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40th anniversary of the Great Midwest Blizzard of '78

turok

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
12,365
next month 01/26-27.

I was working for the late Penn Central RR @ the also late MI Central Station back then, and had purchased a new 77 1/2 Chevy Camaro z28 manual the previous spring. Not wanting to drive it during our cold, icy, and snowy winters, b/c a positraction stick-shift was still no match, I also bought an old '71 Chevy station wagon that fall, so I could store the Camaro in our family's one-car garage overwinter.

That morning it had snowed and sleeted about 8" overnight, but when I left to drive to work, it had changed over to all rain, and the raindrops were fucking huge, since the "eye" of the storm was passing right over Detroit, and the 3rd lowest US barometric pressure ever recorded occurred at the same time, @ 28.68 mbars.

Although it took me about 45 minutes longer to drive to work, other than the icy and snow-covered roads, traffic was light b/c far fewer people had dared to drive to work that morning. When I came into my office early on the 9th floor, no one else was there out of 10 normally. About an hour and a half later, my boss called to see who made it in, and after I told him that only I had, said that he would be coming in soon.

When he came in about an hour later, he started phoning his other subordinates to ask them why they weren't coming into work...when if I hadn't, he probably wouldn't have either...fucking asshole. Then he gets the bright idea to have me drive my car to his administrative assistant's house, to bring her into work. I lied and told him that I drove my father's car into work, and wouldn't risk getting stuck or in an accident with it.

So he decided to take his vehicle, with me along for the ride (obviously to help push in case he got stuck in a snowdrift or slid off a road). She lived 25 miles away, and it turned out that his vehicle was a 4 wheel drive Jeep Wagoneer. It still took almost 2 hours to get to her house, (unexpectedly) and after she discovered that we were there to pick her up, she told our boss to go fuck himself, she still wasn't going to come to work....lolz.

So we drove back to downtown Detroit w/o her in Livonia, IIRC, I wasted more than half of my workday, which meant that I still would be behind that week. I left about an hour early, b/c the weather and winds were getting worse, my station wagon was covered with 6" of ice/snow by then, so all I did was spend about another half hour clearing it with a scraper, small shovel, and broom that I had brought with me. The drive home was twice longer as well, b/c traffic was heavier and slower by that late afternoon.

I remember seeing a satellite image of that blizzard the next day in our evening Detroit News, and it looked exactly like a huge tropical hurricane. We Detroiters did not get the full brunt of that superstorm though, as much as outstate MI and Ohio had several feet and mountainous drifts.


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I remember opening the front door and we couldn't get out. I was 12. Not sure we got two weeks off though. Our school administration would send out on the worse days..

Fun Fact: Unless school was closed never missed a day from K through 12.
 
Fun Fact: Unless school was closed never missed a day from K through 12.

I contracted almost every childhood illness....chicken-pox, mumps (missed our 2nd grade class' school trip to Camp Dearborn) measles, German measles, and the flu several times (once causing me to lose the lead role in a school play to my alternate in 6th grade).
 
I remember opening the front door and we couldn't get out. I was 12. Not sure we got two weeks off though. Our school administration would send out on the worse days..

Fun Fact: Unless school was closed never missed a day from K through 12.

I missed a LOT of days in high school. I had my older sister write my notes from day one to keep the handwriting consistent. I probably skipped 10-15 days a year once I started driving along with tons of dr / dentist appointments.
 
I missed a LOT of days in high school. I had my older sister write my notes from day one to keep the handwriting consistent. I probably skipped 10-15 days a year once I started driving along with tons of dr / dentist appointments.


My HS counselor's assistant was my ex-gf from grade school...she gave me pre-signed absence slips, where all I had to do was fill in the classes that I wanted to skip.>:D
 
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