Remembering The Big Blizzard of 1978

Thirty-five years ago where were you?  It's the anniversary of the Blizzard of 78', I was just a kid and I remember leaving school early and not really understanding why. 

I also remember at how fast the snow was falling, I helped my brother shovel the driveway and an hour later there was twice as much snow as there was when we started.  When I think back there wasn't too much panic in my house about the storm, I think we had just gone through another storm a few days earlier.  Mom made dinner and we still didn't think that it was a big deal, until the snow didn't stop!  It snowed for day's!  I couldn't believe how much snow we had!

The wind had made huge drifts of snow, when I went to the front door of my house which was an eight foot tall sliding glass door, the snow was taller than the glass!  The snow was so deep that we had to tunnel our way through just to get out of the house!  The mountains of snow were huge, especially for a young kid like me, we made forts and sled runs all over the neighborhood.

It took forever to clear the driveway, and when we made it to the road they hadn't been plowed and wouldn't be for day's!  We were lucky enough to have snowmobiles and we were able to get to the local store to buy some supply's when we ran out.  Being so young I didn't really think outside of my neighborhood as to what else the blizzard had affected.  Then we saw the footage on the news of cars snowed in on the highways, people stuck with no place to go, roofs that had collapsed because of the snow.

I remember my father being shocked by the news that at his favorite restaurant Anthony's Pier 4, there was a boat turned into a museum attached that had been ripped from it's berth and sunk.  There were more and more story's like this as the weeks went on of the devastation that the blizzard had caused.

As a kid I just liked being able to play in it and not having to go to school, although I knew the fun would end soon as I saw the huge front end-loader clearing our street and dumping a mountain of snow in our front yard.  A couple of day's later the buses were running and we were back at school.  The one thing that sticks in my mind about the Blizzard of 78' was that we never lost power at our house, all of that wind and snow and not even a flicker, don't know why but it just stayed on.

There have been many snow storms since then but non that even come close to having the effect of the Blizzard of 78', I wonder if we had a storm like that today how we would handle it?  I wonder if we would miss school and work for a week?  I doubt it, I think we would be cleared in just a day or two.