This blog post came about by stumbling upon a February 12, 1978, special edition of the Boston Herald American while reorganizing one of my closets recently. You will find an excerpt from that issue at the end of this post.

Residents of Farragut Road in South Boston dig out their cars from snowdrifts following the Blizzard of 1978. (Source: AP)

I was six years old when the Blizzard of 1978 hit. (Please don’t do the math to figure out how old that makes me now.) My family was moving from the apartment we had lived in since my birth to our new (to us) house in a Massachusetts suburb. I remember sitting up front in the moving van and seeing the first flakes start to fall. Initial reports were that the storm was not going to be all that bad, but my parents were trying to move quickly to get everything to the new house before the roads got slippery.

We got our first truckload of stuff to the new house, and the weather started going downhill. My parents unloaded the truck as fast as they could, but it would not be fast enough – the storm intensified and it became apparent that we were not going to make the return trip to the apartment to get the rest of our things.

My parents grew up in Canada, so large amounts of snow doesn’t phase them. I am sure they probably reasoned they would just wait for the storm to pass and head back to the apartment the next day after the roads had been plowed. Unfortunately, the storm parked over our area for 2 days and with it came hurricane force winds. We were frozen both in place and in time for a solid week afterwards.

View of Route 128 South in Needham, MA, following the Blizzard of 1978. (Source: National Archives)

To a six-year-old the after effects of this storm were magical: Towering snow drifts were everywhere just begging to be made into elaborate forts. To my parents credit, they handled the situation so well that I did not feel any of their stress – they made the inconveniences seem fun. They turned no power and no beds into: “Let’s camp out in front of our new fireplace!” and barely any food into: “We’re gonna have peanut butter sandwiches for dinner!” I am sure they must have been freaking out – they were in a new house, knew none of their neighbors, had very little food or supplies, travel to get anything was impossible, AND they had a child to take care of – but for me it was like my whole world turned awesome! YEA BLIZZARD!

After a few days we made our first trip into town. We had no sled, so my Dad made me sit on a shovel that he dragged along behind him. He told me it would be my job to hold the bag of groceries on our way back. When we got to the only market within walking distance; the shelves were bare. I could not understand why this store had hardly any food. I asked my Dad what was wrong with the store, and he said stores everywhere were probably the same as this one – they were running out of food because the delivery trucks couldn’t make it down the roads. We searched the aisles for what remained – there was absolutely no bread, so my Dad bought crackers. It was slim pickings – we wound up eating crackers with jelly on them for most of our meals that week.

Route 128 in Dedham, MA choked by stranded vehicles on Feb. 9, 1978. (Source: AP)

What stands out most in my mind about the Blizzard of 1978 was the stillness, silence and feeling of isolation. Streets that were normally busy had no one on them. If you were out and saw another person, instead of just minding your business and walking along you somehow felt compelled to go over and see how everything was with them. News was scarce, so conversations with other people was the only way you could find out what was going on in your local area. Luckily, our neighbors all turned out to be very friendly (and generous) people who gave us some firewood and shared with my parents what they knew about our new town.

I wish we had some photos from that week, but our camera must have been at the apartment. If not for the blizzard, I probably would not have remembered moving into the house at all. It seems somewhat odd that a natural disaster remains my most vivid (and cherished) childhood memory, but it probably explains my compulsions to have a fully stocked pantry, rechargeable batteries, and a flashlight within reach in every room of my home. Looking at the newspaper brought back a lot of memories, and one article in particular I thought gave a good overview of that week. If the author is still alive I hope they don’t mind me sharing it here.

From the Sunday, February 12, 1978 special edition of the Boston Herald American, reporter Mitch Keller wrote…

The snow fell fast and thick and when it was done all of southern New England lay beaten and silent.

In parts of Rhode Island it reached 40 inches, the height of an average man’s midriff. In and around Boston it reached 27 inches, making walking like wading through water.

But there was no measuring the drifts in inches or feet. There were one-story drifts and two-story drifts and drifts that bent trees; there were drifts that buried cars and trucks and drifts that pushed in roofs.

“I’ve never seen anything like this storm in my life,” said Boston Punlic [sic] Works Commissioner Joseph Cassazza.

President Carter saw fit to declare an emergency and to send New England 130 military aircraft bearing six million pounds of scoop loaders, graders, wreckers, trucks, fuel tankers, ambulances, compressors, generators and communications equipment, as well as 1000 troops from Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

The most immediate problem was the roads; the snow had taken them all away. No roads meant no ambulances, no fire engines, no rescue workers, no trucks with milk and bread. The first big job was to bring the roads back.

Whichever ones could be cleared belonged only to emergency vehicles. All other traffic was declared illegal; Boston police said they would go so far at [sic] to wrestle unauthorized drivers from their cars. In some communities even pedestrians were declared illegal.

The snow was quick to knock out Route 128 and that alone was enough to hurt Boston badly. On its long twisting circle around the metropolitan area, Route 128 carries many of the trucks that bring the city food and other necessities.

More than 3000 cars and 500 trucks were trapped there in a ghostly traffic jam eight miles long. Hundreds of drivers had to be helped from their vehicles and taken to temporary shelters in police cruisers, National Guard trucks and snowmobiles. Cleanup workers feared they would find more cars beneath the snow and more drivers within them.

Inside his helicopter over Route 128, Maj. Gen Vahan Vartanian, commander of the Massachusetts National Guard, shook his head and said: “It’s unbelievable.”

The snow stopped practically all other transportation, too. Buses were nowhere to be seen, big chunks of the MBTA were gone, only a fourth of the commuter trains were running, and Logan Airport was open only to military relief planes.

The best way to get around in one of the nation’s largest cities was on skis or in snowshoes.

“The general public,” said the Public Works Commissioner Cassazza “has assessed itself or the emergency and for the most part is staying hom, [sic] which at present is the only safe place to be.”

Still, a lot of homes were cold and dark when the blackouts came. They started when the power lines began sagging under the snow and the wind rose, and once they had started, they spread fast. Provincetown, Waltham, Lexington, Arlington, Sudbury – and Boston, big pieces of Boston, twice in two days.

Time seemed to stop with the power. The days merged in an unending recital of snow depths, wind speeds, new records, new evacuations, collapsed roofs, food shortages, medicine shortages, special declarations, public appeals, more troops, more equipment, and more deaths – at last count, 51 in New England and 26 in Massachusetts.

But for the luckiest people the state of emergency meant no more than a few inconveniences and an unexpected vacation in an bizarre playland of snow. It was probably the only time they will ever ski through Park Square and see Boston occupied by the Army.

Below is some of Boston’s channel 7 coverage of the Blizzard. Dig that crazy sweater, Gov. Dukakis…