[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.
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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,
[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
[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.
[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,
[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
[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
[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
[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.
[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
[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
[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
[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.
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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,
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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
[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.
[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,
[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
[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,
[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
[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.
[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
[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
[Speaker 1] here at the time, let me know, what
[Speaker 1] your experience was with the blizzard of seventy