Thoughts on… Bomb Cyclones, Nor’easters and Cabin Fever

While I sit here by the fire embraced by a case of cabin fever, I am gazing out my front window at 10 feet of frozen snow (I exaggerate) the result of “Fern,” a bomb cyclone storm, that dropped too much snow on the South Coast. My memory… what’s left of it… hearkens back to the giant, infamous Blizzard of 1978. They didn’t name snowstorms back then, only hurricanes, so the weather prognosticators settled on an old-fashioned blizzard, though Connecticut called it “Larry.” Mother Nature was in a bad mood that February, dropping nearly 3 feet on southern New England over three days, only two weeks after a 24-inch nor’easter deposited 24 inches of the white stuff, a total of 5 feet destined for the record books.

            I recall cross-country skiing off the top railing of our back deck into the woods behind our house. We were living away from the hustle and bustle of winter in Mattapoisett. My bride was pregnant with our first child and I worked from home, thankfully because shortly after then Governor Dukakis declared a state of emergency, shutting down the entire state for a week. Businesses were ordered to close except for essential services. Everyone was told to stay home. (Dukakis, who later ran for President on the tails of his storm leadership and lost, became a professor at Northeastern University. On my morning commute to teach at a nearby college, I would see Dukakis… who lived in Brookline… walking carrying a briefcase, a plastic bag, and a stick with a nail in it picking up litter along his route. A near president picking up litter! You can’t make this stuff up.)

            Despite the order, nobody stayed home. Private vehicles were not allowed on the streets, but nothing stopped the populous from coming out in droves to experience life in this unusual winter wonderland.

            We lived about 2 miles from the village where the only grocery store remained open. The entire neighborhood grabbed their galoshes, snowshoes and backpacks, and ventured out on foot to get whatever provisions were available for a week of isolation.

            The main road from our house to the village was a steep downhill offering a pleasant walk and fun rides on sleds and toboggans. The trip back, not so much… uphill… with those sleds and toboggans loaded down with available can goods, bread and gallons of milk.

            It took me three days to shovel our driveway. I was young and strong and too poor to own a snowblower. On TV we saw cars stacked in the snow as if a bunch of Legos had been dropped into a box of cotton. It took weeks for the roads to be cleared and those drivers to retrieve their cars. Eventually life returned to a semblance of normal.

            Our little bouncing baby boy, born a few months after the historic storm, is now a grown man nearing 50 and works in the entertainment industry. A second child came along, a girl, two and one half later years (the snow had melted). My bride and I are in our eightieth year! Who would have thunk it.

            Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

By Dick Morgado