Boston-Online’s Adam Gaffin on where he was during the Blizzard 25 years ago:
“Somewhere up in my attic, I still have an I survived the Blizzard of ’78 certificate I bought the day after the snow stopped in Harvard Square.
“I was a freshman at Brandeis. At first, the blizzard was great fun: Brandeis is built on a hill, so we had plenty of places to slide down on our swiped cafeteria trays. And the trains were still running, so I was able to get into Harvard Square and just marvel at people cross-country skiing through the square (thank goodness I had a friend at Harvard; buying two of those survival certificates left me 25 cents short for the train ride back to Waltham). Waltham managed to get its main roads plowed pretty quickly, so with the driving ban in effect and classes cancelled, it seemed like pretty much everybody who wasn’t busy jumping off the roof of the Spingold Theater into a giant snow mound in the parking lot was just walking up and down South Street marveling at everything.
“But a freak lightning bolt the night of the storm knocked out power to my quad. And after a couple of days, everbody (including me) started coming down with one of those godawful winter colds, and things stopped being so fun….”