02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6418 ) |
seejay2 |
I was around for the 'Big One' of '67, but I'm in Kentucky now and all we got was some rain and wind. Will this storm finally take the trophy??...Cj |
02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6419 ) |
Roger D |
I lived on Carolina Street in Hessville in'67. I missed three days of work, my car stayed snowed in until the snow plow came by, then I shoveled it out. My dad got to work in East Chicago and didn't get home for three days. |
02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6420 ) |
seejay2 |
I worked at a little place called Triangle Repair which was 2 doors north of Hill's Agency. Somewhere around 1pm, Will stood, with hands on hips, looking out the window and turned to me and said, "let's get the hell out of here while we still can". No problemo!! I was driving a really scrappy '56 Plymouth and probably fought with it for a half hour before I got it out from the curb to the street heading south on Kennedy. I lived on the 6600 block of Arizona which was only a few blocks north. Once I got going, stalled traffic was all over the place. I kept going south out of fear that I would get stuck again if I stopped. I ran lights and swerved into the oncoming lane just to keep the momentum going. It was like the scene from "Bullitt". I finally turned left on Orchard and left again on Arizona where I spun out on somebody's front lawn and the game was over. The people there said they rented and didn't care if I left the heap there or not. Good enough for me.
Conclusion:
Now I got to walk more like 7 or 8 blocks, against the wind and snow (that felt like glass chips), instead of the few blocks had I left the car on Kennedy. The heap sat on the guy's lawn for a week...Cj |
02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6421 ) |
Paddy |
My wife and I rented an upstairs apartment at 6942 Alabama at the time. I was attending Purdue Calumet, and she was two months away from delivering our first child. She needed a prescription refill, and the nearest open drug store was Walgreen's at the Woodmar shopping center. I donned one of my mementos from my Dad, his fire boots, and trudged down the middle of 169th and Indianapolis Boulevard. There was no traffic to deal with, and the walk was both surreal and serene.
Paddy |
02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6422 ) |
Paddy |
Thinking about the '67 storm reminded me of how snowfalls in the Region provided us with so many pleasures. In my early teens and just discovering girls, I was fortunate to have older friends with access to cars and toboggans. Palos Park had an awesome toboggan slide, and we found plenty of young ladies willing to take the plunge with us.
The toboggan slide was amazing. At the top, groups of sledders lined up to place their toboggans at a wooden gate. Beyond the gate was a long wooden chute running down a hill steep enough to make you feel zero "G's." The ride down was an absolute thrill. As the gate lowered, the hill was so steep that the lead person saw nothing but open space. As the toboggan began its descent, we would close our eyes and scream all the way down.
Now back to the girls. Our toboggan held six, but only if each rider wrapped their legs around the person in front and then scrunched up a close as they could. We rode boy-girl or girl-boy, all in the interest of equality of course.
We stayed at the Palos Park toboggan hill for hours, clambering up the hill, queuing up, scrunching up and then flying down again. Each ride with boys hugging girls and girls hugging boys was exhilerating. Oh, and the zero "G" effect was also nice.
Paddy |
02-02-2011 ( Reply#: 6423 ) |
duane |
Perhaps this was just wishful thinking, but I recall that during the big snow of 1967, the air in East Chicago was actually cleaner and the place far more quiet, because much of the mills had shut down and the coke batteries weren't putting the black coal smoke into the air, and I don't think the blast furnaces were being fired during that time either. It seemed like NOTHING moved for a couple of days- except kids enjoying the snow. I've got some pictures somewhere of my brother and sister and me in the snow fort that we built. |
02-03-2011 ( Reply#: 6424 ) |
Jim Plummer |
Hi everybody!!! I was home from Purdue on semester break. I had dates lined up for almost the entire time. I was unable to go out on any of them due to the snow situation. We pulled a sled down the center of Kennedy Ave to the A & P store on 165th for food and supplies. Mostly it was an excuse to get out of the house and go somewhere-cabin fever! When I got back to school I found out that West Lafayette had, had an ice storm that knocked down many power lines. |
02-05-2011 ( Reply#: 6425 ) |
dilligaf717 |
Although I now live in tropical South Texas, where it has been in the 20's for the last four to five days, I remember the 67 storm like it was yesterday. I went to school at St. John Bosco on Columbia and we lived on Bertram in South Hammond. Wewerereleased early from school and the snow was falling in huge wet flakes. Next morning we threw the bedroom curtains open to see if it had snowed enough that we would not have to go to school. The snow was drifted 3/4s of the way up the window. We opened the front door and there was a six foot high drift on the porch. We were happy and I'll bet my poor Mom pulled out her hair. My Dad was stuck at his office in Chicago for days.
Here in South Texas it snowed Christmas eve 2004. The local newspaper published three books of pictures people submitted of the snow. Big difference. It sleeted Thursday and there were so many wrecks that everything was shutdown.
Jim
Still runnin against the wind. |