TIME MACHINE TUESDAY: The Storm of '97

There's a storm a'brewin'!

The storm in my mind, I'm trying to remember... the storm outside, I'm trying to forget!

Everyone in my generation and older who lives in this 'neck of the woods' very likely remembers the Big Storm of '97.  It was in April, it was massive, and it led to devastating flooding.  The tantrum Mother Nature is throwing tonight somewhat reminds me of that storm.  This rain-turned-slush and high winds with rapid accumulations seems to resemble that storm quite a bit.  Tonight as I checked my weather app on my cell phone, and later paged through the cancellation notices on the TV station's website to find out if gymnastics was still on, I couldn't help but think how different things are now than they were a few short years ago!

I remember the '97 blizzard so clearly, it's almost like it didn't happen14 years ago!  The night it started, my brother & I got permission to go to town to see a movie at the "Show Hall" (yeah, I know this wasn't the 1950's. This is seriously what we did, and probably still do, call the movie theater in my hometown).  My Dad surprisingly let us out of the house, considering he knew there was a storm a'brewin' (I bet he used that exact term too), but we were happy to get out & about for the evening!

When we entered the "Show Hall" at about 7pm, the streets were dry and a light mist had just begun to fall.  By the time we left under 2 hours later, there was a good 4 inches of snoicesh (snowy ice slush?) on the streets.  We knew this wasn't good.  So we dropped my cousin off at home and headed out on the old country highway the 10 miles to our farm.  Doesn't sound like a bad drive, you might say?  You might.  If you weren't the one driving my 46-ft long 1981 Mercury Marquis Banana Boat tank with rear-wheel drive and bald tires.  Being the cautious teenage driver I was (stop the snickering, Seth) it took us nearly an hour to drive those 10 miles.  As we finally made it to where we could see our yardlight, we noticed my dad driving right toward us with the tractor lights blaring.  He had come to look for us.  Oh shit.  This was not good, folks.  Not good at all. 

Now you have to remember that this was a time where a cell phone was something we'd never even seen other than in movies, let alone haul along with us at all times (because remember, they weighed like 12 pounds and had to have a 6-ft whip antenna?)  Dad was pissed that we didn't call from Grandma's, or Heidi's, or "Idon'tcarewheregoddammitjustcall!" before we'd left town, and Mom of course had crafted in her imagination a fine tale of our untimely demise in the crevasses of ice and canyons of snow that had of course developed in the road ditches in those 3 hours... and made Dad fire up the tractor to come dig us out.  It was a long & stressful night, so the 'rents at least had mercy on us and let sleep before the ultimate ass-chewing they would most certainly bestow upon us at dawn.

But morning came with high winds, several feet of snow, and a power outage.  Which lasted 3 days.  So not only did we get the Chuck Christman Lecture of a Lifetime Special, we got to hear it over and over again.  For 3 whole days.  That's what you'd call a captive audience I guess.  Worse yet, it was cold enough outside that we had to fire up the old propane furnace and sleep huddled together around it in our basement so we didn't die in our sleep from hypothermia.  So there I was, sandwiched between Darth Vader and Buzzsaw McSnorysnore, lying awake and debating the pros and cons of going back upstairs to sleep in my 41-degree bedroom rather than put up with these jokers.  Turns out, we had plenty of blankets, so I sequestered myself in my icebox, and that's where I spent the remainder of the power-less days, probably stewing about how much it was going to suck being grounded for who-knows-how-long.  Definitely a memorable storm.  Glad it hasn't happened since!

Oh, and by the way:  I still call home before I head out on a trip home, especially under inclement weather conditions. So lesson learned, Chuckles.  Lesson learned.