...and like FloydHokie, I recall that the state eventually said just to forget about making up everything. We often lost electricity as I was growing up but, luckily, did not that time. Toward the end of February, the Winter Olympics provided some great entertainment on our black & white television set. My mama and grandma pieced lots of quilting that winter, and my daddy tended the cattle. My folks also had a big vegetable garden, as most people did, so we were usually prepared for winter. But that year was different. IIRC, in the remote area where we lived, we couldn’t drive anywhere for three weeks straight. After we’d been snowbound for some time, my parents (who were around 50 then) shoveled and hiked all day to a small grocery on a hardtop road—about 2 miles each way. Some drifts were over their heads. The mail carrier had left all of our mail at that store. I was just a kid, of course, but I remember seeing my folks walk back home in a blaze of glory, as people say—milk and bread and copies of the Roanoke newspaper in hand. Many days later, we heard the county snowplow scraping its way through the trees lining our road, which meant we’d have school the next day. Our road straddled two counties, with neither county wanting to use the resources to keep up the road if there were any chance the other would do it first. The road crew was always a welcome sight, though, and my folks usually tried to take out hot coffee whenever the county or APCo had to come during bad weather. Good memories.
(I think I posted this after astrohokie’s message in error—one line too high. Sorry!)

[Post edited by Mama Goose at 07/24/2018 04:47AM]