By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--February 26, 2024
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This is one of the most cherished memories of my Heartland childhood. Journey with me, dear reader, to those remarkable days in my memory, February 25th and 26th, 1961.
I turned eight near the end of 1960. We had moved away from the old hometown of New Castle, Indiana the previous year and had moved again already, this time to a rented two-story house in Richmond, Indiana. We were a family of five with the folks, my two brothers and me. My dad had taken a job with a local heating and air conditioning firm, and my mother had gone to work as a secretary at the local college. Both sets of grandparents still lived in the old hometown, thirty-two miles away. We visited them often, every couple of months if possible. This story came about because of a visit to my paternal grandparents in February of 1961.
I lived in a boy’s world, focused on the daily routines of school and home, but also fascinated by the orderly farm fields, timber plots, barns, and houses that dotted the Hoosier landscape in those years. We weren’t used to living in a town. The place we lived when I was born was on the outer edge of a town, with farm fields on both sides of our road and only a few scattered houses nearby. It was only about 40 yards from our house to the farmhouse where my grandparents lived. I already missed being so close to them, but, hey, there was new stuff and besides, I just had to go along where the folks decided we were going. I don’t remember any of the moves. We had not lived in the tall house in Richmond very long when the folks decided we should make a visit back to the grandparents’ place.
We would go on the last Saturday in February. That was the day in 1961 for the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s regional playoffs, the second of four weekends of the famous basketball tourney. For just such occasions, New Castle had built a sunken high school gym that held 10,000 spectators. It dwarfed everything in the state. Naturally, it was a perfect place for the regional games. My oldest brother, a high school junior, would attend the games and come home separately. We two younger brothers and the folks would make it a one-day visit to the old hometown to visit grandparents.
I never saw it coming and I have no doubt that my dad didn’t see it coming, either. He was no fool. If he had known we would get caught in a blizzard on the way to New Castle we would never have gone. Weather forecasting was different in those days. One never heard anything like ‘a 60 percent chance of snow on Saturday.’ There was no weather radar and no internet to search for the latest stories. Weather predictions weren’t all that good, and there was nothing like wall-to-wall coverage of disasters and storms. Storms were something that hit with very little notice. There might be mention on the local radio, and there would be stories in the newspaper the next day. Nightly TV news was also in the future, so there were precious few opportunities to hype or dramatize the weather. Watching the wind direction and the barometer was your best bet. In my mind there was never enough snow, so I always welcomed it.
Saturday morning February 25 came around and found the four of us making preparations to leave. There wasn’t much to do. My grandmother would be making all the meal preparations, and all three of her grandsons looked forward to sitting down to eat every time we went there. It was February, so we wore our coats and hats, but there was no reason we knew of to wear boots or make any storm preparations. The family car at that time was a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere wagon, black with those ’58 fins in the back over round red tail lights. There were mats on the floor but no carpet. There were two ways we went to New Castle. One crossed Richmond from southeast to northwest, connecting to Indiana Route 38 that went through Greens Fork, Hagerstown, past Millville, and on to New Castle. We took the other route that morning for some reason, going west across the south side of Richmond and out along the National Road, US 40, through Centerville, Pennville, Cambridge City, Mt. Auburn, Dublin, and then Lewisville, where we turned north onto Indiana 103. From there it was about ten miles to the farm next to where we used to live.
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I remember it was cloudy late that morning, but I don’t remember snow lingering on the ground. As we drove beyond Cambridge City it began to snow a little, and then it began to fall faster. We stopped at the light in Lewisville facing west and I looked ahead to the edge of the world. I still didn’t want to go there. We turned north toward the farm. We hadn’t cleared Lewisville by more than a mile or two when the wind really picked up. Snow was sticking on the cold ground already. I remember so clearly looking at the road in front of the car. The wind blew snow across the road ahead in diagonal lines that made it hard to see the stripes on the blacktop. The wind really increased so we could feel it buffeting the car. There were little drifts across the road that the tires flattened with little muffled bumps. Wind-blown snow struck the windshield but glanced off without sticking. It grew quieter outside and inside the car, too, as we watched the storm overtake us on the highway that was harder and harder to see. It seemed to take longer than usual to travel the last few miles, but we were going slower, of course. I could sense the danger my dad faced as we drove on through the storm. When we reached the farm, the road was completely snow covered along with the ground. The wind continued to rise, making visibility difficult.
We parked out front and hurried in to the usual warm welcome I came to love. My grandfather met us at the door and was thrilled as usual to see us. “Get on in here out of that cold,” he would always say. My grandmother would remain back in the kitchen where she would be tending the big meal that was to come. We would take our coats off, leaving them in the ‘front room,’ a spare bedroom, then pass through the chilly living room and through the prairie-style doors into the heated dining room and kitchen. There we would greet our grandmother and immediately see if there were any tidbits to sample. For dinner we would expect chicken or Swiss steak or ham, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, rolls, milk, and always a pie of some kind. With their unconditional love for us and more food than could be eaten, it was a boy’s Garden of Eden.
This was already an unusual visit because the snow didn’t quit and neither did the wind. There was growing concern about the storm. Traffic was already reduced, and what about all those people at the field house for the tourney? How would they get home? The regional championship game wouldn’t be until tonight. We turned the old wooden radio on to see if the local station had any news. My mother was alarmed, but I kept looking outside and outside it just kept coming down. The grass had long disappeared and the wind had begun to pile drifts along the garden fence and around the corner of the big stone front porch.
The afternoon passed quickly bringing an early darkness as the storm continued outside. The folks decided at some point that it was too dangerous to try to go home, so we would just have to spend the night there! My excitement grew steadily. We were snowed in, stranded at the farm, the happiest place of my childhood in my first blizzard. Just the thought of being there that evening still gives me chills.
I had heard about blizzards on the plains where people got lost going from the house to the barn, only to be found frozen against a haystack in the spring. It was a little scary for an eight year-old. I thought about what we would need to survive the night. There was always plenty of food there. The basement shelves were lined with the fruit and tomatoes and jams and jellies my grandmother had made during the previous summer and fall. The big basement freezer had lots of pork and chicken and beef. I went down to the basement with my grandfather to tend the coal fired octopus furnace, the main source of heat for the old house. There was plenty of coal in the coal bin room beside the furnace, and plenty of kindling and some firewood to get the fire started again if it went out. I made sure of that. There was a bulb that burned in the winter time in the well pit near the laundry area in the basement. That was on, so we would have a steady supply of well water. There were plenty of blankets and pillows. The folks would have to sleep in the front bedroom, my grandparents in their bedroom on the other side of the bathroom. That bathroom had a toilet with a wooden seat and lid, the only place I had ever seen that arrangement.
I thought it was terribly rustic and, besides, it wasn’t so cold when one sat down on it. The iron bathtub had an apron against the floor and a fill spout about the size of a pencil that would make clouds of suds if the soap were put in right. There was a white rubber stopper on a chain that went in the drain to hold the water. At eight years old, I had never taken a shower, only baths. At any rate, it looked like we just might survive the night. When dark fell, we were in a snug farmhouse, but the storm howled outside. There was little or no traffic on 103, only the noise of the wind on the windows.
The evening passed quickly, too. Boys are always hungry, so we had a cold supper of leftover everything from the big meal of the day, with another slice of pie. I was never hungry for long at the farm in Henry County. My mother was probably not all that comfortable or happy to be there for an unexpected overnight stay. She liked her home routine. I was not even aware yet of the hardships she had endured as a girl growing up. My mother had not packed an overnight bag or any extra clothing, so she did not relish staying the night. My dad had slept on the ground and in destroyed buildings in the winter of ’44-’45 in Europe, so he was comfortable most anywhere.
It being Saturday evening, my grandfather would have turned on the RCA Victor console television (black and white, of course) around 8 PM. Since the next day was Sunday, I think my brother and I were allowed to pull up chairs and watch TV with him. Gunsmoke was in its fifth year by 1960 and was a Saturday night staple, still running in half-hour segments. It didn’t air until 10 PM, but maybe we were allowed to stay up to see Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty. Even if we had gone to bed with the chickens, how would anyone be able to go to sleep with the wind howling at us from outside?
Tune in next time as the storm continues and we have a big surprise!
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Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.