From time to time Mom mentions a memorable blizzard sometime during her childhood. Her parents took in the Dack family. Ray and Marjorie Dack, with sons Bud and Douglas, were a local family who lived north of the Swanstroms. They were stranded on the highway and couldn’t get home. For a week, the two families ate and slept in shifts. Grandpa had to tie a rope to himself when he went out to feed the cattle, so he could find his way back to the house.
I’ve been curious to find when it was, and tonight I came across it by accident, while listening to a YouTube piece from Wyoming PBS about the Lincoln Highway. It was January 2-5, 1949. Mom would have been 12.
Then, as if that wasn’t a jackpot sufficient for one day, I came across another video about wildlife migrations around Pinedale, Wyoming, where the Swanstroms lived and near where the Luces lived in Big Piney.
I’m pretty sure the word Wyoming is etched on my forehead right now. I attribute it to getting a Wyoming cowboy sticker from Mom last week and putting on my laptop yesterday.
- Wyoming PBS. “100 Years on the Lincoln Highway“. Yahoo <yahoo.com> (June 1, 2017).
- Wyoming PBS. “Migrations“. Yahoo <yahoo.com> (June 1, 2017).
- Wyoming PBS. “Storm of the Century – the Blizzard of ’49“. Yahoo <yahoo.com> (Jul. 28, 2017).
Now I want to find something about the Blizzard of ’63, the big one I remember from my childhood; and the Blizzard of ’82, when Missey and I were stranded in Denver and coulnd’t get home to Salt Lake City; and maybe the Blizzard of 1887 that changed Wyoming forever.
Revised to add names of the Dack family.