THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607110203
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 48 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: 66 lines
For three days, in January of 1949, we never left the house as a blizzard raged across the high plains.
My dad, normally a fearless guy, worried about the horses in the barn and the cattle down in the valley carved out by the Niobrara River.
He had lived through 54 years of storms in the Sand Hills, but never one like the Blizzard of '49. When he awoke the first morning he headed for the barn about 100 yards from the house. He couldn't find it, and returned, cold and shaken, unable to see through the snow and barely able to stand up in the gales that in sub-zero temperatures raked bare skin like a razor.
He said that nobody could leave the house until the storm ended, never dreaming that it would roar in full fury for three days.
We had no electricity or running water. The telephone went out the first day, so we had no communication with neighbors, who were a few miles away.
But we had plenty of food, lots of coal for the pot-bellied stoves, gas for the lanterns, lots of library books checked out in town the previous Saturday, and several decks of cards. My dad and mom and my two younger sisters played pinochle and pitch for hours and hours. Then we'd read.
Dad poked his head out the door every hour or so, but the storm's fury stayed at high pitch.
Time dragged, and Dad worried more and more about the horses in the barn and the cows in the valley.
The second night, as I huddled in the darkness listening to the shrieks of the wind, I heard another sound, a sound I'd never heard before.
Dad was crying.
``They're all dead. We'll be broke,'' I heard him say between sobs.
My Mom took me back to my room when I went to see if Dad was all right.
``He's afraid all the cows may be dead,'' Mom said. ``But try not to worry. It is going to be all right.''
I didn't sleep much that night. The next morning the storm ended, and Dad and I walked over 15-foot drifts to get to the barn. We hitched a team of horses to a hayrack and fought through the drifts toward the valley where the cattle roamed. The drifts covered fences and roads, so we headed across the prairie. After a couple of miles the horses dropped into a ravine, and couldn't get out. We took off their harnesses and got them to high ground, and then rode them toward the valley.
Ring-necked pheasants by the dozens were digging out of nests in the snow, blind, their eyes frozen over with snow. Dad was very quiet as we rode up to the valley and looked down.
The cows were all there, eating twigs and bark from the tops of tall trees, several feet of snow packed like rock under their feet.
Dad looked at me and grinned, a few tears frozen on his cheeks. We herded the cows to a stack of hay and cut the fence around it, so they could eat.
When we got home I captured about 20 pheasants and wiped the ice off their eyes so they could see. Then we checked out the neighbors. All of them were all right.
None of us got to town for days. When a snowplow finally opened the roads high winds quickly drifted them shut, and we had to spend the night in Hay Springs.
For weeks we battled the drifting drifts. It was a terrible winter for a 15-year-old.
I have since seen the aftermath of a tornado and watched hail turn a ripe field of wheat into useless stubble. I have ridden the flood waters of the Missippippi River across three states.
But as I write this Wednesday night, I have never seen as destructive a storm as the Blizzard of '49.
I hope I can still say that when Hurricane Bertha is but a memory. by CNB