all the neighborhood snickers).

We out ran our Mother in those trusty, old slippers
(she looked like a seal, with great big, huge flippers)!
Then Mother exclaimed as we ran out of sight,
"You're Grandmother just about died from fright!"

"We're sorry dear Mom but she would never have known,
the fun we were having outside of our classes
if you wouldn't have bought her
those dumb field glasses!"

-T. Bloomer
Sophomore English Assignment, 1982