Recently the Hartford Courant (http://www.courant.com)
has been running a series of stories compiled from the last 250 years. I
haven't paid much attention to them...until today.
In this morning’s Courant, the “250 Years—Moments in
History”—was all about monster snow storms that have hit New England, and
specifically Connecticut, over the last 250 years.
My kids and I had our own adventure
during the Blizzard of 1978 (Storm Larry). I wrote about in in my Christmas book
"Come Ride With Me", Vol. 1. At the time, the woman mentioned in the story lived in a small house
behind ours and shared the driveway and garage space.
A Blizzard Named
Larry — FEBRUARY 6-7, 1978
We knew a snowstorm was coming, but no one knew just how
intense it would be.
It was Monday and I had gone to the store for groceries to
see us through the storm. As I put the car into my section of the garage, “T”
was standing there looking strange. When I got out of my car she said to me,
“I’m going to commit suicide.” At first I didn’t believe her then I looked at
her again. “Well, if you do, please do it on your own side of the wall. I don’t
want your mess on my side.” I was all heart as you can see.
I brought the groceries into the house and told the kids
what had just happened. I recognized what she had just done was a cry for help;
what made me mad was the fact she had involved me and I felt responsible for her. Her! Of all people! The two of us had
an ugly history, but that’s another story.
I called the visiting nurse in town who I knew to be a
friend of “T”’s and told her what had happened. In the meantime, the snow had
begun falling and was accumulating fast. The visiting nurse arrived accompanied
by the local police. After an hour or so, an ambulance came and took “T” away
through the rapidly deepening snow.
For the remainder of the storm we listened to the radio for
information on the outside world. We also watch cars being abandoned right and
left on Route 5. At one point a VW Bug (the original model) was stopped at the
traffic light at Route 5 in front of the high school. Along came an ambulance
(with a patient inside we later learned) and we watched it run right up and
over the VW. That brought police and two more ambulances—one a replacement of
the first and the other for the driver of the car. Driving conditions were so bad that drivers were unable to navigate the deep snow and they couldn't see through the white-out conditions.
The storm lasted two days. At the end of that time, Governor
Ella T. Grasso, closed everything in the state for 3 days so clean-up could be
done.
The day after it stopped snowing, we had about three feet of
snow in the driveway, and along came an ambulance. “T” was dropped off at the
edge of the road and made to wade through the snow to her house. It seems she
has an ugly history with many people.
The ambulance attendants were pretty angry. They had trudged
through all that snow to get her to the hospital and they were not going to do
it again. “T” decided she didn’t want to stay. The ambulance crew told us she
was nuttier than a fruitcake! We knew that.
Eventually a truck showed up to plow the driveway—I think it
was the landlord’s son. He hooked the plow onto the dumpster to move it out of
the way, and tipped it forward, dumping garbage bags everywhere. It took over
an hour for the plow to get the dumpster set upright and all the garbage re-collected. We watched from the window in an
upstairs room and laughed hysterically! The landlord’s son was not one of our
favorites, either.
On Cape Cod: This was the storm that took out Coast Guard
Beach, the parking lot and bath houses, and most of the dunes south toward
Nauset inlet. The Outermost House was thrown way back into Nauset Marsh/Salt
Pond never to be seen again. This storm was just the beginning of major erosion
that goes on to this day.
