No blizzard I’ve been involved in, however difficult, has compared to the Great Blizzard of 1966, which ended with snowdrifts 30 feet high on the prairies of North Dakota, where the only resistance to the storm was strands of barbed wire.
On March 2, 1966, after a few snowflakes drifted down into the bare trees on the steep hill behind my dorm, the howling wind rose to 70 miles per hour, gusting to 100 mph, and created a solid gray sheet of snow that obliterated the hill, piling up massive drifts. By evening the windows on the first floor were half-covered, classes at Valley City State College were cancelled, and still the thick snow came down.
We were a close gang of playful inmates, back for our second year on third floor. We played pinochle, penny-ante poker, whist, chess, checkers, listened to music and talked smart. But those activities paled, so we invented games, like Ban-ball: knocking over a Ban deodorant can on the floor with a tennis ball. (Scoring favored caroms off walls, ceiling, or window.) In our underwear we lugged down the wet hall on our butts. We designed variations of ping-pong (two tables end to end, or one table side against the wall, or spin 180 degrees after each stroke,) played wiffle ball with textbook bats (the psych book worked best) and other goofy games.
By the third evening, we needed a new jolt of excitement. I became the unwitting linchpin, when I wondered aloud how deep the snow had risen behind the dorm. We couldn’t gauge the depth through my frosted-up window on third floor. We needed a better look.
“The bathroom,” I said. “I don’t think it has a screen.”
In the bathroom, I unlocked the latch and grunted to pull up the window. Snow streamed in unimpeded on the screaming wings of the wild storm.
A couple of us leaned out, blinking back tears in the fierce wind, peering through the dimness.
“What do you think?” I said. “Five feet?”
“I know how to find out,” someone said.
We yelled encouragement as he slid through the opening and pushed off, plunging down shoes first perhaps a dozen feet, drilling deep into the snow bank up past his waist. After a few seconds others followed, and minutes later skidded back, snow-covered, into the bathroom in paroxysms of laughter. New fun!
Eventually someone offered a quarter to whoever would jump out without pants. That naturally led to an obvious end, when “Calvin” asked how much we’d pay if he went out naked. After a moment of cheering, then consultation, we anted up 85 cents ($6.10 today – a lot of money then to a college kid.)
He dropped his pants and drawers, skinned off his shirt, and while we hooted and hollered, crawled onto the sill, screamed like Tarzan, and jumped. We laughed uproariously, jostling each other for a glimpse of Calvin, a porcelain doll buried up to his armpits, freezing in the snow bank.
Calvin’s roomie held open the first-floor door, and he raced up into a hot running shower. That punctured the balloon, providing a fitting end to our festivities during the worst blizzard, hands down, that I’ve been involved in.
Or should I say, “pants down?“
Bill Vossler’s four daily Facebook photos discuss gondola rides, or foggy trees. The Writer-in-Residence’s ebook is Polishing Your Prose: How to Write Better, and others.