Remembering snowstorms of long ago
I made it home to visit Mom in Monticello just in time for the snowstorm a couple of weeks ago.
It began snowing on Thursday evening and continued through the night. The legendary Monticello wind had not yet started, and before I retired to bed, I stepped out and saw snowflakes falling gently through the dark night, visible in the glow of the street lights.
The stillness that accompanies falling snow provides the very definition of serenity. Every sound is absorbed into the night, and we are left only with profound silence. I looked out the window the following day and saw the foot of snow and thought, now is my chance to prove to the neighborhood that I am not the ungrateful widow’s son, who is never around to pick up a shovel in times like these.
I located the shovel and started clearing her driveway, but before I finished half of the job, I heard something and saw mom’s new neighbor, Jake Palma, and two of his kids, shovels in hand, ready to join the project. “Where do you want us to help?,” I heard Jake say.
Others soon arrived, and within 20 minutes, the good neighbors finished the job – with a tiny bit of assistance from me.
Jewell’s neighbors wouldn’t let me handle it alone.
I thought of the significant snowstorms of my younger days. Back then, most winters produced at least one storm heavy enough to bring everyone’s daily routine to a screeching halt. Schools closed, and local businesses either closed or opened late. I remember piles of snow so high in the middle of Main Street that you couldn’t see the buildings from one side of the street to the other. When a storm was severe enough to shut down most daily functions, the best in everyone was immediately on display.
People didn’t stay home by the fire; they emerged from their snowbound homes, bundled up in their warmest layers, searching for someone who needed help. The most severe winter was in 1948/1949, five years before I was born. The storms that year sat at the top of weather conversations for a long time. Mom tells of a day when she and Lisle, my Dad, drove from where they lived in Blanding to Monticello during one of those Arctic blasts.
Upon arrival, Dad pulled in front of the L.H. Redd Co. store at the corner of Main and 200 South, where the visitor center now sits. It was snowing so hard that you could barely see the front door from the curb.
When he asked Mom if she wanted to go in with him, she responded, “What do you think?” and she sat in the car with the heater going full blast. When he returned to the car, he said, “Anyone who would live here has to be completely crazy.
No amount of money could persuade me to move to this frozen wasteland!” Of course, within a matter of months, they were moving into the apartments, not 100 yards from where he made that vow.
They lived the rest of their lives in the village at the foot of the Horsehead. The newspaper featured stories from every corner of the county each week, from dozens of cars stranded between Monticello and Dove Creek in January to tales of lonely isolation in the farm settlements of Eastland, Lockerby, Horsehead, and the Summits in February.
But through it all, people kept their sense of humor with a battle of wits and poetry that started in early February and lasted six weeks.
It began with an entry penned by the “San Juan Poet Laureate” of the day, Josephine Bayles.
The thing most discussed in our town Is the weather, and some people frown. They’re tired of snow And wish they could go Where the ground doesn’t change from a brown.
• • •
It stormed every day last week, The skies were so cloudy and bleak, The wind blew so swift It made the snow drift In Blanding, this winter’s a freak.
• • •
Our weatherman, J. Franklin Wright, Keeps records of dark days and bright, Folks phone him each day And here’s what they say: “Did it go below zero last night?”
• • •
When the snow is so deep, you can’t go, And the wind’s more a howl than a blow, If you think it’s bad here, You’re mistaken, my dear-- Go over to Monticello.
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Not to be outdone, the very next week, Frank Halls of Monticello entered a rebuttal:
Mrs. Josephine Bayles Blanding, Utah • • •
Dear Josephine: Our Weather (latest bulletin)
• • •
When the wind starts to howl and its thirty below, We feel right at home here in Monticello.
• • •
If we crave some warm weather, sunshine’s the thing, We just fold our arms and envy Blanding.
• • •
You may think we are crazy, devoid of good sense, To live here with snow drifts clear over the fence.
• • •
But we are real happy and think it is swell, For there’s no place quite like it this side of ...Heaven.
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And here in 2025, we spend hours each day on our knees praying for a storm or two like those of 75 years ago! June and Jennie Powell from Bluff soon joined the poetry battle that lasted until mid-March 1949. Visit the San Juan Record website at sjrnews.com to read the entire saga.
Links in order: