The Blizzard of 1978

As I woke up to snow this morning I was reminded of the blizzard of 1978. Of course the weather this morning isn't even close to that day, but after surviving my first blizzard, every time I wake up to snow I think of that day.

The radio on Wednesday before the blizzard was talking all day about the weather change and the snow that we were to expect. Being from Cincinnati, I knew it could change and apparently the architect for Mulberry Church of Christ which bid on Thursday was thinking like me. When I called him about four in the afternoon on Wednesday the bid was still due at one the next day. The church was a million dollar bid, and with a tremendous amount of mill work.

By the time I left to go home I had the bid under control with all categories covered. Arnold Beck, the company I worked for, would do the concrete and carpentry. We probably had fifteen to twenty subcontractors and that many material suppliers. Usually we tried to have three or more prices in each category, on this bid when I left to go home I had at least one bid in each.

That night I met my good buddy Doc for dinner and I pitched a proposal to a group of investors for a farm I was looking to buy. It was seventy degrees when we left the bar. We laughed about the blizzard and thinking it had missed us. How can we have a blizzard by morning when it was seventy at one o'clock?

Well about three o'clock the wind woke me up and it was snowing. When I got up around six we had about a foot of snow with an inch or two of ice underneath and the wind was still blowing. All I could think of was my bid being due at one. My transportation at the time was a Firebird Formula, a sports car.

That morning the only people on the road was salt trucks, four wheel drives, and me. Making it to the office by nine, I was the only one there. Calling the architects office every fifteen to twenty minutes and no one answering was frustrating, I made it in, where was he? And is my bid still due at one?

Mel Wahlert picked Barry Carney up in his Bronco and came on in around ten o'clock. They were surprised to see me. The architect finally answered his phone around eleven o'clock and postponed the bid for twenty four hours. So I had to go through this all again tomorrow.

The next day, before I left home, all the counties declared a snow emergency and the only vehicles allowed on the road were four wheel drives. My little sports car made it in again. This time the architect did not answer his phone so I no choice but to delivered my bid to his office on Mt. Lookout Square at one only to find out it was closed. Now I'm mad, he knew yesterday that I was ready and he postponed it twenty four hours when he could have told me to have it ready on Monday.

My sports car had trouble in two spots in those two days of travel. One a lady spun out on I-275 in front of me and I momentarily lost control. The other was stopping on a slight grade on the ramp to Colerain Avenue. The first one I got out and pushed the lady back on the highway and the second I made it up by gunning my engine and moving a few feet at a time until I made it into the intersection.

It was satisfying to know I worked those two days when others gave up. The architect probably felt sorry for making me come in, we did get the job. This experience made me start looking for a job in warm weather.