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By Ilene Hoffman
January 20, 1978: Huge snowstorm.
(When I wrote this, I didn’t know a real huge snowstorm was coming in two weeks.)
February 6, 1978: Left work, slightly paranoid about the snow.
That’s my diary entry regarding the Blizzard of 1978.
Unfortunately, I have no personal photos from that historic blizzard 40 years ago, but I do have a great story.
Unlike everyone else, I was not stuck in my house without electricity, heat, or other necessary items. I had a great time during that blizzard, because I was one of the few who were allowed to drive during the storm.
I worked in the Fresh Pond area of Cambridge. Around 12 p.m., I looked out the window and thought, “Gee, this supposed light snow doesn't look right.” The flakes were too small, too close together, and the sky did not look like it was going to turn into anything other than a gray snow sky for the rest of the day. The forecast was simply for light snow.
My boss refused my request to leave early and threatened to fire me if I did leave, but my internal weather radar was screaming that this was not a normal snowfall. Around 3 p.m., my boss was nowhere to be found and I told a coworker that I was leaving - if the boss wanted to fire me, she was welcome to do that - and I left. By this time, the snow was falling quickly and accumulating. Everything was turning white. I just hoped my little orange sports car, an MGB hatchback with a questionable battery, was up to the task of getting me home.
Driving home via Route 2 to Route 128 (now called Route 95) was my normal route, but on this day, something nagged at me to risk the back roads. It was only my instincts that told me to leave work early and travel off my beaten path.
There were no plows or sanders out on the roads. The snow was pretty deep and falling more briskly, but I managed to slip and slide my way through Watertown and back to Needham. That MG did a great job plowing through the snow-covered streets. I arrived home safely, only to discover that many of the uphill exit ramps off of Route 128 were backed up and that cars were skidding and stuck all over the highway.
Had I traveled my usual route, my car and I never would have made it home.
Once home, I picked up my dog, dog food, and various necessities from my apartment and headed for my parents’ house on Garden St., which was like a fortress. Thankfully, my parents were in Florida, so I had the old New England three-bedroom home to myself, at least for a day. I don’t think we ever lost electricity or heat in that house. My parents had fully-stocked cupboards and a freezer in the basement full of food. They also had a full complement of camping gear with emergency blankets, cooking supplies and radios.
One of my friends called Wednesday morning (February 8) and asked if I’d pick up some groceries for a couple of families and medicine for his mother, because he knew my parents were among the few who owned a four-wheel-drive Jeep. While driving to do this errand, I was stopped by the police and was politely asked to return home immediately. After a short discussion, during which I explained that we were delivering medicine and food, he informed us that the only way I could drive around was by getting a “pass” at the police station. I got that pass, then drove around and picked up a few other friends. We all camped out in my parents’ fortress and spent the week discharging errands of mercy. We had to explain our presence and pull out the permission letter often - no one had cell phones back then, so easy communication was not an option.
While the world was closed down by the snow, my friends and I spent the week working the blizzards; there were two, remember. The car had a CB radio in it, and there was a CB base station in my Dad’s pediatric office. Everything was so closed down that the police were not allowed to travel between towns. We became the best transportation across town lines. My Dad, being a preeminent physician in town, always had his driveway plowed first, and thankfully we didn’t have to shovel it out!
We set up a system with the Needham Police in which they would call the house and ask for pickups and drop offs of medical personnel to the various hospitals in the area. When you use a CB, you needed to use a special name, called a handle. The base station was named Wazoo1. I was Susie Creamcheese, and another driver was WireO. The folks manning the base station would call into the car CB and tell us where to go. The police supplied the gas, too.
We drove doctors and nurses between Needham, Dedham, Dover, Newton, Norwood and Wellesley. Where needed, we delivered medicine and supplies. Two people were always in the car and two people manned the phones. We worked 24/7 for the whole week.
Let me tell you how eerie it was driving on deserted roads with foggy, snowy scenes all around us. Visibility was zero and deep snow blanketed everything. One night on Oak St. in Newton, we happened upon a huge plow whose blade was stuck in a depression in the road. The worker was stranded. My girlfriend and I helped him lift the blade out of the hole, so he could continue his work. Wrestling with the plow blade for an hour in the falling snow was one of the more scary events of the storm.
During the day, once the snow had stopped falling, Needham became a Norman Rockwell painting. People took to the streets on sleds, toboggans, skis, wagons, saucers and whatever else could slide or be pulled along the snow-packed streets. Everyone laughed and joked with everyone else. Some stores opened with limited staff. People checked on their neighbors and helped where they could. Life slowed down to a reasonable crawl.
It was magical.
My most memorable scene was driving up to the entrance of Route 128 in the wee foggy hours and seeing these little balls with red and yellow flames that were probably kerosene smudge pots or highway torches used to mark highway construction back in those stone ages. Near each entrance were the ghostly figures of armed National Guardsmen standing guard over the roads to make sure no one drove onto the highway. The highway was a snowy field of stuck cars and mounds and mounds of snow. It looked like a scene from your worst disaster movie. It was chilling for us to see and probably freezing for them.
I came within minutes of becoming a highway statistic, but instead was able to do some measurable good that week, thanks to our Jeep, the CB radio, and a few good-natured volunteers.
