It was 1978. It was one of the worst winters, and it was also the year I was born. I interviewed my mother, RoseMary Cubellis about how life was for her during the Blizzard of 1978. Although the winter of 1978 was not the worst - we all know that the most recent winter of 1996 was much worse and caused many hazards as it reached over 100 inches of snow - the winter of 1978 and its Blizzard was pretty close. Below I retell her story from my interview with her.
Jen Cubellis
My mother Rosemary, who was pregnant with my twin brother Tony and I, told me that two weeks before the Blizzard of 1978, my father had fallen and broken two ribs, so she had a lot on her hands to deal with. Not only was she pregnant, but she had to take care of my father, who as I mentioned before broke his ribs by falling on a piece of ice. She also had to take care of my grandmother, and she had to work in my father's restaurant, so this blizzard was not something that she really needed. She said "there was so much snow that you could barely walk anywhere." She also mentioned that it was terrible, because there was no electricity or heat and you could barely walk out the front door without walking into snow up to you knees. For her it was even worse being pregnant with twins. People made it a point to get out and do things on the days that were nice - and my father's business did extremely well on those days because people were tired of being stuck in the house with nothing to do. After all there is only so much you can do in a house without getting bored. There was an up side to this. My mother said, "it gave kids who had nothing to do, a reason to go outside. The smaller kids would be playing in the snow and the teenagers would be shoveling it." Everyday, my mom said to me, that someone had to go and plow out the yard, just in case she went into labor, except that one day someone didn't plow the driveway out and of course what happens? - my mother went into labor. My uncle Leo, had to go out and shovel out the driveway the best that he could, while my mother was in terrible pain. Then he took my mother to the hospital, but of course it was snowing so it took awhile to get there. So as you can see I consider myself a lucky person, because nothing really bad happened to me during this blizzard, but I think this has something to do with why my mother calls me hardheaded.
Jen and RoseMary Cubellis
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