Chatt Farm Center, Blizzard of 1978.
This past week we had a fairly nasty snowstorm, followed by sub zero temperatures. Although we had enough wind to cause drifting and to make the country roads impassable, I don’t think it was considered a blizzard. And it certainly was not of the same caliber as the Great Blizzard of 1978.
It will soon be the 36th anniversary of the Great Blizzard, which began on the evening of 25 January 1978. The storm in ’78 was truly a blizzard and we were snowbound four days afterward. We were only snowbound about a day and a half this year, but it was enough to turn my two-week Christmas vacation into a nearly three-week vacation.
What did Chatt look like after the Great Blizzard of 1978? Last year Jerry Miller loaned me a few 35mm slides that his father Glenn took after the Blizzard. The Millers always lived in Chatt and were there to experience the Great Blizzard.
- Chatt, Blizzard of 1978.
Catherine Miller ( I believe), left, Blizzard of 1978.
I promised Jerry that I would scan and digitize these slides some day and that day was this past Wednesday.
This scanning project turned out to be a successful learning project. I borrowed a VuPoint Solution Digital Film Scanner from a friend. The scanner was a couple years old and was made to work with Windows XP. I have Windows 7 on my office PC and I could not get the scanner to work on this computer. It appeared that it had scanned something, but I could see nothing but white.
So Joe went down in the basement and resurrected an old laptop that had XP on it. Although the aged laptop was very slow, the scanner worked like a charm with the right operating system. Joe was doing such a good job with the scanner and the laptop that I allowed him to continue scanning and finish the project.
He saved the digitized images to a thumb drive and I transferred them to my office PC. The digital scans turned out very well and I would recommend this method to digitize 35mm slides.
Chatt, Blizzard of 1978.
The scanner also has a tray for negatives and I asked Joe if he would scan a few negatives, too. I misplaced a group of special photos but I still had the negatives. Scanning those negatives was on my to-do list and Joe did a fine job scanning them, too. The negatives also produced nice digital images. In fact, I have a whole box of negatives that could be scanned, which would give Joe something to do now that he is retired.
I’ll post a few more Blizzard photos from Chatt next week.
Thanks for sharing the slides, Jerry!
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Where were you in 1978? Imagine the streets of Chatt during such a storm before there was heavy equipment to move the snow! We all recall storms and drifts from our childhood that seem so much worse. How were things different then? Were they worse, or were we just small and impressionable? If people were not commuting to work everyday or there were no electric power lines to fail, would the storm be treated the same?
Judging from the way the narrow path cut through the drifts (ie snow not thrown on top) the streets must have been cleaned with a payloader. The fertilizer company was not in Chatt back in 1978, was it? Who brought in the heavy equipment to open the street?
Bill Beerbauer was one of the owners of Rockford’s Stone Quarry, and the State Hwy contacted him and arranged to send a pay loader from Rockforf, Oh to Chatt to clear open one lane through the snow.
Because most roads were impassable, the military was hired to fly a helicopter into Chatt, to pick up 3 boxes of yeast from the Chatt Valley Foods business, that my dad, Robert (Bob) LaBrun, and my mom, Violet, owned and operated, that was located on the north end of Chatt, and the military helicopter flew the supplies to Butler’s Bakery in Van Wert Oh, so the bakery could bake bread for the town of Van Wert.
Glenn and Catherine Miller lived next door, (1 house north) of Bob and Violet LaBrun on SR 49. Mom, (Violet), and Catherine were best friends for over 70 yrs, until Catherine passed away, and mom missed her dearly untill Violet passed away at 93 yrs old, just about 2 yrs later in 2013. Dad, (Bob) LaBrun passed away 10 yrs earlier in 2003.
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Jerry Miller provided many of the Blizzard photos I used. We went to church with Glenn and Catherine, a great couple.
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Thanks again for this information. You have some great memories and insights. Those drifts after the blizzard were something. Nobody was going anywhere unless they had a snowmobile.