It
started out cloudy, calm and balmy. Not
everyone had radios
and
reception wasn’t too good.
I lived in
from
there. On this particular morning before
I left Oakley huge
flakes
were wafting down lazily and were getting thicker so I phoned
Merritt
Yale, a school board member and he in turn rang Richard Brown
another
school board member, a trick that could be done in those days
if
you were on the same line. I told them
about the huge flakes but it
wasn’t
snowing in Grinnell so I went to school, not really dressed for
what
was to come.
By recess time it was misting heavily
from the east and George
Kaiser,
one of the eighth grade boys, asked if I wanted my car moved to
the
west side of the schoolhouse out of the mist so he moved it for me.
The
starting
to fall. We spent the
tracking
them as they fell and trying to catch them before they fell
on
the ground. Great sport.
We assembled at
in
from the north so I decided the storm was upon us so I decided to send
the
children home. The Adam Geist family
lived a half mile southeast of
the
schoolhouse so I saw the three boys Alvin, Aquiline, and Adrien were
properly
dressed, with the wind to their backs I sent them home with
instructions
to stay to-gether and not tarry. Barbara
and Onan rode horses
so
weren’t long in getting home. Richard Brown
came after his three
children,
Marie,
Holaday
children Raymond, Viola, Dennis, Edmund, Billy, and Albert.
Frank and Jake Kaiser came after their
sister Barbara and
brothers
George and Eddie. Since the county had
worked to roads in all
directions
from the schoolhouse I asked Frank to drive my car to my in-laws
the
Albert Sites’. Everything went O.K.
until we got three quarters of a mile
east
of Sites’ when the car stopped due to a wet distributor. Frank walked to
Sites’
to tell them I was in the car east of them, they weren’t at home so he
left
a note for them and walked on home a mile west of Sites’.
After the Sites’ got home my
brother-in-law, Carl Sites, started up
after
me in the car but ran into the ditch so he walked up after me. After
he
got his breath and warmed up a little we walked to the farm against a raging
blizzard
which was in full progress at that time.
After the blizzard had spent itself in
three days and two nights and left
roads
blocked and some drifts as high as buildings we were glad to see the sun
and
to look out on a world unknown.
The
Schroeder children, Verna, Norma, Maurice, and Virgil, didn’t
come
to school this day because their sister Elsie was going to high
school
in Grinnell and rode to and from school with the Harris children.
The
Harris’ had a radio so knew the storm was forecast so didn’t go to
school.
Since most of the farmers weren’t
prepared for the onslaught
most
everyone lost many cattle because they drifted with the storm
into
unknown places smothering in the snow drifts and freezing in
the
fence rows and creek beds.
This remains a chilling incident in
the lives of all who endured
and
survived the storm.