In the year 1976 during late fall in Alden, New York, I sat in the family-room of my one story farmhouse, next to my mom and dad. I turned on our television and started flipping through the channels, seeing Happy Days, and M*A*S*H, but not stopping until Welcome Back Kotter came on. I watched the show for a while until David and Sean, who both lived in my neighborhood, came over.
All three of us walked down the street while talking. After about a mile, the road turned to dirt. After walking for a bit more, we decided to stop and play in a cornfield.
”So, what game do you guys want to play?” asked Sean.
“Well, ain’t we gonna play hide and go seek, what else would we do in a cornfield!” teased  David. So we did just that we played hide and go seek. As I found David, I looked at his arms and suggested he should have worn long sleeves, as his arms looked awfully cut up. David just shrugged and helped me look for Sean. I was just eight years old, with jet black hair.  After some time, it started to get dark, so we all ran back home. I headed out to the barn in my front yard to feed the family chickens and my sheep. A lot of my neighbors happened to have animals such as sheep, pigs and cows. My family had chickens. Fall winded down, and we were met with a bitter cold winter.
*****
As the new year of 1977 came around the weather didn’t get any warmer. It had been predicted that on January 28th there would be a bad storm, eventually known as the The Blizzard of 1977, so school was canceled the day before. I woke up that day at around nine, and I was shocked to see it was sunny outside.
"No way there's gonna be a storm today," I addressed my mom. "Just wait for it," my mom answered smiling.
At about eleven-twenty in the morning, my dad went out to talk to our neighbors and  to check the gas for the tractors.   One minute I looked out the window to see my dad and neighbor are talking. After a few minutes passed and I looked out the window again to be greeted with pure white. It was as if someone had painted the window white, I couldn't see a thing.
A few minutes later, the side patio door swung open and my frozen dad walked in.
"What happened out there?" I mused.
"The storm has begun!" my father responded with a laugh. My dad and I worked to grab extra lights and hay for the chickens to stay warm.
"Do ya’ think the chickens will be okay?"I worried.
"I reckon’ if we get them all these extra lights and hay they'll be just fine," my father concluded.
The next few days led to staying inside; we couldn't have gone outside if we had wanted. You wouldn’t have been able to see your hand in front of your face. We were stranded at home. The winds blew and howled for hours on end it was a haunting sound that never seemed to end. School was obviously cancelled.  A few days went by.
“Is the storm gonna stop, Dad we’re almost out of food?” I whined worriedly.
“I think so, son. It’ll be okay we’ve got food to last us for now,” my dad replied.
It was bitter cold with the wind chills reaching down to negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit. After the storm started the temperature never even got above zero degrees Fahrenheit. It was quite boring be stuck at home, but I was more scared wondering if the storm would ever end. On February 2nd, the storm finally subsided.The storms end didn’t help much because we had barely any food left and couldn’t travel. Scared,upset and nervous, there was nothing we could do but wait for help.
Luckily, a few days later a man came to our house on a snowmobile and took my father into town to get some groceries from Bells and other supplies we would need. I was beyond relieved. Once I finally was allowed to go outside, I was greeted with insanely high snowdrifts, some up to sixteen feet high. It didn’t seem real, I couldn't believe how much snow there was it was insane. Everywhere I looked was pure white. It seemed as if someone had dumped sugar all over my neighborhood.  The snow felt light and fluffy, and the air smelt white and frozen.
Eventually, three bulldozers were sent to our street to start the cleanup of the snow. In one day, they cleared only less than a mile of the road. The neighborhood all worked together in efforts to help clear the snow, but it still took a long time. In the midst of this federal disaster, there was natural gas shortage. In total, school ended up being cancelled for three entire weeks.
My neighborhood was very rural with my neighbors living half a mile away and forest and empty fields surrounding us. This left us with the struggle of so much snow and so few people to take care of it. The storm was very hard on my family and neighborhood. As a community, we all really had to work together. It was quite scary, the reality of it but I’ll never forget the blizzard of 1977.