Lost in the Blizzard of 77

Hiya readers. I'm Johnny. Allow me to tell you a winter story, a memory from my unique past, something special. Its about the time I came amazingly close to death as a very young boy. Stick with me and see what I show you.

I’d like to go back in time now, far back. To an integral historical event in Buffalo history, and for me personally. Although my memories are somewhat vague, it all happened so long ago. It’s been an infamous part of local history, as well as my own.

In the wintertime, late January 1977, we suffered through a unique blizzard, something so powerful it’s never been seen in Buffalo history, and nothing even close to it since. The region has always been known for snow, cold, and ice storms as well. As far back as Buffalo existed, we’ve always had serious winters. To live there was to be part of it, embrace it, live it, or maybe die in it. There was always snow at varying heights, from October to March, sometimes covering the windows to the roof, it is still a way of life there.

No way around living with the snow there. Sometimes it was too high for plows to be even effective. Imagine front doors unable to open due to high drifts, as well as all windows buried. Cars get covered so they are but higher lumps of white on an endless white sea, and if the snow is high enough often no lumps at all. Of course, you usually couldn’t see the streets themselves either. In fact, in those circumstances, the only way you would know you are actually on a street in the first place is to notice those aforementioned lumps or street signs and lamps sticking out above the snow.

So, five to six months a year, it was just business as usual. High snow ever present was a fact of life next to Lake Erie. A homeowner's best friend, as well as a most dreaded tool, was the snow shovel. A major cause of heart attacks as well. Necessary, but utterly despised.

Of course, snow at any height above a foot is a chore, no doubt, but ice can be far more treacherous, and dangerous. I come from the perspective of a lifetime walker. You don’t merely walk through high snow, you struggle, fight, and trudge through it. There’s no easy path, depending upon the height, drifts, and layout of the freezing white curse. Enough of it can inconvenience you, but ice can easily kill you. Far more vehicle accidents are caused by ice rather than snow. Folks have cracked their skulls by walking and slipping on ice. Deaths are rare, but they have happened from time to time.

That January in 77, there was already a lot of snow covering Buffalo, long before the blizzard happened. In December, the lake was already solid ice, and snow was piled high on the solid lake surface, and all over the entire city of Buffalo well over a month before the actual blizzard.

That was an abnormally cold winter, not just in Western New York, but in multiple places across America. It actually snowed in Miami that winter, I can only imagine the panic there, bikinis and cold usually don’t mix.

Locally, that month was more than a bit chilly, average temps were around 11F, and it snowed aplenty. However, a child’s perspective is much simpler, cold is cold, regardless of the temperature number. It was actually so cold that when I ventured outside tears would immediately be shed, and those tears would promptly freeze on my face.

Quite brisk I’d say. Back then at seven years old, I enjoyed the snow, as a young boy would, but not the extreme cold. I had no desire to become a boysicle, frozen forever in place. A distant kin to my favorite dessert. Seemed like an unpleasant way to end up for a seven-year-old youngster. At that tender age, I had no friends, just my horrid selfish mother, and my incessant reading, these were my only companions I’m sorry to say. I hated the early grades in public schools, almost as much as the later grades from kindergarten on up. I never fitted in with other kids, and was never just “one of the boys”, even way back then.

I was a pariah, just for being myself. Way too smart for my own good, very shy, and different, with a few too many questions about the meaning of it all. Other young kids would avoid me, or laugh, and teachers would get flustered, I didn’t exactly fit the standard mold. In fact, I even have memories of being ousted from Sunday school when my mother dragged me into church on weekly occasions. So I ended up sitting through the adult services usually. They were far more boring, but the instructors didn’t want me to infect the other children with questions that couldn’t be answered, as was my nature. My disease was an unwillingness to be ignorant, as many religions require for their supplicants.

When at home I usually would often wander outside, well insulated in layers of course, to play alone in the vast and fun whiteness. I made snowmen, snow angels, snow devils, forts for one, and played in drifts as high as some buildings. Sometimes plows would push up snow in such massive piles so high in parking lots that I could never hope to climb them.

In my mind, they often seemed like giant frozen waves, or white pristine tall structures, just waiting for my creative side to make them useful and fun.

That was the essence of my time outside in winter. At that tender young age, I was still getting used to things, the seasons, the changes, my very young existence, and learning about time itself. Summers seemed to stretch for eternity, and winters as well, school or no. Time passes differently when you are younger; It bends, plays around, twists, and lengthens, until you get more years under your belt. Once you are old enough, the whole process flips. Then there’s never enough years, and they go by far too quickly. Lightning moves slower at that point.

That time in 1977, the winter seemed like forever, since everything was white, and frozen far in advance. Snow was already record high, and conditions were ripe for a disaster of epic proportions in western New York.

In December there was already high levels of snow, and none of it was melting. It stubbornly stayed everywhere, like that gum on your shoe that just won’t go away.

Due to the very low temperatures, the snow stayed there. Average temps that January were 10f, not much better than December, in fact, it was a bit worse. It snowed pretty much everyday that month, almost nonstop.

There was an official snow depth of 60 inches, but to a kid, it was all the same. It was white, very cold, and higher than my head, that is all that really mattered to me.

Schools closed in Buffalo sometimes, however, since extreme snow and cold was a normal part of life there, they didn’t close as often as one would think. That Friday, the very first day of the blizzard, they should never have opened in the first place, but they did sadly. To the detriment of young lives, and the forever shame of the city of Buffalo.

Many young kids were bussed into school that morning, including myself. They had warnings, but they went unheeded. Luckily I lived a mere 7 blocks or so from public school 77, although I still took the bus, as did many other unfortunate youngsters living on the west side of Buffalo that year.

We arrived that morning, went to our various classes, but within an hour or so, we were all gathered in the school auditorium for important announcements.

Turns out during that short time, things had taken an extreme turn for the worse. Winds had risen to a very high speed, piled show was blowing straight off of Lake Erie into the city, adding substantially to the snowfall already coming from the heavens. It was destined not just as a white blanket, but a final shroud for many lives.

The powers that be made then the worst decision in the history of Buffalo. Visibility was down to almost zero, snow on the streets was again piled high, and they had no confidence in the yellow buses getting through the routes unscathed. However, the longer the schools were open, the higher the snow, and the less visible it was bound to get, so the order came down from on high. Those elite beings with the authority to make such life changing decrees had decided the fates of the very young. The schools would close, and since the buses couldn’t possibly make the return trip, the students would be sent home on FOOT! Among bad decisions in the history of american public schools, this may have been the worst possible decision that anyone could have ever made, and was destined to end in tears.

So from my perspective, I didn’t know much, the what and why eluded my young mind, but I do know I was ordered to walk home, in snow and winds that were so out of control I couldn’t see across the street. It was that thick and heavy, and deadly for a 7 year old small boy, Death awaited, forever patient,and coldly beckoning. So along with a number of many other helpless children, I was cast out to make my own way home. Some kids were fortunate, their parents braved the blizzard, and risked life and limb to retrieve their beloved little ones, in cars that slowly worked their way down blinding white streets.

I was NOT one of those fortunates, I had to do it myself, on foot, like much of my life, I had to make my very own path, though Death wanted me for his very own.

So I was bundled, layered, then ousted into the blizzard, to trudge slowly home, through a deadly cold temperature, and blindingly white desert, just waiting for me to stop forever, and become a frozen monument to nature’s harshness. I refused to give in, after all, it was only around 7 blocks, but some young children did stop sadly, and died on various streets of Buffalo, but never forgotten. I was almost one of them. In fact I came a bit too close that day. I walked, and struggled and forced my way through it. My legs were frozen, and numb, as well as my hands, and my young face, which I could not feel at all by this point.

The world was a white swirl, and getting thicker as I walked. I navigated using landmarks I knew well, and somehow didn’t get lost, since it was a straight shot to my block.

The cold was insidious, and relentless, but so was I! Even at that age, I had a powerful will to continue, though Death himself was after me, as it claimed many others that day. I made it a long way by myself, no doubt, and I finally struggled to the corner of my block, on Utica street. There was a club on the corner called the Utica club, which like the entire city, was closed that day, but I took shelter in their small doorway, exhausted beyond measure, frozen, numb, and done for. I’d had more than enough, and was quite willing to give up the ghost finally. I was frozen, tired, and exhausted, and had quite enough by then.

After 7 blocks and fighting a force of nature that killed many grownups, and a number of children, I was done for. I couldn’t feel my body at all, and tears were frozen over my face, it was just about the end, I would end up a frozen boysicle after all it seemed. I was quite ready to surrender to Death, I’d had quite enough by then.

I was on my very corner, a mere block away from a warm house,and life itself, but the cold had sapped all my strength, like a wintery vampire, latched onto my lifeforce, intent on taking the rest of me. I remember shivering as I stumbled to the building on my corner, Club Utica. I getting sleepy, and almost unable to move. It was kind of a soporific feeling, I was ready to drift away slowly, and let it all go.

Throughout my whole chilly journey, I’d not seen a living soul, besides the other kids going their separate ways when the school sent us all helplessly into the blizzard. After the first block, I was the only one the rest of the long way home. I remember finding an empty doorway at the corner building of my home block and resting in the frigid snowbound weather. Basically, I was giving up the ghost. My journey was at an end, I had no more fight within me by that point. The Blizzard had sapped any possible further defiance out of me, to be folded into its frosty eternal embrace.

My mother was many things throughout my life, harridan, albatross, immoral selfish being out only for herself. However on that day, she did something worthy of song and eternal memory, she saved my life from the deadliest blizzard in Buffalo history. It was her one act of selflessness and goodness I can recall. She came to look for her only son, and found him, amazingly enough.

After talking to her sisters over the years, I’ve learned that my mother was not known for her good deeds, just the exact opposite. She was always petty, selfish, and sometimes downright spiteful, right from the beginning.

However, on that morning, she did something good. My school called her, as it did all the parents, and informed her that I was walking back, trying to make it home alive, no credit to the sorry school system. They'd done all they could, which added up to nothing besides that single phone call. Most American public schools are utterly worthless, and mine was no exception. So there I was,on the very corner of my block, about to give it up, and surrender calmly to the cold hands of Death himself, ready for me, as He is for all of us eventually.

He is our final companion, stoic, and inevitable. Somehow I heard my name being called on the wind, “Johnny”, over and over, and I saw a large form making its way through the snow. It was actually my mother, and she stopped and looked into my frozen small doorway. She reached down, covered head to toe, but I knew who she was, and why she was there, for me of course.

"I got you Johnny, we'll get you home and warm." In all the time Ive been her son, those were the kindest words she had ever spoken to me, then, and since.

She helped me slowly get to my feet, and Death himself was denied an amazing prize that day, being deprived of my young innocent soul. Even though I heard the howling of the wind, angry, and somehow sounding robbed that cold day. We slowly struggled our way back home, hand in hand, very cold but still amazingly alive. She opened the door to our house, and I felt the warmth immediately envelop me, hugging me, and granting life itself. It was like the sun on my face, warm, and friendly.

Later on, there was Hell to pay. Some very bad calls were made by the school system, and some kids died in the storm, inevitable I suppose. I count my blessings often that I wasn’t among the dead of that infamous blizzard, but it was close one. The school board was summarily sued, and lost, since there was no real excuse for sending young helpless kids out to walk home in one of the worst blizzards America has ever seen, then, and now.

All told, 23 souls were welcomed by Death, many adults,frozen in their cars, and some children on their way to homes they would never reach. Unpardonable, and unforgivable, a permanent black spot on the reputation of Buffalo, NY. Some deaths were unavoidable certainly, but not those children, who were doomed to walk home in such deadly conditions, it should not have occurred.

I happily made it, and that was my mother’s one true good deed throughout her life that I know of. She only walked a single block in the snow, and I walked 7, but regardless, it’s the thought and deed that will count in the end.

She risked herself once, selfless, for me, and I will always remember that, no matter what monstrous acts came later in life; And there were plenty of those. I live today, because of her one act of goodness, so I relate this story to you in the exact way I remember it happening.

I have no idea where she exists now, Heaven or Hell, Purgatory or somewhere else, or nowhere at all, but I forever thank her for what she did that day in Buffalo, during the horrifying Blizzard of 1977. Because of her actions that day, I live to tell this tale.