Share your blizzard of ’78 memories here
by Greg Reibman | Feb 6, 2018 | Newton, Newton Centre | 16 comments
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First, seeing the photo of the Academy Cinema after all these years is awesome! As far as the storm, I was pretty young, but I do remember the shoveling, lots of it, and watching way too many reruns on TV during the day.
I was a junior in college, living off campus in a roach trap but honorary member of a friend’s dorm. When I heard snow was coming, I headed there. We had a great time, like a long slumber party – especially celebrating the unheard of luxury of a week’s delay of classes! and there were some great snow sculptures on campus. It was amazing watching people cross-country ski down Mass Ave and across the river.
I was a college student and living in a house just off Beacon and Hammond Pond parkway. My strongest memory was the day after – beautiful, sunny and the roads COMPLETELY devoid of cars. We walked to Cleveland Circle and there was a giant party going on. No cars, the streets full of students, a giant sound system blasting music out of a 2nd story apt window and a keg of beer planted in a snowbank.
I was in first grade (or so), and stayed home from school for a week (unheard of). My dad took my sled to the local grocery store at some point to get more food. All the dads in the neighborhood took the sleds to the grocery store. We had some kind of construction vehicle plow our driveway, which was really cool when you are six years old.
I was 10, growing up in Tewksbury- best memory was building a snow fort on top of our 2nd car, which we had despaired of digging out at first,
I think I may be one of the very few people that lived through both the Boston Blizzard of 1978 and a year earlier, the Great Buffalo Blizzard of 1977. I was up from Washington on a detail because my mom had terminal cancer and needed an additional caretaker for a short period of time. The City had a plan to send a toboggan to the house if she needed to get to the hospital. The one thing I remember from 78 was having to jump out a second story window to begin shoveling a pathway to the street to pick up her medicines.
But the beauty of 78 was that it came and went pretty quickly. Buffalo was a lot scarier. 200 inches of snow fell in a five week period. I was attending a conference there when the worst of the storm hit. We were stuck in a downtown hotel for more than a week because no planes were flying in or out of the City. Luck was still holding, however, because there was a Polish tavern and restaurant right across the street. They never ran out of beer, spirits and some pretty good comfort food and “Don’t Tell Those Polish Jokes Polka” was the number one song on the jukebox. It really became serious on the 6th day because heating fuel supplies were virtually depleted and almost nothing in the City was moving. Then, suddenly, it cleared. They plowed the airport and major roadways, planes rolled in, and we were able to fly to DC. We flew over Buffalo going out. Everything was white and nothing was moving. I was never so glad to get home.
I’ve always wished I’d been here, but was in my first year of business school in Chicago, and quite envious of my sister who was a freshman at Lesley College and thus getting the full Cambridge experience of Mass Ave shut down, etc.
How nostalgic to see all those long-gone landmarks–the movie theater, the gas station beyond it, and of course Chandler Levy. We’d moved into the neighborhood a year and a half earlier and had been just about living at the local hardware store ever since. Somewhere in a shoebox we have our own photos of this same scene. Mostly I remember cabin fever–it was more than a week before our street got plowed–and hiking through waist-deep snow to the A&P at Four Corners to bring back milk and cereal for our son, who was a toddler then. I remember him, too, beside himself with wonder when a front-end loader eventually showed up to plow the driveway. The award for best story goes, as always, to Bob Burke, raconteur extraordinaire.
I was working at a bank downtown in ‘78. I remember that around 11:00am the water in the toilet in my office tower was swirling around as the building swayed in the gusting wind. Around 11:30, the word went around that the governor declared a state of emergency and we were to go home. I waited at 100 Federal St. for the 501 bus for 2 hours before actually squeezing on to the first to arrive. It was another 2 hours limping through downtown to reach the Pike and then another 3 hours on the Pike to get to about a half mile from Exit 17. At that point, a rebellion on board forced the driver to open the door. I walked the last 3/4 mile home.
I was with three college buddies in Copley Square the night after/of the storm. Deserted. Not another sole on the street. We came across a big Greyhound bus right there on Saint James Ave. Totally abandoned, presumably it just got stuck there. No one was on the bus. But the engine was running! We went inside, warmed up, smoked a joint and stayed for, well, I don’t recall, a while. It never occurred to us to worry about C02 poisoning on a vehicle whose exhaust pipe might have been burred.
I was in high school and psyched for the time off from school! Went outside to help my parents shovel snow and was sent into the house on an errand. Regrettably, my teenage persona was more interested in looking cool than being warm, so I was wearing a pair of Frye leather boots (all the rage in 1978) – with very slippery soles. As soon as I hit the kitchen floor, and a patch of melted water, my left foot went sideways and I landed on top of it resulting in the worst sprain I’ve ever had in my life. The good news is my ankle didn’t break. Bad news – I spent the rest of the blizzard on crutches. But, it was nice not to have to shovel the snow!
P.S. Perhaps it was an omen – my second kiddo was born in the middle of the April 1st Blizzard of ’97!
I was out at UMass Amherst (ZooMass in the Happy Valley). I was dying of curiosity hearing about back east… for us it wasn’t as big a deal. The Pike shut down, state of emergency…….my grandmother in the Highlands was tickled pink, loving how everyone was out in the streets like bygone days of yore :D
It’s great to read all of these stories. Great thread.
My family and I were living in a cul de sac at the bottom of a hill in Roswell, GA, north of Atlanta, and I was attending graduate school. My kids were 4 and 1, surrounded on the street by other kids their age. The road was closed except to a few people’s 4 wheelers. Both the kids and grownups went sledding all day – going from house to house for hot cocoa and snack breaks. The real party came later after the kids were asleep.
It wasn’t a blizzard but any snow there leads to fun as long as you aren’t on the road when it happens.
I was 15, we lived on a tidal marsh at the end of a dead end road in Gloucester. No power, no heat, After a week the national gaurd arrived with heavy equipment to dig us out, but we had already walked 3 miles to grandparents house. Massive snow drift made it possible to reach the roof of our house.
I was just checking on some old you tube videos of the 10 worst national or international snowstorms that included Boston 78 and Buffalo 77. They ranked Boston, 19 78 as number 7 and Buffal, o 1977 as number 1. Another top 10 had Buffalo in second place. Regardless of the exact order, both were memorable and scary.