1950 Misc Events
THE BLIZZARD OF 1950, from Jim Polk
It was the weekend of the Ohio State Michigan football game and the ground was already covered with several inches of snow. A snow storm started on Friday night and by Saturday morning there was probably 8 to 10 inches of snow. Then the winds came and along and with it huge drifts of snow. The snow kept coming down to reach over two feet.
My dad was going to a farm auction and I went along. We got about two miles and were going over the bridge on Polk Road in front of my grandfather’s house when the old Dodge truck did about two 360’s and we found ourselves headed back in the direction we had come from. Right then and there dad decided to go back home. We lived on Weaver Road and between our farm and the Lawrence Long farm was a huge hedge row about 12 feet high. We were the last vehicle that traveled Weaver Road for three weeks.
The Ohio State Michigan football game was played in the worst blizzard that day. It snowed and blew so hard the players could not move the football and the hardy fans could not even see the game. Michigan won by score of 9-3 and several thousand Ohio State fans got stranded in Columbus and along the highway if they attempted to get home.
In Clinton County, snow reached 24 to 30 inches with drifts higher than your head. School was canceled the following week, but for me it became three weeks. That 12-foot high hedge row had drifted level full and like a lot of Clinton County small farmers, we had lots of livestock to take care of. Milk cows, cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens, horses. It became a matter of survival trying to keep them fed and watered. The temperature was way below zero and with the chill factor, watering became the number one chore, chopping holes in ice for the livestock to drink and it would quickly re-freeze and we had to do it again in a few hours. After everyone else went back to school at Reesville, our road remained closed. Dad took one of the horses and hooked him up to a one-horse (sleigh) sled and put about 6 bales of straw on it. I remember taking a crate of eggs into Sabina; whether they froze or not, I don’t know. We went through the fields, cutting the fence to reach Dakin Chapel Road, the back way to Sabina, stopping along the way to check with the neighbors to see if they needed supplies
Taking care of the livestock consumed our days, and in between we would go into the house and get warm and play checkers. You don’t know what cold is until you have laid on the frozen ground in temperatures below zero and the wind blowing and trying to fill a little kerosene heater and lighting the wick to keep the hog fountain from freezing. We played over 1200 games of checkers in those three weeks.
Finally, the township trustees sent a huge bull dozer to Weaver Road and plowed out the 12 feet of snow that had drifted where the hedge row was. I was finally able to go back to school. I was the farthest one on the route and the bus driver, Jack McCall of Melvin’s famous restaurant/grocery, would turn around in our driveway. I don’t think I ever had to make up those lost days, guess they didn’t have snow days back then. School never started until after Labor Day, we had two weeks off at Christmas, spring vacation and was out of school by the end of May. I was 12 years old, starting Junior High at Reesville School, but like everyone else who went thru the Blizzard of 1950, I remember it well.
Blizzard Photos from the Myers Family