Don't try telling my achy back that the Nor'Easter which dumped up to 20 inches of snow in the Lowell area wasn't a monster storm. It was.
But it was no Blizzard of 1978. That storm was historic. It was the reason a seventh-grade student at Sacred Heart School in Lowell didn't have school for a week. That's right, kids. A week. No school Monday-Friday. Pictures of hundreds of cars being stranded on Route 128 are ingrained in the mind. Many highways turned into parking lots.
It was like living in a snow globe.
Shortly before this past Christmas, I was in line at a post office. A six-inch storm was forecast. One guy mentioned the Blizzard of '78. No introduction was necessary. We all knew what we meant. Soon, about a half-dozen strangers who grew up in various parts of Massachusetts were exchanging their memories of Feb. 5-7, 1978.
At the time, we were living one house from a funeral home. The funeral home owner recruited my brother and I to shovel off a flat roof in the back of the building. The owner was worried the roof would collapse under the weight of the snow. We tossed the snow off the roof to the parking lot some 25 feet below. I never thought we were going to finish.
Monday and Tuesday's storm was a doozy. But it was no Blizzard of '78.
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