It was a night very similar to last night – windy and a cold rain. Connie wanted me to join her for Trick or Treat at her house. Her son, Andy, did my “makeup” and Connie dressed me as a witch and sat me in a chair near her front door. Then she covered me with something that looked like cobwebs and handed me a rubber snake and a bowl of candy.
Why don’t we have a picture of this event? There were lots of trick or treaters that night even though the weather was nasty. Kids were wearing their hooded parkas over their costumes.
When it was over I stopped at Mom’s house a couple blocks away just to say hi and see what she was doing. When I got home I went to bed and it was still raining and 29 degrees.
Early the next morning I was dreaming about gunshots – what? I woke up and looked outside on a shocking scene – it wasn’t gunshots but limbs cracking and breaking and everything was covered in thick ice.
The tv was reporting widespread ice several inches thick over everything and the trees continued to break as the wind picked up. School was cancelled everywhere and I remember walking from one room to the next to look out when about 8 am the power went off.
(I wish I hadn’t waited until midnight to look for these pictures!)
Hours passed and still no power and it began to get cold in the house so I started bringing in firewood. Our fireplace had an insert with a fan that blew the hot air into the room but of course the fan wouldn’t run so I had to open the doors. I moved the couch over in front of the fireplace, dressed in my warm clothes and tried to sleep – it was very, very dark! No yard lights in sight. I had a couple of flashlights and oil lamps.
The next morning still no power but later that day I think the power came on in town and I went to Mom’s to get water for the toilet and the animals. I used a kids plastic sled to bring wood to the house – everything was covered in ice and it was hard walking. I stacked the wood in the living room and that night the temps fell below zero. Everytime I woke up I put more wood in the fire. By morning the wood supply was gone.
A neighbor called and asked if I had a trouble light – he would hook it up to a lawn mower battery so I had light in the evening. The hook is still in the ceiling where he hung the light.
This went on for 3 days, then four. The very large utility poles along the highway were snapped off in two. I don’t think I had a radio – I can’t remember. Everything remained encased in ice until later the next week – the power finally came back on 4-1/2 days later.
So much damage outside and everywhere you looked. I could have stayed in town at mom’s but I had a dog and cats and I just couldn’t leave them alone in a totally dark cold house. We all huddled around the fireplace on the couch through the night but during the day we worked hauling wood to the house and water to the barn – in jugs from mom’s house.
I know many of you readers lived through the 1991 ice storm. Tell me what you remember. If I ever come across the pictures I’ll post them even if it’s next summer! I did have a husband at the time who was a long distance trucker – he never once called home during the storm to see if I was ok.
Oh, there were so many storm stories – I wish I could remember them. I never did like Halloween and the 1991 storm confirmed it.
Just to let everyone know that if you have sent a contribution to our Children of the Mountains event in December, you should be getting a note in the mail from me acknowledging your contribution. Please give it a week or two getting back to you. I’m also working on a large landscaping project in our back yard so I have been going back and forth with both projects. Because I have received a number of beautiful wall hangings, we will be doing an hourly drawing in the store to give them away. I plan to display them throughout the store and they can wander around and pick out the one they desire. I’ m meeting with the Earthfare managers mid November to firm everything up and will update here on the blog. Please call or text me if you have any questions. My info is: 828-551-8412 OR barbarawawa1953@gmail.com. My address is Barbara Aker, 165 Char Oak Dr, Columbia, SC 29212. Thank you everyone for helping me pull this off for the kids!!!!
Barbara – I’d say it’s you we all should thank – you’ve worked above and beyond what you started out doing.
Ladies, I’m Ron’s friend Alice. Your cards have started to come in!! He received 4 yesterday & he was so very pleased & a bit shocked! I had told him he might be getting a few cards as I had shared his veteran’s information. I’m going to put his cards & envelopes in plastic sleeves in a notebook for him. I know his kids will want to see his cards. I will post pictures of him after Veterans Day so you can see his cards.
This past Wednesday my little Bentley crossed the Rainbow Bridge. I found he had health problems that he just wasn’t going to recover from, so I chose to have him put down. He was 14.5 & a rescue. He was 9 when I got him & I was the 4th person to adopt him in less than a yr! He was so traumatized that he bit everyone! Yes, he bit me more than a couple of times! But I’ve had enough dogs I really felt he would be okay once he felt safe. After about 6 mo he finally let me pet him & do belly rubs. It was a long road to recovery, but he became one of my sweetest dogs! I’m heartbroken, but I will start looking for another rescue in the Spring. I will always have a dog to love on & if something happens to me…I have 2 kids that love animals as much as I do!!
Alice, Thank you for the heart warming story of both Ron and Bentley. Both are lucky to have you in their lives. Now you have some heartbreak with Bentley, but so many warm memories. You are a special person.
Vicki, I’ve always loved animals & little Bentley is not my first rescue, but I’ve loved everyone of these precious pups! Bentley was such a comfort when my husband passed 4 yrs ago! As I said, I’ll look for another older dog to adopt in the spring! Thank you for your kind words!
I’m sorry to read about Bentley. It’s heartwarming to know he knew love and kindness in his last years.
The worst storm I’m remembering was in 1978. Our then home had casement windows & due to the wind & cold I heard a constant cracking sound. I remember wondering what we would do if the glass broke! However it didn’t. My husband was determined to go to work as he was an accountant for a chemical co & they had to balance the books at the end of the month. He managed to somewhat shovel out our driveway to get the car out. But was finally convinced (by me) driving into Cincinnati wasn’t a good idea when a large earth mover got stuck in front of our home! It stayed there for several days & we were lucky not to lose power. In 1991 I remember an ice storm & at that time I worked for Federated which is now Macy’s. I lived within 5 miles, so was able to get to & from work. I don’t think our area was as badly hit as other areas. But do remember tree limbs & trees coming down & the clean up. Because Federated/Macy’s is a credit facility & they had to have people there for customer service they offered to pay for a hotel room for employees that lived a distance. At the time I owned a little 5 speed Camry that would go through anything so I had no problem ever getting to work! Best little car ever! The winters here in SW Ohio have been pretty mild since I moved here to this home 6 yrs ago. Since I’m retired now, if the weather is bad I stay home & enjoy the beauty! They also plow the roads & shovel my walk & drive! I gave my snow blower to my son!
I just read on a quilters blog that today November 2 is International Scrap Sorting Day. Now this is one I could get into celebrating! Thinking of Patti in FL and hoping she is up to playing with her beloved scraps today to create a new quilt for charity. Last we heard from her she wasn’t feeling good but remember she was going to her Angels group yesterday. Please play today fellow quilters with your scraps today and be happy that sewing is our saving grace in this sometimes crazy world.
Kathy – oh, how fun! But I have this mess in both rooms that I can’t live with – maybe tonight?
Well Mary I didn’t get to play with scraps like I thought I would. Went to a town garage sale at our recreation building and did some thrift store shopping. Good bargains on puzzles, books, nascar drinking glasses and soup crocks. I love using them for my soups and stews. Husband found some organizing bins for his barn. Then it was off to the garden store for a bird feeder and I bought a plant. Here I go down that rabbit hole……
Kathy – your scraps will be there tomorrow.
thank you kathy. i try to play with my scraps everyday. today (saturday) i did go thru two small bins of white/low volume but think i’m going to go with tan toward gold instead. thanks for thinking of me. patti in florida
Reading comments about ice/snowstorms brought back a memory that is a favorite memory from my childhood. When I was 6 years old and my sister was 7, we were at school when a snowstorm hit.
(It must have been before forecasting bad weather so schools would be dismissed before storms hit.) We were on the bus ready to go home when my sister and I and 2 neighbor boys were asked to leave the bus and wait in the school. We lived 8 miles from town and a high school teacher who lived in the country near us was going to drive us home. The country roads and driving conditions were so poor that the teacher decided to stop at the farmhouse of the grandparents of the neighbor boys. We had a nice supper and because they didn’t have a TV, everyone sat around the table and played board games and worked on puzzles. All these years later, I remember a delicious peach pie. The Grandmother put my sister and me to bed upstairs and tucked us in with extra quilts so we would be warm. I remember how kind she was and I remember feeling safe instead of afraid. Late the next day, my dad and the father of the neighbor boys came with a wagon and 2 draft horses to take us home. My sister and I were delighted and thought of Jingle Bells horses taking us home but my dad made us sit on bales of hay then covered us completely with blankets because of the dangerous temperatures. This is a precious memory.
Sheryl – my first question is – did your parents know where you were????
I’m sure they did. We had the crank telephone system so I’m sure the grandparents called the parents of the neighbor boys or my parents.
We lived in the desert Southwest in 1991 but grew up in northwestern Wisconsin. My sister lived in St Paul. Her birthday is Oct 30 so I called to wish her a Happy Birthday. She said she couldn’t talk long because a blizzard was coming the next day and she had to pull up her garden. Some parts of the twin cities got 31 inches of snow!! We still happily reside in the desert Southwest. Very hot in the summer but no ice or snow.
Mary I also remember the winter of 1978-1979. I was pregnant with baby #3 and due on Jan 12,1979. Every time the wind blew and the snow blew I Went into false labor! But, I delivered a baby boy in Jan. 22, 1979. It was a snow storm. Then in February of that year I needed to go to Rochester and we got caught in that blizzard of around Feb 22, 1979. On our way home from Rochester we were almost to the Blue Earth exit when the snow and wind hit us and we basically felt our way into Blue Earth. We rented the last motel room in town! It got terribly cold overnight -20* plus wind! Our car wouldn’t start! Jay had planned to get up during the night to go out and start it to warm it up. But, we were exhausted from a week in Rochester. When we finally got out of there it was a single file down the interstate through the plowed drifts. A neighbor was also in Rochester being treated for cancer. they counted 134 cars stalled in the snow. We had our baby with us through all that! I was nursing him so really had no choice. What a winter.
Joy – oh my, what a story! Doesn’t it make you scared to think back on all the things that COULD have happened? And a nursing baby!!! Oh, good grief.
Yes, Mary thinking about it later was very frightening! While we were in Rochester r stayed at a boarding house for $11! Everyone gathered around in the big room by the entry and visited in the evening. Talking about their medical problems. Sure is different! But getting to when the snow hit the car, it was like someone laid a sheet in the windshield! I could sometimes see the white line beside me…then I saw the sign of blue earth..then the white line curved off ! We could see the stop sign and turned to the left and went into blue earth! Stopped at a restaurant to have lunch. Jay asked a couple truckers what it was like going west. The trucker asked if the baby was his! Jay said yes! He said, Don’t go anywhere! A memory I will never forget! And never want to live through again! The only place I enjoy a storm is at home!
Joy – I can imagine in my mind exactly what it looked like. One winter night years ago we had a couple here visiting and at 10 o’clock the weather man warned about a high wind arriving literally immediately. And then we heard it – the couple went for home but I stepped out in the road to watch their taillights and I could not see anything – it was solid white and I made my way back to the house carefully because in swirling snow it’s easy to get disoriented. They didn’t want to stay at our house because their dog was at home. It took them soooo long to drive 4 miles to town.
Mary – I don’t remember the ice storm of 1991 on Halloween. Sounds similar to the wind storm my husband and I went through in 2006. We were 6 days without power. It was horrible. Our cats slept with us on the bed instead of in their beds. It was cold and miserable. We could wash dishes and bathe because we had natural gas water heater. We cooked outside on the small camp stove with propane.
Halloween has always been my least favorite holiday.
I just moved back to my hometown this last April. I guess I thought there would be trick-or-treaters since I live in a very quiet neighborhood. Where I lived before, we didn’t get trick-or-treaters because of where our house was located. I guess I should have known there was something off when I got home from the store yesterday with the candy. All my neighbors’ shades were drawn, and no outside porch lights were on when it got dark. The only trick-or-treater was me. I ate candy and watched a Hallmark movie. I am not buying candy next year. I guess the kids nowadays are trunk or treating, going to Halloween parties, or going to businesses to get the treats. They don’t get to go house to house in their neighborhoods for Halloween. Everything sure has changed since I was a kid.
Take care everyone.
I survived the 1993? (Not sure about date) Blizzard in Atlanta. The kids and I decided we wanted pizza so we weathered the storm to get out and get some before the power went out. I love Halloween it is one of my favorite holidays!
Oh yes, the Halloween blizzard of 91. We knew it would be a bad night as just getting home from work and kids from school was a miserable challenge. Actually, I like a beautiful snow storm and the blessed peace and quiet of nature so I did like every night and bundled up to take my dog for his evening walk. Just the two of us walking a curvy country road through the woods. As I remember kids didn’t come for candy that night. So far, it wasn’t too bad (the weather man said we had 8-1/2″) but overnight & the next morning we had an additional 11+”. I had a pumpkin on the front steps but I couldn’t even find the dent in the snow where it was sitting. Everything was closed as we waited for the plows to come which took forever because of wind blowing it into drifts. Lucky, I had electricity and heat the whole time. My husband (this is before we met) plowed snow for one of the Pillsbury buildings so he had to keep plowing every so often to keep ahead of it. He didn’t get home for 3 days. Yes, you can cat nap in the cab of a pickup. We survived just fine and now just have tales to tell. Here’s wishing everyone a nice weekend.
Janet – where do you live that you got all that snow and we just got all ice?
Mary, I think Janet was mentioning the snow on Halloween 1991.
Mary, We live in Carver MN which is just southwest of Eden Prairie (near Minneapolis). Basically, because of the growth, we are probably now considered a suburb.
Sorry, I should have read further. Yes, I was talking about the 91 blizzard. This last Halloween most of just got slush and lots of wind which made it miserable but okay. My son in southwest Minnesota got enough snow the grass was completely covered. Winter is on the way.
I remember that storm well. We were out of electricity for several days. My daughters went into town to take a shower at their friend’s houses. I remember taking many old fashioned sponge baths. I was teaching at the time. We brought water in to flush the toilets, bought fast food home and slept under lots of covers. Finally, Bob got a generator and we had limited electricity. Much outside damage to our trees. A Halloween to remember for sure.
Jean—. I saw your request for Barbara’s address:
Barbara Aker
165 Char Oak Dr.
Columbia, SC 29212
THANK YOU!
I never remember the year, but we had an ice storm in Maryland, sometime in the early 1990s, and we had the same “gunshot” sounds from tree limbs breaking. We finally gave up staying home and went to a relative’s house so we could get warm. The silver lining to the ice storm was that our trees got pruned.
We had an ice storm that challenged our survival skills in March 1991. So many slept in my living room as we had a fireplace and a gas grill to cook outside what people were losing in their freezers. We all ate well and fed more who needed it. To this day I still want to hoard pillows as we did our best to provide everyone and we really don’t need to cause all now have a generator who were here. It was 4 days of no power and it became warmer spring temps but I remember that cracking sound of tree limbs coming down around us. It was a mess for weeks to clean up. I also remember the winter storm of 1978 very well as we needed a nearby farmers pay loader to come dig a tunnel for our driveway.
Kathy – I, too, remember the winter of 1978!!
I think it was 1991…we had planted a new windbreak a few years before and the heavy snow and ice was freezing to those young trees. We walked through the whole windbreak and shook the frozen stuff off the trees to save them. During the night neighbors cattle walked with the wind blinded by the ice on their face and walked through fences for miles to the southeast. I don’t remember being without power but there was no school.
Wow, what an ordeal. I really don’t like ice storms. We’ve had a few but not as severe as that one or the one in Maine. I do remember driving through parts of Maine that had trees, especially the beautiful birch trees bent this way and that and lots of other trees just broken. So sad. The worst storm I’ve experienced was the Blizzard of 78. We were without power for days and everything shut down for about a week. It was incredible, people abandoned cars on the highway. Snow was so deep! And there was another time we lost power for a few days but I can’t remember why. We and the kids slept by the fireplace but one of the worst parts is not having water for the toilet to flush! We didn’t have chickens then. I do have natural gas so we did have the ability to cook on top of the stove. Can’t believe your husband never called. I’m glad you got out of that relationship! Jan in MA, where it is 68 degrees on November 1st!
I had to go back to the title to see you were writing about 1991. A very scary Halloween for sure. It is awful to lose electricity in cold weather. I’ve been lucky, never lost power for days, just hours. I always liked to have kids come to the door for trick or treat. Especially when my husband was a teacher and coach and the teenage kids would come over. I always love it when the teenagers have fun and can be “young” for a night.
When we lived in Maine we had an ice storm in January of 1998, 9 days with no power. Thankfully I had apparently married a “boy scout” which helped greatly….. We had to haul water from our well to run toilets…. We had a wood burning furnace so we were warm….. but with no power it was, as you know, not fun. I kept thinking about how our great grandparents had to live without electricity………… And the mess of all the tree branches down was not fun in the aftermath. I didn’t have a smart phone then and never took any pictures with my regular camera… unfortunately.
I’m frustrated. I simply cannot find the address where to send my quilt to Barbara. I have delayed writing this because I feel badly asking. However I’m old and have trouble remembering. Barbara if you are reading this please republish the address where we are to send our quilts for North Carolina. Thank you!
Here’s the address for sending your quilt:
Barbara Aker
165 Char Oak Dr.
Columbia, SC 29212
Hope you have a good day!
Barbara Aker
165 Char Oak Dr.
Columbia, SC 29212