Remembering the Great Chicago Snow of 1967.
Posted: Thursday, January 15, 2009
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
As I sit here waiting for the Arctic cold front to move in and turn the Midwest into a giant freezer, I recall another great winter event in my life.
If you have any age on you and lived in Chicago it is simply called the great snow. That is something since Chicagoans are used to getting hit with ten or twelve inches from time to time. But there really hasn't been anything I ever saw like that great storm in late January in 1967.
The day before the great snow was a perfect day hitting sixty degrees. The warnings that day however told of a cold front with a decent four inch snow headed our way in the next few days.
Boy did the weather forecasters call that one wrong.
I worked the 7-3:30 shift with my dad and the drive home that afternoon was a little chewy but we were able to make it with just a few harrowing experiences as cars started getting stuck right in the middle of the streets. There was about a foot of snow by now and it was coming down in a blindingly heavy amount that later would be reported at three or four inches an hour.
I remember dad pulling the car into a drift in front of the house and telling me we would have to take public transportation tomorrow.
The problem was winds had changed and started to swirl off Lake Michigan causing the storm to stop dead in its tracks right over the city and it just snowed and snowed well into the night.
The next morning dad woke me about 5 am telling me we had to get going as he wasn't sure there would be any buses running today. Since the nightly news had shown even downtown streets filled with abandoned cars and buses, I knew he was right. I also knew it was five miles to work.
It was truly preposterous walking in this snow that officially came in at 24 inches but as always, was well short of a real total. Even in the streets we were up to our knees and there were drifts as tall as I. The plows could do little as everywhere there were vehicles abandoned that prevented them from pushing the snow off the streets. I noticed hundreds of cars just plowed in as snow plows tried to open at least the center of the streets.
We did catch one break as out of nowhere a bus jammed with people came by and we were able to ride about halfway to work before we needed to go in another direction.
Arriving at the plant, I remember one of those strange things that wind and buildings can do to a snow. A part of the yard was almost clear of snow. The other side, the side which the fuel oil trucks would need to have opened was like a wall of snow taller than me by several feet.
The two factories within thirty feet of each other had created a trough that allowed snow to blow in but not blow back out and as we looked dad showed me about thirty feet down the alley a horizontal piece of wood. "That's the top of the door" he remarked.
We went into the factory through the office area that had almost no snow around it and walked through the ice plant. When we got to the door in the alley and I opened it up, it was just like in one of those comedy movies. Snow actually filled the entire doorway and dad and I had to laugh at our predicament.
Only we two and four men from the night shift were on hand to try and clear the 300 foot alley of snow so that the heating oil trucks could get out and deliver their much needed fuel. But there was nowhere to put the snow. Besides the big end loader was buried in a drift at the other end of the alley.
My dad was always the thinker and he came up with an idea that went straight into company legend.
Ice back then came in 400 pound blocks that were cut into chunks and then into slabs and then into cubes using hot water running through Beryllium rods. That meant that we had several huge hot water boilers to make sure the tubes never went cold and stopped the cutting process.
Dad had us find all the hose we could in the factory and there was a lot as we used hoses to wash the trucks. It was quicker to walk the truck line than drive each truck up to a spot for a scrubbing down so we had tons of rubber hose.
My dad than put a piece of conduit into the ends of two separate hoses and then flattened the end with a hammer to make it like a power sprayer.
That was the plan. There were two sewer grates in the alley and we were going to melt the snow down the middle till we found the grates. Then we would branch out and start working on melting all the snow in the alley letting the water run into the sewer.
It was a surreal job as the very hot water really did cut through the snow but before long we were like coal miners as we actually were walking along digging tunnels in the snow.
When we hit the sewers we were sure the idea would work but we were also sure it would take a very long time.
As three of us took turns manning the two hoses, two others with my dad clawed through the back entrance and freed the end loader to begin scooping up a shovelful of snow at a time and clearing the back dock for loading the oil trucks. It was obvious it would be a long time before they would be able to help us clear the alley.
It is one of those times where you go somewhere else in your mind. The solid white always in front of you made your mind go numb. By mid-day, the night shift guys had to sleep and they just curled up in their clothes in the locker room. Dad and I were fresher and we walked along slowly most of the night spraying down the snow and telling stories to each other. By now the old end loader had broken down after a half day of constant use.
I never did get to ask my dad before he died, but I think I learned more about him that very strange night than I did all the years I knew him. I wonder if he would say the same thing about me. It was just one of those things where you just keep going and going and since the temperature wasn't too bad it was fatiguing but bearable.
In the middle of the night we were relieved but I don't think either of us slept much. I do recall being up and having coffee with the guys before dawn.
As all of this was going on, the city was trying to get back to normalcy. Streets were starting to open and thousands of cars had been towed to parks waiting for an owner to claim them.
Late that afternoon, the owner of the company finally made it into work and with perfect timing a fuel oil truck drove down the alley on its way to deliver oil as he drove in.
It was forty years ago but I will never forget the look on his face. From the front gate all the way back to the oil depot, a full 600 feet, the ground was perfectly clear of snow. A great deal of it bone dry.
He came up to all of us now into either a 32 or 40 hour shift and said it was the most remarkable thing he had ever seen. To this day I still agree with him on that.
There might be other snowstorms in my life. But there will only be one great snow and it was in January 1967.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)I like reading about the massive the Great Snow as you adequately described it, but what gripped even more is the experience you shared with your dad, how you learned the most about him that day. Thanks, Mike, for sharing this precious memory. ~mogama~Thnaks Mogama. Of course writing is "shared thought" and I enjoy being a storyteller.Mike
great story, thanks. KristinYou are most welcome Kristin.Mike
Awesome story! I was 9 back then......remember grocery stores were unable to get deliveries....walked down Cicero Avenue at Belmont with my brother (age 11) trying to find milk for our younger brother & sisters!
Hearing details from the South about the current snow storm, had me thinking back to 1967, too. I remember jumping off our roof into the snow drifts made higher by the the snow that had been plowed to the curb the night before. Cars were "parked" underneath all that snow for days! It was the only time in my entire school career in Chicago that the schools were closed for weather.
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