Well I've always told visitors to Oregon we only get one snow storm per year.
I've never said how long they were; well maybe a day or two....
Wow! This storm reminds me of winter storms in Quakertown, PA. Just North of Philadelphia we used to get at least one doozy winter storm, every year in March. Snow would pile up in drifts 3 to 6 feet tall.
Then when I got to Boot Camp in Great Lakes, Ill. December of 1966 I just figured God had been preparing me for Boot Camp. Great Lakes that winter I was in one of the companies which had to handle Service Week for the long winter build up for Vietnam. We shoveled snow every day and every night for four (plus) months we had snow. I remember the train from Milwaukie to Chicago with the snow blower on the front coming down the track swaying on the rails, blowing a column of snow off into the night. It's headlight shooting ahead into the dark like a laser with snowflakes shooting down through the light.
O’Hare Airport was shut down for two weeks. On Boot Liberty to Chicago we got as far as North Chicago. In the streets the snow had been shoveled and built up so the sidewalks were like canyons of snow.
Firefighting at Great Lakes was burning down the WWII barracks in the night. The firefighting water was go cold it froze coming out of the firehouse nozzle.
Going to our swim test was c.o.l.d. Hitting the water from the dive tower was like hitting a concrete floor. The cold water was as though it were extra dense from the cold. The drill instructor told us it was 40˚. Our bare bodies in that cold water were freezing, chattering teeth cold.
Walking,.. Marching back from our swim tests was freezing! Company 739, December 23, 1966.
We got our shots and everybody came down sick. Those of us who could stand did the laundry for the whole company, then out into the cold yard in the middle of the barracks to tie everything up on the line with “little string ties”. Of course we were bare for that too since All of the clothes had to be washed and hung out ready for the next day’s inspection of our clean clothes… although a bit frozen.
Great Lakes was packed that year. San Diego was shut down by hepatitis. Everybody got sent to Great Lakes. We had to stand in line for the chow hall first at Main side then near our newly built concrete barracks… Camp Dewey Porter. We learned to stand really close together in the Illinois wind while we waited for chow. About half of my company was on mess cook duty for the four months. I only had to do mess hall for a couple of days and then got to be outside doing something else…. But shoveling snow that long and that cold… well it eased up well before the other guys got out of being mess cooks.
The two companies before us and after us went straight to Marine Corps indoctrination to go on to become corpsmen. About 300 guys went that route, roughly 75 guys per company, while I was there. Word was out that it was not a good thing to get to do, more like a death sentence for the bulk of them.
I was gun shy of that calling, corpsmen. I’m thankful for the path I was given. I had choices to go to First Army, Naval Academy Prep School, go to Nuclear Power School. So many options it sounds like now. My cousins husband, Lcdr Charles (Chuck) Hary, was teaching Mechanical Engineering at the Naval Academy. After talking with him I took Nuclear Power School, but ended up at Polaris Electronics (missile school) at Dam Neck, Virginia.
On my way there I visited Chuck and Barbara Hary at their quarters on the Naval Academy grounds. It was by the boat house on the Severn. Chuck even took me to a football game at the Sailor's and Marine's athletic field where I got to sit in the faculty section of the bleachers with us all in uniform. I was in my cracker jacks and Chuck in officer winter dress blues. I was agog at all of the officer uniforms.
It was there that Chuck put me on the track to watch for and sign up for the Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program (NESEP).
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