November 25, 2025 • 22 mins
In this episode, Mike rewinds the clock to January 1978 and relives one of the most legendary winter storms in Michigan history — not as an adult, but as the 12-year-old kid he was at the time. Join Mike as he shares what it was like watching the storm unfold on TV and Radio as the local weather team track the impossible, and experiencing the chaos, excitement, and wonder of a once-in-a-generation blizzard.
From the snow drifts taller than a kid to the surreal quiet of a world that completely shut down, this episode captures the Blizzard of ’78 as only someone who lived it — wide-eyed and bundled up — can tell it.
Mike sets the scene by sharing that he had just celebrated his birthday when the blizzard began, remembering how he had a pizza party at home after his father picked up Sicilian square pizza from a local place called Little Richard’s. He recalls the excitement in the air as TV news talked about the potential for a blizzard.
On the morning of January 26, schools were closed as drifts of snow created significant chaos. Mike describes how everything was completely buried under the snow, with even the antenna of his mother’s car barely visible. The storm had high winds, creating massive drifts and making travel impossible. He recounts the challenges of feeding horses at a nearby barn and how his family navigated the snow-laden landscape.
He humorously shares anecdotes about the struggles of shoveling snow with his cousin and their father using a 1970 John Deere lawn tractor equipped with a snowblower. After several days, the roads began to open again, and stories about neighbors and their interactions during the storm emerge, including a humorous tale about a front-end loader being used to deliver cigarettes to a stranded neighbor.
As the storm’s impact persisted, schools were closed for an entire week, and the community adapted to the extraordinary amount of snow with creative solutions like snowshoeing for transportation. Mike also describes his memories of hot soups simmering on the wood stove during the storm, a comforting detail from those winter days.
He revisits the enormous snowbanks that formed by the season’s end, making comparisons to today’s weather reactions and reminiscing about the blizzard’s lasting impact. Mike wraps up by inviting listeners who experienced the Blizzard of ’78 to share their stories and reflecting on how this blizzard remains a notable part of his childhood memory.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Speaker 0]In a world created by Mike Dell, I
[Speaker 0]guess you would call it Mike Dell's world.
[Speaker 1]Yep. And that's what I call it. Mike
[Speaker 1]Dell's world for November twenty fifth twenty twenty
[Speaker 1]five. This is episode four thirty one for
[Speaker 1]those of you keeping score. And it's, of
[Speaker 1]course, the twenty fifth day of Nippon Pomo.
(00:22):
[Speaker 1]After this, I only got, four more to
[Speaker 1]go or five more to go. Whatever. I'm
[Speaker 1]terrible at math, at least today. Anyway, I
[Speaker 1]wanna talk about something that in two months
[Speaker 1]will be forty eight years ago. That's, actually
[Speaker 1]sort of amazing to me because I can't
(00:44):
[Speaker 1]I can't believe that I can remember something
[Speaker 1]that happened forty eight years ago, but it's
[Speaker 1]true. I was twelve years old. Right? Just
[Speaker 1]turning twelve when, this event started. In fact,
[Speaker 1]it was the day after my birthday that
[Speaker 1]it really happened, but, hey. No, no big
[Speaker 1]deal. So let me set the scene. I'm
(01:06):
[Speaker 1]twelve years old. Just had a birthday party
[Speaker 1]at my house, for my twelfth birthday, and
[Speaker 1]dad went to Little Richard's Pizza. And if
[Speaker 1]those of you that are local here in
[Speaker 1]Traverse City, Little Richard's was on Union Street
[Speaker 1]just down from or, yeah, just south of
(01:27):
[Speaker 1]the city bike shop, in the, in that
[Speaker 1]I mean, a storefront there, and, they did
[Speaker 1]Sicilian square pizza, and it was, you know,
[Speaker 1]fairly famous pizza place around here back in
[Speaker 1]nineteen seventy eight. And, of course, before and
[Speaker 1]somewhat afterwards, I don't know when they closed,
[Speaker 1]but little Richard's, I remember I requested that
(01:50):
[Speaker 1]because that was my favorite pizza place. So
[Speaker 1]dad comes home, and he, at the time,
[Speaker 1]was driving a, nineteen seventy VW bus. And
[Speaker 1]we used to keep the back driveway plowed
[Speaker 1]because we had a pole barn, way on
(02:11):
[Speaker 1]the back of the property, and he kept
[Speaker 1]that plowed. And then he plowed a trail
[Speaker 1]down to the house alongside the deck in
[Speaker 1]the back of the house. That was a
[Speaker 1]really long driveway. It was probably a hundred
[Speaker 1]yards long, and then he would plow back
[Speaker 1]to, to the house, which was probably another
[Speaker 1]fifty yards. So, you know, it was a
[Speaker 1]lot of plowing to get there, but, you
(02:33):
[Speaker 1]know, we hadn't had a lot of snow
[Speaker 1]that year. Wasn't, too bad. And he, you
[Speaker 1]know, went to Little Richard's, got pizzas, and
[Speaker 1]decided he would park his VW bus there,
[Speaker 1]along the back deck. And, anyway, the so
[Speaker 1]he was way, you know, back down a
(02:56):
[Speaker 1]couple of plowed driveways and parked, and we
[Speaker 1]had the pizza party. And, of course, the,
[Speaker 1]TV news was talking about a possible blizzard.
[Speaker 1]Now this is where my memory got fuzzy.
[Speaker 1]Nine and ten was the TV station, still
[Speaker 1]is. CBS affiliate in Cadillac, Michigan now moved
(03:18):
[Speaker 1]to Traverse City, but, they were originally in
[Speaker 1]Cadillac, Michigan. In fact, their transmitter's still down
[Speaker 1]there or one of the transmitters. And there
[Speaker 1]was a guy on there, and it wasn't
[Speaker 1]who I think is. I've done a little
[Speaker 1]research before, starting this episode. I always thought
[Speaker 1]it was Bill Spencer that was the weatherman
(03:39):
[Speaker 1]there, but he was not. He came on,
[Speaker 1]somewhere in the early eighties and also got
[Speaker 1]the nickname Blizzard Bill. The guy that was
[Speaker 1]there, I don't remember what his name was,
[Speaker 1]but, you know, he had predicted as a
[Speaker 1]possibility of some lake effect snow, blah blah
[Speaker 1]blah blah blah. But on channel thirteen, w
(04:00):
[Speaker 1]z z m out of Grand Rapids. I
[Speaker 1]think it was channel thirteen, or was it
[Speaker 1]channel eight? I forget. One of the two
[Speaker 1]stations, but we used to get channel thirteen
[Speaker 1]up here because that was before we had
[Speaker 1]an ABC affiliate. So on our cable system
[Speaker 1]and, yes, we had cable. I think we
[Speaker 1]had eight channels, something like that. WZZM was
(04:23):
[Speaker 1]our ABC affiliate, I I believe. Like I
[Speaker 1]said, this is all fuzzy math because I
[Speaker 1]was twelve years old, and a lot of
[Speaker 1]that stuff from forty eight years ago is
[Speaker 1]a little fuzzy in the Internet's memory as
[Speaker 1]well because the Internet didn't exist then. But,
[Speaker 1]anyway, I always thought it was Bill Spencer,
[Speaker 1]but it wasn't. It was, what was his
(04:46):
[Speaker 1]name? Jeez. And I get his email all
[Speaker 1]the time because he's still at it. Anyway,
[Speaker 1]Bill Stefan. There we go. Bill Stefan was
[Speaker 1]was Blizzard Bill as well. And, of course,
[Speaker 1]Bill Spencer also got, the the nickname Blizzard
[Speaker 1]Bill, when he worked in Cleveland. He retired
(05:07):
[Speaker 1]in twenty seventeen. That's what I found out
[Speaker 1]about him. But, anyway, back to the story.
[Speaker 1]So we had the, you know, VW bus
[Speaker 1]there. I had a pizza party, all that.
[Speaker 1]And, of course, us kids used to whenever
[Speaker 1]we'd have snow, we would sit downstairs. We
(05:28):
[Speaker 1]had a stereo, and I I don't remember
[Speaker 1]what kind of stereo it was, but, you
[Speaker 1]know, the old stereo receivers, you know, big
[Speaker 1]warm tones and whatever. And it had a
[Speaker 1]blue dial on it, and we would always
[Speaker 1]tune in to one of the local radio
[Speaker 1]stations and wait for the school closing list.
[Speaker 1]Well, we got up that morning on the
(05:49):
[Speaker 1]twenty sixth, and there was no doubt that,
[Speaker 1]schools were gonna be closed. In fact, the
[Speaker 1]road was closed out in front of the
[Speaker 1]house. And, I mean, it was closed closed.
[Speaker 1]I mean, there was, you know, three foot,
[Speaker 1]four foot drifts. My mom had a nineteen
(06:09):
[Speaker 1]seventy three. I had to think about that
[Speaker 1]for a second. VW Beetle. And back then,
[Speaker 1]the CB craze was kinda big, so she
[Speaker 1]had an eight foot whip antenna on the
[Speaker 1]back bumper of her seventy three Beetle. And,
[Speaker 1]of course, she parked it in the front
[Speaker 1]driveway. And all we could see of that
[Speaker 1]eight foot whip was about three and a
(06:30):
[Speaker 1]half feet of the whip antenna sticking out
[Speaker 1]of the snow, and, otherwise, the car was
[Speaker 1]completely buried flat. I mean, you wouldn't even
[Speaker 1]know there was a car there. That that's
[Speaker 1]how much snow got dumped. Now the the
[Speaker 1]total of the snow really wasn't that much.
[Speaker 1]I mean, it was a lot, but, it
(06:51):
[Speaker 1]wasn't, you know, four feet. But with the
[Speaker 1]wind, it was. They had winds, in the
[Speaker 1]hundred and ten knot range, and that's, you
[Speaker 1]know, about a hundred and, yeah, hundred and
[Speaker 1]twenty six, hundred twenty seven miles an hour.
[Speaker 1]And that causes great drifting. And, of course,
(07:13):
[Speaker 1]back then, we didn't have that many trees
[Speaker 1]around, where my folks lived or where I
[Speaker 1]lived at the time too, and that's still
[Speaker 1]where mom lives now. But, drifting was kind
[Speaker 1]of a big deal, especially, you know, when
[Speaker 1]the lake effect was kicking up, plus the
[Speaker 1]system snow, plus the wind. You know, it
[Speaker 1]was all, you know, kind of the perfect
(07:33):
[Speaker 1]storm. But, man, I'll tell you, that was
[Speaker 1]a lot of snow. And, of course, we
[Speaker 1]had horses, which we we were, gonna build
[Speaker 1]a barn. I think we built the barn
[Speaker 1]in seventy nine. But in seventy eight, we,
[Speaker 1]used a barn two houses down from us.
(07:53):
[Speaker 1]Neighbors let us use their barn and pasture
[Speaker 1]and everything for the horses. So that was
[Speaker 1]a whole another thing. I had to snowshoe
[Speaker 1]over there to, feed the horses and, had
[Speaker 1]to it it would bring buckets of water
[Speaker 1]out to them. And, yeah, that was that
[Speaker 1]was a whole another ball of worms. But,
(08:17):
[Speaker 1]yeah, it was just incredible. Like, all the
[Speaker 1]roads outside of town were closed. Even in
[Speaker 1]town, they had a lot of trouble. It
[Speaker 1]was, you know, the most amount of drifting
[Speaker 1]and snow I'd ever seen in my life.
[Speaker 1]It was just amazing amount of snow. Of
[Speaker 1]course, you know, ice cross country skied. You
(08:37):
[Speaker 1]know, we had snowmobiles. In fact, the snowmobile,
[Speaker 1]we parked up on the barn roof, as
[Speaker 1]I remember it now. Like I said, fuzzy
[Speaker 1]from being a twelve year old, but, maybe
[Speaker 1]we parked the snowmobile up there after this
[Speaker 1]storm because of the snow piles. I don't
[Speaker 1]remember. But, anyway, we found the snowmobile, and
[Speaker 1]it was kinda pointless in the powder, so
(08:59):
[Speaker 1]we didn't use that. So we, you know,
[Speaker 1]snowshoed. Yeah. It snowshoed over to the horses
[Speaker 1]that, you know, twice a day with food.
[Speaker 1]Well, if they had the food over there,
[Speaker 1]but I'd have to bring water to them.
[Speaker 1]And but, I mean, it was it was
[Speaker 1]closed closed. The the roads, the schools, the
[Speaker 1]schools were closed for an entire week, because
(09:22):
[Speaker 1]of this, and it took probably four days
[Speaker 1]before the road was open. And one of
[Speaker 1]the interesting stories about the road getting open
[Speaker 1]is there was a a lady that lived
[Speaker 1]a little further down the road and down
[Speaker 1]another road about two miles off of our
[Speaker 1]road, which was not really a main road,
[Speaker 1]but, she she was kinda way back there.
(09:44):
[Speaker 1]And her husband owned a heavy equipment company.
[Speaker 1]And then we had an excavating company, nearby,
[Speaker 1]Brayton's. They're still around, I think. But, Brayton's
[Speaker 1]wanted to buy a new front end loader
[Speaker 1]from this, I think it was called Northern
[Speaker 1]Equipment at the time. And so they you
(10:06):
[Speaker 1]know, about three days into the storm or
[Speaker 1]into the cleanup, he said, well, if you
[Speaker 1]can get over to the lot there, you
[Speaker 1]know, go ahead and grab one of the
[Speaker 1]front end loaders and then bring it by
[Speaker 1]and bring my wife a carton of cigarettes.
[Speaker 1]And that's, you know, the lady that lived
[Speaker 1]down the road there, you know, ran out
[Speaker 1]of cigarettes. So that, front end loader came
(10:29):
[Speaker 1]down our road, opened up our road, not,
[Speaker 1]you know, one lane, not, you know, not
[Speaker 1]wide like the county road plows would do,
[Speaker 1]but, opened up a a trail and got
[Speaker 1]all the way down to her house and
[Speaker 1]gave her carton of cigarettes. And on the
[Speaker 1]way back, he made lots of money plowing
[Speaker 1]out people's driveways, and we had him plow
(10:50):
[Speaker 1]ours. Not not ours, our main driveway, but
[Speaker 1]the the driveway up to the horses. And
[Speaker 1]and then, plus, he had the road, so
[Speaker 1]we got a lot easier. You know, didn't
[Speaker 1]have to use snowshoes to get up to
[Speaker 1]the barn, but we didn't have the money
[Speaker 1]or the inclination to have him plow our
[Speaker 1]driveway out, which would have been a lot
[Speaker 1]easier than what we did end up doing.
(11:13):
[Speaker 1]But, yeah, with my cousin and I, we're
[Speaker 1]roughly the same age, and we lived about
[Speaker 1]a mile apart. And we would cross country
[Speaker 1]ski, and, you know, it was it was
[Speaker 1]a grand old time. But when it came
[Speaker 1]came time to clear out the driveways, for
[Speaker 1]stars, my dad had a, a nineteen seventy
(11:33):
[Speaker 1]John Deere one ten lawn tractor with the,
[Speaker 1]and I only know this because I just
[Speaker 1]got rid of the tractor, gave it to
[Speaker 1]the neighbor behind where dad lived. But, nineteen
[Speaker 1]seventy John Deere one ten with a snowblower
[Speaker 1]attachment on it. It was a single stage
[Speaker 1]snow thrower, thirty seven inches wide. And we
(11:57):
[Speaker 1]started up at the pole barn and started
[Speaker 1]plowing towards the road. And my cousin and
[Speaker 1]I would, knock the snowbank down, and then
[Speaker 1]dad would blow it out. And then we
[Speaker 1]would knock it down, and he'd blow it
[Speaker 1]out. And we did that for two straight
[Speaker 1]days before we got to the road, and
(12:17):
[Speaker 1]then we went back and, did the the
[Speaker 1]trail over to my dad's VW bus that
[Speaker 1]had been snow locked in the backyard. Anyway,
[Speaker 1]about four days after, after the the storm,
[Speaker 1]the roads, you know, the county plows came
[Speaker 1]through wide out the roads, and it wasn't
[Speaker 1]too terrible. But, you know, it took us
(12:40):
[Speaker 1]three or four days with that little John
[Speaker 1]Deere lawn tractor. And, of course, you know,
[Speaker 1]at that time, we got the snowmobile out,
[Speaker 1]so we'd snowmobile up, get gas for it,
[Speaker 1]up to a little store a couple miles
[Speaker 1]away. And, my uncle who lived over on
[Speaker 1]Long Lake, in the south end of Long
[Speaker 1]Lake at the time, he snowshoed over just
(13:01):
[Speaker 1]because he was bored. And, yeah, it was
[Speaker 1]it was quite the time. You know, we
[Speaker 1]heated with wood at the time as we
[Speaker 1]discussed in a previous episode. All the wood
[Speaker 1]was in the house, so that was easy.
[Speaker 1]And I just remember, dad would have a
[Speaker 1]pot of bean soup or a pot of
[Speaker 1]chili or, you know, some sort of soup
(13:23):
[Speaker 1]on the, wood stove all the time, you
[Speaker 1]know, sitting up on top of the wood
[Speaker 1]stove, and he'd come in after two or
[Speaker 1]three hours of moving snow. And I tell
[Speaker 1]you what, there was nothing better than a
[Speaker 1]big old hot steaming bowl of chili or
[Speaker 1]or bean soup or whatever it was. I
[Speaker 1]don't specifically remember, but he'd always had something
[Speaker 1]going on there. And he always had a
(13:44):
[Speaker 1]pot of, water on there. It wasn't boiling
[Speaker 1]or anything, but you could, you know, do
[Speaker 1]coffee or or whatever. And we never really
[Speaker 1]lost power. I think maybe we lost power
[Speaker 1]the first night, when the winds were kicked
[Speaker 1]up, but the power came back fairly quick.
[Speaker 1]I don't really remember the power outage that
[Speaker 1]much, but I do remember, you know, just
(14:09):
[Speaker 1]navigating the snow. You know, we had a
[Speaker 1]deck that went, you know, pretty much all
[Speaker 1]the way around the house or at least
[Speaker 1]around half of it, one side and in
[Speaker 1]the front and the back. And, you know,
[Speaker 1]I had to move the snow off of
[Speaker 1]the deck, and then, you know, you push
[Speaker 1]some snow off the deck and then get
[Speaker 1]the snowblower out to blow it out of
[Speaker 1]where it landed. You know, we even shoveled
(14:31):
[Speaker 1]the roof, which almost never had to do
[Speaker 1]there because of the wind. But, again, it,
[Speaker 1]you know, it it drifted up. It was
[Speaker 1]it's incredible. I mean, just absolutely nuts. You
[Speaker 1]know, I've never seen snow like that since.
[Speaker 1]You know, now we've had a fair amount
(14:52):
[Speaker 1]of snow, but never all at once like
[Speaker 1]that and never totally paralyzing the roads and
[Speaker 1]all that. That was just beyond normal. And
[Speaker 1]and this this blizzard really, you know, it
[Speaker 1]covered, you know, many states and and, you
[Speaker 1]know, there's lots of, stories out there. But,
[Speaker 1]yeah, I'm telling my story from when I
(15:13):
[Speaker 1]was twelve. Let's see. I did write down
[Speaker 1]a couple of things just so I wouldn't
[Speaker 1]forget. But, no, I got it all. Or
[Speaker 1]at least I got all that part of
[Speaker 1]it. But, that year was incredible. After that,
[Speaker 1]it was like every Sunday we or every
(15:35):
[Speaker 1]Monday. No. What was it? No. Thursday or
[Speaker 1]Friday, we would get a blizzard. And, generally,
[Speaker 1]we didn't go to school on Friday or
[Speaker 1]Monday for the rest of that snow season,
[Speaker 1]you know, until at least until February. And,
[Speaker 1]I mean, the snow banks were you know,
[Speaker 1]by the end of the season, you know,
(15:55):
[Speaker 1]along the roads, the snow banks were probably
[Speaker 1]eight foot tall. You know, and that's no
[Speaker 1]exaggeration. That was a ton of snow, and
[Speaker 1]it just lasted and lasted and lasted and
[Speaker 1]lasted. I do remember, you know, before the
[Speaker 1]road was completely clear, another uncle of mine
[Speaker 1]where my cousin lived and, you know, when
(16:17):
[Speaker 1]it skied over and helped me plow snow.
[Speaker 1]Of course, we plowed him out, and he
[Speaker 1]had a Jeep, c j seven. I think
[Speaker 1]it was brand new at the time too,
[Speaker 1]or it was pretty close. Maybe it was
[Speaker 1]a seventy six, but it was pretty new.
[Speaker 1]Had a plow on the front of it.
[Speaker 1]And, but this was too much snow for
[Speaker 1]for that vehicle and the plow, at least
(16:39):
[Speaker 1]until, you know, we got at least broke
[Speaker 1]up. But, anyway, we we made the the
[Speaker 1]first trip into town to, get groceries and
[Speaker 1]beer and cigarettes and whatever the hell else
[Speaker 1]back then everybody smoked. Come on. I didn't,
[Speaker 1]but, you know, that was kind of the
[Speaker 1]thing. And, I remember riding into town in
(17:01):
[Speaker 1]that jeep, you know, just looking at all
[Speaker 1]the snow. I mean, it was pretty, but
[Speaker 1]man, oh, man, it was a ton. And,
[Speaker 1]went down to Meijer Thrifty Acres. It's now
[Speaker 1]called Meijer, but it's a big grocery everything
[Speaker 1]store kind of. Think of Walmart, but, not
[Speaker 1]quite. But, went down there and just, you
(17:25):
[Speaker 1]know, filled the back of that Jeep up.
[Speaker 1]Me and him, you know, went down there.
[Speaker 1]We're in four wheel drive the whole time.
[Speaker 1]And as I said in my winter driving
[Speaker 1]thing, I recommend four wheel drive if you
[Speaker 1]have it. But, yeah, I remember that trip
[Speaker 1]into town and, you know, of course, it
[Speaker 1]was still blowing and drifting a bit. So,
[Speaker 1]you know, you'd go into little blast of
(17:47):
[Speaker 1]whiteout and, of course, the Jeep isn't really
[Speaker 1]the warmest thing in the world, and, the
[Speaker 1]defrosters didn't work very well neither did they
[Speaker 1]on VWs that we had. But, anyway, that,
[Speaker 1]that storm was, you know, one for the
[Speaker 1]history books, and I just can't believe it
(18:08):
[Speaker 1]was that long ago. Something interesting, there's a
[Speaker 1]famous picture that was there's a couple famous
[Speaker 1]pictures that were in the Record Eagle, our
[Speaker 1]local newspaper, and I'm having trouble tracking them
[Speaker 1]down. But I I do have one in
[Speaker 1]front of me, which I will, put in
[Speaker 1]the show notes over at mike dell dot
[Speaker 1]com. But, and I don't I can't tell
(18:30):
[Speaker 1]which theater this is. It was either the
[Speaker 1]Michigan theater or the state theater on Front
[Speaker 1]Street, and you could see the big drift
[Speaker 1]on the sidewalk under the marquee. And, playing
[Speaker 1]in the theater, first run was, oh god
[Speaker 1]with George Burns and, John Denver. So that
[Speaker 1]was a picture of that marquee and, all
(18:53):
[Speaker 1]the snow on Front Street. And, you know,
[Speaker 1]what was on Front Street was far less
[Speaker 1]than what we got to out out of
[Speaker 1]town over by Long Lake. So and then
[Speaker 1]there was another, thing that happened. I think
[Speaker 1]it was around the same time, but maybe
[Speaker 1]not exactly. There was a, school ship out
[Speaker 1]in the bay, in West Bay, and it
(19:16):
[Speaker 1]wasn't the current one. They're right there's a
[Speaker 1]current school ship there at the NMC's Maritime
[Speaker 1]Academy called the the state of Michigan. But
[Speaker 1]this was a different boat, and it was
[Speaker 1]their school ship. And it capsized in the
[Speaker 1]bay and the ice, and it was laying
[Speaker 1]on its side in the shallow water on
(19:37):
[Speaker 1]West Bay and, on the front page of
[Speaker 1]the newspaper. And, yes, newspapers were a thing
[Speaker 1]back then. I guess they still are sorta
[Speaker 1]kinda, but, record eagles around anyway. But, it's
[Speaker 1]a picture of that boat laying on its
[Speaker 1]side, and somebody'd spray painted on the bottom
[Speaker 1]or painted on the bottom this side down.
(20:00):
[Speaker 1]But, they were able to flip it back
[Speaker 1]up after after not too much and didn't
[Speaker 1]really hurt the ship too much, I don't
[Speaker 1]think. But, again, I'd fuzzy twelve year old
[Speaker 1]memory from forty eight years ago, but I
[Speaker 1]do remember seeing that ship out there as
[Speaker 1]well. You know, we finally got back to,
(20:21):
[Speaker 1]you know, normal life and, you know, go
[Speaker 1]by there periodically. But, yeah, that was, that
[Speaker 1]was quite the storm. And, yes, I am
[Speaker 1]old enough to know and remember the blizzard
[Speaker 1]of seventy eight. And somebody so, you know,
[Speaker 1]Wikipedia has an article about it, and they
(20:41):
[Speaker 1]the title of the article is the great
[Speaker 1]blizzard of seventy eight. We just caught the
[Speaker 1]blizzard of nineteen seventy eight or blizzard of
[Speaker 1]seventy eight. Other names for it were the
[Speaker 1]Cleveland Superbomb. That was crazy. But, yeah, it
[Speaker 1]was, you know, it was it was the
[Speaker 1]perfect blizzard. You know? And, again, you know,
(21:02):
[Speaker 1]I don't know if nowadays it would be
[Speaker 1]as big a deal. I know Buffalo, New
[Speaker 1]York gets an amazing amount of snow. That
[Speaker 1]doesn't sound like, it it was impact as
[Speaker 1]impactful as the storm was at least around
[Speaker 1]here. And I know, Indiana and Ohio and
(21:25):
[Speaker 1]and, you know, some of the other surrounding
[Speaker 1]areas got it pretty good too. And, you
[Speaker 1]know, I think even the East Coast got
[Speaker 1]some of it. I I I wonder if
[Speaker 1]it was one of those nor'easters that, stayed
[Speaker 1]strong and just kept going. But, anyway, that's
[Speaker 1]my, remembrances of the blizzard of seventy eight.
(21:48):
[Speaker 1]And, you know, that winter was great because,
[Speaker 1]we didn't go to school all that much.
[Speaker 1]We had lots of snow days. And snow
[Speaker 1]days are a whole another thing, you know,
[Speaker 1]up here. Now nowadays, you know, if if
[Speaker 1]I look out my window and they see
[Speaker 1]four inches of snow on the hood of
[Speaker 1]my truck, chances are they're gonna call a
(22:09):
[Speaker 1]snow day or at least a delay. They,
[Speaker 1]their wusses compared to what we were. We
[Speaker 1]went to school in some some crazy weather.
[Speaker 1]But, hey. That's okay. Not yeah. Hey. If
[Speaker 1]it, if it works for them, it works
[Speaker 1]for them. That's fine. So, hey. You know,
[Speaker 1]if anybody that's old enough and was around
(22:32):
[Speaker 1]here at the time, let me know, what
[Speaker 1]your experience was with the blizzard of seventy
[Speaker 0]In a world created by Mike Dell, I
[Speaker 0]guess you would call it Mike Dell's world.
[Speaker 1]Yep. And that's what I call it. Mike
[Speaker 1]Dell's world for November twenty fifth twenty twenty
[Speaker 1]five. This is episode four thirty one for
[Speaker 1]those of you keeping score. And it's, of
[Speaker 1]course, the twenty fifth day of Nippon Pomo.
(00:22):
[Speaker 1]After this, I only got, four more to
[Speaker 1]go or five more to go. Whatever. I'm
[Speaker 1]terrible at math, at least today. Anyway, I
[Speaker 1]wanna talk about something that in two months
[Speaker 1]will be forty eight years ago. That's, actually
[Speaker 1]sort of amazing to me because I can't
(00:44):
[Speaker 1]I can't believe that I can remember something
[Speaker 1]that happened forty eight years ago, but it's
[Speaker 1]true. I was twelve years old. Right? Just
[Speaker 1]turning twelve when, this event started. In fact,
[Speaker 1]it was the day after my birthday that
[Speaker 1]it really happened, but, hey. No, no big
[Speaker 1]deal. So let me set the scene. I'm
(01:06):
[Speaker 1]twelve years old. Just had a birthday party
[Speaker 1]at my house, for my twelfth birthday, and
[Speaker 1]dad went to Little Richard's Pizza. And if
[Speaker 1]those of you that are local here in
[Speaker 1]Traverse City, Little Richard's was on Union Street
[Speaker 1]just down from or, yeah, just south of
(01:27):
[Speaker 1]the city bike shop, in the, in that
[Speaker 1]I mean, a storefront there, and, they did
[Speaker 1]Sicilian square pizza, and it was, you know,
[Speaker 1]fairly famous pizza place around here back in
[Speaker 1]nineteen seventy eight. And, of course, before and
[Speaker 1]somewhat afterwards, I don't know when they closed,
[Speaker 1]but little Richard's, I remember I requested that
(01:50):
[Speaker 1]because that was my favorite pizza place. So
[Speaker 1]dad comes home, and he, at the time,
[Speaker 1]was driving a, nineteen seventy VW bus. And
[Speaker 1]we used to keep the back driveway plowed
[Speaker 1]because we had a pole barn, way on
(02:11):
[Speaker 1]the back of the property, and he kept
[Speaker 1]that plowed. And then he plowed a trail
[Speaker 1]down to the house alongside the deck in
[Speaker 1]the back of the house. That was a
[Speaker 1]really long driveway. It was probably a hundred
[Speaker 1]yards long, and then he would plow back
[Speaker 1]to, to the house, which was probably another
[Speaker 1]fifty yards. So, you know, it was a
[Speaker 1]lot of plowing to get there, but, you
(02:33):
[Speaker 1]know, we hadn't had a lot of snow
[Speaker 1]that year. Wasn't, too bad. And he, you
[Speaker 1]know, went to Little Richard's, got pizzas, and
[Speaker 1]decided he would park his VW bus there,
[Speaker 1]along the back deck. And, anyway, the so
[Speaker 1]he was way, you know, back down a
(02:56):
[Speaker 1]couple of plowed driveways and parked, and we
[Speaker 1]had the pizza party. And, of course, the,
[Speaker 1]TV news was talking about a possible blizzard.
[Speaker 1]Now this is where my memory got fuzzy.
[Speaker 1]Nine and ten was the TV station, still
[Speaker 1]is. CBS affiliate in Cadillac, Michigan now moved
(03:18):
[Speaker 1]to Traverse City, but, they were originally in
[Speaker 1]Cadillac, Michigan. In fact, their transmitter's still down
[Speaker 1]there or one of the transmitters. And there
[Speaker 1]was a guy on there, and it wasn't
[Speaker 1]who I think is. I've done a little
[Speaker 1]research before, starting this episode. I always thought
[Speaker 1]it was Bill Spencer that was the weatherman
(03:39):
[Speaker 1]there, but he was not. He came on,
[Speaker 1]somewhere in the early eighties and also got
[Speaker 1]the nickname Blizzard Bill. The guy that was
[Speaker 1]there, I don't remember what his name was,
[Speaker 1]but, you know, he had predicted as a
[Speaker 1]possibility of some lake effect snow, blah blah
[Speaker 1]blah blah blah. But on channel thirteen, w
(04:00):
[Speaker 1]z z m out of Grand Rapids. I
[Speaker 1]think it was channel thirteen, or was it
[Speaker 1]channel eight? I forget. One of the two
[Speaker 1]stations, but we used to get channel thirteen
[Speaker 1]up here because that was before we had
[Speaker 1]an ABC affiliate. So on our cable system
[Speaker 1]and, yes, we had cable. I think we
[Speaker 1]had eight channels, something like that. WZZM was
(04:23):
[Speaker 1]our ABC affiliate, I I believe. Like I
[Speaker 1]said, this is all fuzzy math because I
[Speaker 1]was twelve years old, and a lot of
[Speaker 1]that stuff from forty eight years ago is
[Speaker 1]a little fuzzy in the Internet's memory as
[Speaker 1]well because the Internet didn't exist then. But,
[Speaker 1]anyway, I always thought it was Bill Spencer,
[Speaker 1]but it wasn't. It was, what was his
(04:46):
[Speaker 1]name? Jeez. And I get his email all
[Speaker 1]the time because he's still at it. Anyway,
[Speaker 1]Bill Stefan. There we go. Bill Stefan was
[Speaker 1]was Blizzard Bill as well. And, of course,
[Speaker 1]Bill Spencer also got, the the nickname Blizzard
[Speaker 1]Bill, when he worked in Cleveland. He retired
(05:07):
[Speaker 1]in twenty seventeen. That's what I found out
[Speaker 1]about him. But, anyway, back to the story.
[Speaker 1]So we had the, you know, VW bus
[Speaker 1]there. I had a pizza party, all that.
[Speaker 1]And, of course, us kids used to whenever
[Speaker 1]we'd have snow, we would sit downstairs. We
(05:28):
[Speaker 1]had a stereo, and I I don't remember
[Speaker 1]what kind of stereo it was, but, you
[Speaker 1]know, the old stereo receivers, you know, big
[Speaker 1]warm tones and whatever. And it had a
[Speaker 1]blue dial on it, and we would always
[Speaker 1]tune in to one of the local radio
[Speaker 1]stations and wait for the school closing list.
[Speaker 1]Well, we got up that morning on the
(05:49):
[Speaker 1]twenty sixth, and there was no doubt that,
[Speaker 1]schools were gonna be closed. In fact, the
[Speaker 1]road was closed out in front of the
[Speaker 1]house. And, I mean, it was closed closed.
[Speaker 1]I mean, there was, you know, three foot,
[Speaker 1]four foot drifts. My mom had a nineteen
(06:09):
[Speaker 1]seventy three. I had to think about that
[Speaker 1]for a second. VW Beetle. And back then,
[Speaker 1]the CB craze was kinda big, so she
[Speaker 1]had an eight foot whip antenna on the
[Speaker 1]back bumper of her seventy three Beetle. And,
[Speaker 1]of course, she parked it in the front
[Speaker 1]driveway. And all we could see of that
[Speaker 1]eight foot whip was about three and a
(06:30):
[Speaker 1]half feet of the whip antenna sticking out
[Speaker 1]of the snow, and, otherwise, the car was
[Speaker 1]completely buried flat. I mean, you wouldn't even
[Speaker 1]know there was a car there. That that's
[Speaker 1]how much snow got dumped. Now the the
[Speaker 1]total of the snow really wasn't that much.
[Speaker 1]I mean, it was a lot, but, it
(06:51):
[Speaker 1]wasn't, you know, four feet. But with the
[Speaker 1]wind, it was. They had winds, in the
[Speaker 1]hundred and ten knot range, and that's, you
[Speaker 1]know, about a hundred and, yeah, hundred and
[Speaker 1]twenty six, hundred twenty seven miles an hour.
[Speaker 1]And that causes great drifting. And, of course,
(07:13):
[Speaker 1]back then, we didn't have that many trees
[Speaker 1]around, where my folks lived or where I
[Speaker 1]lived at the time too, and that's still
[Speaker 1]where mom lives now. But, drifting was kind
[Speaker 1]of a big deal, especially, you know, when
[Speaker 1]the lake effect was kicking up, plus the
[Speaker 1]system snow, plus the wind. You know, it
[Speaker 1]was all, you know, kind of the perfect
(07:33):
[Speaker 1]storm. But, man, I'll tell you, that was
[Speaker 1]a lot of snow. And, of course, we
[Speaker 1]had horses, which we we were, gonna build
[Speaker 1]a barn. I think we built the barn
[Speaker 1]in seventy nine. But in seventy eight, we,
[Speaker 1]used a barn two houses down from us.
(07:53):
[Speaker 1]Neighbors let us use their barn and pasture
[Speaker 1]and everything for the horses. So that was
[Speaker 1]a whole another thing. I had to snowshoe
[Speaker 1]over there to, feed the horses and, had
[Speaker 1]to it it would bring buckets of water
[Speaker 1]out to them. And, yeah, that was that
[Speaker 1]was a whole another ball of worms. But,
(08:17):
[Speaker 1]yeah, it was just incredible. Like, all the
[Speaker 1]roads outside of town were closed. Even in
[Speaker 1]town, they had a lot of trouble. It
[Speaker 1]was, you know, the most amount of drifting
[Speaker 1]and snow I'd ever seen in my life.
[Speaker 1]It was just amazing amount of snow. Of
[Speaker 1]course, you know, ice cross country skied. You
(08:37):
[Speaker 1]know, we had snowmobiles. In fact, the snowmobile,
[Speaker 1]we parked up on the barn roof, as
[Speaker 1]I remember it now. Like I said, fuzzy
[Speaker 1]from being a twelve year old, but, maybe
[Speaker 1]we parked the snowmobile up there after this
[Speaker 1]storm because of the snow piles. I don't
[Speaker 1]remember. But, anyway, we found the snowmobile, and
[Speaker 1]it was kinda pointless in the powder, so
(08:59):
[Speaker 1]we didn't use that. So we, you know,
[Speaker 1]snowshoed. Yeah. It snowshoed over to the horses
[Speaker 1]that, you know, twice a day with food.
[Speaker 1]Well, if they had the food over there,
[Speaker 1]but I'd have to bring water to them.
[Speaker 1]And but, I mean, it was it was
[Speaker 1]closed closed. The the roads, the schools, the
[Speaker 1]schools were closed for an entire week, because
(09:22):
[Speaker 1]of this, and it took probably four days
[Speaker 1]before the road was open. And one of
[Speaker 1]the interesting stories about the road getting open
[Speaker 1]is there was a a lady that lived
[Speaker 1]a little further down the road and down
[Speaker 1]another road about two miles off of our
[Speaker 1]road, which was not really a main road,
[Speaker 1]but, she she was kinda way back there.
(09:44):
[Speaker 1]And her husband owned a heavy equipment company.
[Speaker 1]And then we had an excavating company, nearby,
[Speaker 1]Brayton's. They're still around, I think. But, Brayton's
[Speaker 1]wanted to buy a new front end loader
[Speaker 1]from this, I think it was called Northern
[Speaker 1]Equipment at the time. And so they you
(10:06):
[Speaker 1]know, about three days into the storm or
[Speaker 1]into the cleanup, he said, well, if you
[Speaker 1]can get over to the lot there, you
[Speaker 1]know, go ahead and grab one of the
[Speaker 1]front end loaders and then bring it by
[Speaker 1]and bring my wife a carton of cigarettes.
[Speaker 1]And that's, you know, the lady that lived
[Speaker 1]down the road there, you know, ran out
[Speaker 1]of cigarettes. So that, front end loader came
(10:29):
[Speaker 1]down our road, opened up our road, not,
[Speaker 1]you know, one lane, not, you know, not
[Speaker 1]wide like the county road plows would do,
[Speaker 1]but, opened up a a trail and got
[Speaker 1]all the way down to her house and
[Speaker 1]gave her carton of cigarettes. And on the
[Speaker 1]way back, he made lots of money plowing
[Speaker 1]out people's driveways, and we had him plow
(10:50):
[Speaker 1]ours. Not not ours, our main driveway, but
[Speaker 1]the the driveway up to the horses. And
[Speaker 1]and then, plus, he had the road, so
[Speaker 1]we got a lot easier. You know, didn't
[Speaker 1]have to use snowshoes to get up to
[Speaker 1]the barn, but we didn't have the money
[Speaker 1]or the inclination to have him plow our
[Speaker 1]driveway out, which would have been a lot
[Speaker 1]easier than what we did end up doing.
(11:13):
[Speaker 1]But, yeah, with my cousin and I, we're
[Speaker 1]roughly the same age, and we lived about
[Speaker 1]a mile apart. And we would cross country
[Speaker 1]ski, and, you know, it was it was
[Speaker 1]a grand old time. But when it came
[Speaker 1]came time to clear out the driveways, for
[Speaker 1]stars, my dad had a, a nineteen seventy
(11:33):
[Speaker 1]John Deere one ten lawn tractor with the,
[Speaker 1]and I only know this because I just
[Speaker 1]got rid of the tractor, gave it to
[Speaker 1]the neighbor behind where dad lived. But, nineteen
[Speaker 1]seventy John Deere one ten with a snowblower
[Speaker 1]attachment on it. It was a single stage
[Speaker 1]snow thrower, thirty seven inches wide. And we
(11:57):
[Speaker 1]started up at the pole barn and started
[Speaker 1]plowing towards the road. And my cousin and
[Speaker 1]I would, knock the snowbank down, and then
[Speaker 1]dad would blow it out. And then we
[Speaker 1]would knock it down, and he'd blow it
[Speaker 1]out. And we did that for two straight
[Speaker 1]days before we got to the road, and
(12:17):
[Speaker 1]then we went back and, did the the
[Speaker 1]trail over to my dad's VW bus that
[Speaker 1]had been snow locked in the backyard. Anyway,
[Speaker 1]about four days after, after the the storm,
[Speaker 1]the roads, you know, the county plows came
[Speaker 1]through wide out the roads, and it wasn't
[Speaker 1]too terrible. But, you know, it took us
(12:40):
[Speaker 1]three or four days with that little John
[Speaker 1]Deere lawn tractor. And, of course, you know,
[Speaker 1]at that time, we got the snowmobile out,
[Speaker 1]so we'd snowmobile up, get gas for it,
[Speaker 1]up to a little store a couple miles
[Speaker 1]away. And, my uncle who lived over on
[Speaker 1]Long Lake, in the south end of Long
[Speaker 1]Lake at the time, he snowshoed over just
(13:01):
[Speaker 1]because he was bored. And, yeah, it was
[Speaker 1]it was quite the time. You know, we
[Speaker 1]heated with wood at the time as we
[Speaker 1]discussed in a previous episode. All the wood
[Speaker 1]was in the house, so that was easy.
[Speaker 1]And I just remember, dad would have a
[Speaker 1]pot of bean soup or a pot of
[Speaker 1]chili or, you know, some sort of soup
(13:23):
[Speaker 1]on the, wood stove all the time, you
[Speaker 1]know, sitting up on top of the wood
[Speaker 1]stove, and he'd come in after two or
[Speaker 1]three hours of moving snow. And I tell
[Speaker 1]you what, there was nothing better than a
[Speaker 1]big old hot steaming bowl of chili or
[Speaker 1]or bean soup or whatever it was. I
[Speaker 1]don't specifically remember, but he'd always had something
[Speaker 1]going on there. And he always had a
(13:44):
[Speaker 1]pot of, water on there. It wasn't boiling
[Speaker 1]or anything, but you could, you know, do
[Speaker 1]coffee or or whatever. And we never really
[Speaker 1]lost power. I think maybe we lost power
[Speaker 1]the first night, when the winds were kicked
[Speaker 1]up, but the power came back fairly quick.
[Speaker 1]I don't really remember the power outage that
[Speaker 1]much, but I do remember, you know, just
(14:09):
[Speaker 1]navigating the snow. You know, we had a
[Speaker 1]deck that went, you know, pretty much all
[Speaker 1]the way around the house or at least
[Speaker 1]around half of it, one side and in
[Speaker 1]the front and the back. And, you know,
[Speaker 1]I had to move the snow off of
[Speaker 1]the deck, and then, you know, you push
[Speaker 1]some snow off the deck and then get
[Speaker 1]the snowblower out to blow it out of
[Speaker 1]where it landed. You know, we even shoveled
(14:31):
[Speaker 1]the roof, which almost never had to do
[Speaker 1]there because of the wind. But, again, it,
[Speaker 1]you know, it it drifted up. It was
[Speaker 1]it's incredible. I mean, just absolutely nuts. You
[Speaker 1]know, I've never seen snow like that since.
[Speaker 1]You know, now we've had a fair amount
(14:52):
[Speaker 1]of snow, but never all at once like
[Speaker 1]that and never totally paralyzing the roads and
[Speaker 1]all that. That was just beyond normal. And
[Speaker 1]and this this blizzard really, you know, it
[Speaker 1]covered, you know, many states and and, you
[Speaker 1]know, there's lots of, stories out there. But,
[Speaker 1]yeah, I'm telling my story from when I
(15:13):
[Speaker 1]was twelve. Let's see. I did write down
[Speaker 1]a couple of things just so I wouldn't
[Speaker 1]forget. But, no, I got it all. Or
[Speaker 1]at least I got all that part of
[Speaker 1]it. But, that year was incredible. After that,
[Speaker 1]it was like every Sunday we or every
(15:35):
[Speaker 1]Monday. No. What was it? No. Thursday or
[Speaker 1]Friday, we would get a blizzard. And, generally,
[Speaker 1]we didn't go to school on Friday or
[Speaker 1]Monday for the rest of that snow season,
[Speaker 1]you know, until at least until February. And,
[Speaker 1]I mean, the snow banks were you know,
[Speaker 1]by the end of the season, you know,
(15:55):
[Speaker 1]along the roads, the snow banks were probably
[Speaker 1]eight foot tall. You know, and that's no
[Speaker 1]exaggeration. That was a ton of snow, and
[Speaker 1]it just lasted and lasted and lasted and
[Speaker 1]lasted. I do remember, you know, before the
[Speaker 1]road was completely clear, another uncle of mine
[Speaker 1]where my cousin lived and, you know, when
(16:17):
[Speaker 1]it skied over and helped me plow snow.
[Speaker 1]Of course, we plowed him out, and he
[Speaker 1]had a Jeep, c j seven. I think
[Speaker 1]it was brand new at the time too,
[Speaker 1]or it was pretty close. Maybe it was
[Speaker 1]a seventy six, but it was pretty new.
[Speaker 1]Had a plow on the front of it.
[Speaker 1]And, but this was too much snow for
[Speaker 1]for that vehicle and the plow, at least
(16:39):
[Speaker 1]until, you know, we got at least broke
[Speaker 1]up. But, anyway, we we made the the
[Speaker 1]first trip into town to, get groceries and
[Speaker 1]beer and cigarettes and whatever the hell else
[Speaker 1]back then everybody smoked. Come on. I didn't,
[Speaker 1]but, you know, that was kind of the
[Speaker 1]thing. And, I remember riding into town in
(17:01):
[Speaker 1]that jeep, you know, just looking at all
[Speaker 1]the snow. I mean, it was pretty, but
[Speaker 1]man, oh, man, it was a ton. And,
[Speaker 1]went down to Meijer Thrifty Acres. It's now
[Speaker 1]called Meijer, but it's a big grocery everything
[Speaker 1]store kind of. Think of Walmart, but, not
[Speaker 1]quite. But, went down there and just, you
(17:25):
[Speaker 1]know, filled the back of that Jeep up.
[Speaker 1]Me and him, you know, went down there.
[Speaker 1]We're in four wheel drive the whole time.
[Speaker 1]And as I said in my winter driving
[Speaker 1]thing, I recommend four wheel drive if you
[Speaker 1]have it. But, yeah, I remember that trip
[Speaker 1]into town and, you know, of course, it
[Speaker 1]was still blowing and drifting a bit. So,
[Speaker 1]you know, you'd go into little blast of
(17:47):
[Speaker 1]whiteout and, of course, the Jeep isn't really
[Speaker 1]the warmest thing in the world, and, the
[Speaker 1]defrosters didn't work very well neither did they
[Speaker 1]on VWs that we had. But, anyway, that,
[Speaker 1]that storm was, you know, one for the
[Speaker 1]history books, and I just can't believe it
(18:08):
[Speaker 1]was that long ago. Something interesting, there's a
[Speaker 1]famous picture that was there's a couple famous
[Speaker 1]pictures that were in the Record Eagle, our
[Speaker 1]local newspaper, and I'm having trouble tracking them
[Speaker 1]down. But I I do have one in
[Speaker 1]front of me, which I will, put in
[Speaker 1]the show notes over at mike dell dot
[Speaker 1]com. But, and I don't I can't tell
(18:30):
[Speaker 1]which theater this is. It was either the
[Speaker 1]Michigan theater or the state theater on Front
[Speaker 1]Street, and you could see the big drift
[Speaker 1]on the sidewalk under the marquee. And, playing
[Speaker 1]in the theater, first run was, oh god
[Speaker 1]with George Burns and, John Denver. So that
[Speaker 1]was a picture of that marquee and, all
(18:53):
[Speaker 1]the snow on Front Street. And, you know,
[Speaker 1]what was on Front Street was far less
[Speaker 1]than what we got to out out of
[Speaker 1]town over by Long Lake. So and then
[Speaker 1]there was another, thing that happened. I think
[Speaker 1]it was around the same time, but maybe
[Speaker 1]not exactly. There was a, school ship out
[Speaker 1]in the bay, in West Bay, and it
(19:16):
[Speaker 1]wasn't the current one. They're right there's a
[Speaker 1]current school ship there at the NMC's Maritime
[Speaker 1]Academy called the the state of Michigan. But
[Speaker 1]this was a different boat, and it was
[Speaker 1]their school ship. And it capsized in the
[Speaker 1]bay and the ice, and it was laying
[Speaker 1]on its side in the shallow water on
(19:37):
[Speaker 1]West Bay and, on the front page of
[Speaker 1]the newspaper. And, yes, newspapers were a thing
[Speaker 1]back then. I guess they still are sorta
[Speaker 1]kinda, but, record eagles around anyway. But, it's
[Speaker 1]a picture of that boat laying on its
[Speaker 1]side, and somebody'd spray painted on the bottom
[Speaker 1]or painted on the bottom this side down.
(20:00):
[Speaker 1]But, they were able to flip it back
[Speaker 1]up after after not too much and didn't
[Speaker 1]really hurt the ship too much, I don't
[Speaker 1]think. But, again, I'd fuzzy twelve year old
[Speaker 1]memory from forty eight years ago, but I
[Speaker 1]do remember seeing that ship out there as
[Speaker 1]well. You know, we finally got back to,
(20:21):
[Speaker 1]you know, normal life and, you know, go
[Speaker 1]by there periodically. But, yeah, that was, that
[Speaker 1]was quite the storm. And, yes, I am
[Speaker 1]old enough to know and remember the blizzard
[Speaker 1]of seventy eight. And somebody so, you know,
[Speaker 1]Wikipedia has an article about it, and they
(20:41):
[Speaker 1]the title of the article is the great
[Speaker 1]blizzard of seventy eight. We just caught the
[Speaker 1]blizzard of nineteen seventy eight or blizzard of
[Speaker 1]seventy eight. Other names for it were the
[Speaker 1]Cleveland Superbomb. That was crazy. But, yeah, it
[Speaker 1]was, you know, it was it was the
[Speaker 1]perfect blizzard. You know? And, again, you know,
(21:02):
[Speaker 1]I don't know if nowadays it would be
[Speaker 1]as big a deal. I know Buffalo, New
[Speaker 1]York gets an amazing amount of snow. That
[Speaker 1]doesn't sound like, it it was impact as
[Speaker 1]impactful as the storm was at least around
[Speaker 1]here. And I know, Indiana and Ohio and
(21:25):
[Speaker 1]and, you know, some of the other surrounding
[Speaker 1]areas got it pretty good too. And, you
[Speaker 1]know, I think even the East Coast got
[Speaker 1]some of it. I I I wonder if
[Speaker 1]it was one of those nor'easters that, stayed
[Speaker 1]strong and just kept going. But, anyway, that's
[Speaker 1]my, remembrances of the blizzard of seventy eight.
(21:48):
[Speaker 1]And, you know, that winter was great because,
[Speaker 1]we didn't go to school all that much.
[Speaker 1]We had lots of snow days. And snow
[Speaker 1]days are a whole another thing, you know,
[Speaker 1]up here. Now nowadays, you know, if if
[Speaker 1]I look out my window and they see
[Speaker 1]four inches of snow on the hood of
[Speaker 1]my truck, chances are they're gonna call a
(22:09):
[Speaker 1]snow day or at least a delay. They,
[Speaker 1]their wusses compared to what we were. We
[Speaker 1]went to school in some some crazy weather.
[Speaker 1]But, hey. That's okay. Not yeah. Hey. If
[Speaker 1]it, if it works for them, it works
[Speaker 1]for them. That's fine. So, hey. You know,
[Speaker 1]if anybody that's old enough and was around
(22:32):
[Speaker 1]here at the time, let me know, what
[Speaker 1]your experience was with the blizzard of seventy
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