Big Snow

Visitors from Boston (says the Baltimore Sun) finding a snowy white welcome in Baltimore (say I).

I have a little bit of a snow history. Thirty-two years ago, there were back-to-back snowstorms in New England that we call "The Blizzard of '78," a snow emergency unlike any seen in a lifetime wherein hundreds of cars were stranded on highways, thousands of homes lost electricity, and the City of Boston came to a standstill for about a week. I was living in an efficiency apartment on St. Botolph Street and working as a waiter at the 57 Restaurant, and when I awoke with no power, I hadn't heard the radio news (and I didn't have a TV then) and didn't know that a state of emergency had been declared. So I walked to work (as I always did) leaving quite a bit of time to get through the drifting. When I arrived, my supervisor asked, "Why the hell are you here?" And then realized that having an additional worker on-hand would be helpful, and told me that I'd need to stay for the lunch shift.

Of course, there were only a few diners. The hotel on the opposite side of the 57 Complex (a Howard Johnson's) was less than full, but there were business people there who would not be going to work, so they came to us for extended lunches. But there was a more important task for some of us: working in the kitchen.

The families that owned the 57 (the Philopoulos and Dadasis families) were politically connected, and "the old man" worked his connections at every turn. When the state of emergency was declared, the owners instructed the executive chef to roast enough beef to make hundreds of roast beef sandwiches. Which a group of us then made, and delivered 500 sandwiched to the State Police and 500 sandwiches to the Boston Police. The police were thankful, of course. They were hard working public servants, after all, and our expression of support for them was an indication of our appreciation of all they did.

Still, it was interesting that, in the days of the state of emergency when little traffic was allowed in the city of Boston, food trucks would be escorted by the police to the loading docks of the 57, and when other restaurants in Back Bay and the Theater District were closed, we had fresh supplies each and every day.

Coincidence, I'm sure!

Stay tuned for more tales of the Blizzard of '78.