What you are about to read is true. Well, as true as the passage of 30 years will allow, given that time tends to muddy the recollection. Still, the story I am about to share remains a fixed part of my personal oral history, embellished only where necessary to enhance the tale and its telling.
In the vast flatness spanning the horizon west of Grand Forks, one will find dozens of small, largely unincorporated communities with names like Mekinock, Gilby, Inkster, Johnstown, Honeyford, and Forest River. The first of these, where I lived for a time, rested 5 miles north of the runways of Grand Forks AFB, where on any given day B-52 heavies would fly directly overhead, mere hundreds of feet overhead, on their way to who knows where. Some of those flights featured crews that included my dad, but I digress.
On a lonely county road, in the relative center of all these townships, is Midway Public School. In my day, Midway was a K-12 facility, with only enough students to fill a single class for each grade. Indeed, had I stayed there through all of my high school years, I would have been in a graduation class of about 29. If I had to guess, I’d wager that this remains more or less the case to this day. The school features a hexagon pod for 1st-6th, and a couple of hallways for grades 7-12. We had a gym, of course, a real “shop” for woodworking, welding, and the like, and a big, curtained stage (part of the gym) where the pep band would stand and play for basketball games. From my home, the bus ride to and from school was 30 minutes – and I was the last pickup in the morning, and the first drop off in the afternoon. In my mind’s eye, I can still see it all – the gravel roads, the grain elevators, the unending flatness of the fields – as if it were yesterday.
Winters in this part of the country are marked by three things: frigid cold, bitter, howling wind, and drifts upon drifts of snow. Weather systems often drop out of Canada with frightening speed, bringing subzero temps, winds 40-50 miles per hour and even more, inches upon inches of snow, and drifts several feet high across the roads. This is a tale of one such storm.
I was sitting in class late one afternoon, English class I think, listening to the teacher drone on about something I don’t recall. To my left was a bank of windows that looked out to the parking lot in front of the school. It was an overcast day, but not unpleasant as far as that goes. As the clock turned slowly on its dial, it began to get darker, but there wasn’t anything unusual about that at that time of day, that time of year. Snow began to fall, and the wind started picking up, but again, nothing out of the ordinary for the northern Dakota plains.
Then it hit – a wall of wind and snow that shook the windows so hard that even the teacher was momentarily startled out of her monologue. We all stared at the window, chattering and marveling at what we were seeing. Or rather, not seeing. For where moments before you could see cars a mere 10-15 yards away, now was a wall of white. We’d had such conditions before, but usually they were relatively short-lived, and often looked worse than they really were (a good wind on a bright sunny day can grab the snow and blow it against the windows, creating a similar effect). This time, however, we were dealing with the real thing.
It wasn’t long before the principal came on the PA, announcing to the school that busing was being suspended due to the increasingly hazardous conditions. What with the wind and zero visibility, that was kind of a no-brainer. Students were to go on to their last period classes and wait for further instructions. The bell rang, and we went on, but with the buzz of adrenaline and excitement that comes with the knowledge that we were in the middle of something quite outside our normal routine.
By 3:00, the wind and the snow had only gotten worse. Some brave parents (or stupid, as the case may be) ventured out to the school to pick up their kids. But the vast majority of students like myself, dependent on the buses, were stuck. The principal came on the PA again, to announce that due to the worsening conditions of the storm, all students and teachers were to proceed back to their 1st period classes, where we were to in effect start a “new day” of school, regular schedule. Attendance would be taken. “Lunch” would in fact hit right about dinner time.
And so we did. Most teachers turned their class periods into a study hall of sorts, allowing us to complete the assigned homework from earlier in the day. One or two of mine continued with the next day’s lesson plan. Actually, it was quite ingenious, because it kept us busy (and contained) for as long as possible. Outside, darkness fell, the wind howled, and the white-out continued. Dinner consisted of grilled cheese, some kind of soup, and that chocolate cake mix the kitchen staff insisted was “pudding”. By the end of our second rotation through the school day, it was clear that we were headed into uncharted territory: they were keeping us overnight.
And then the party started. The gym was opened up, initially half-court for volleyball, half-court for basketball. Later, the volleyball nets were pushed to the side, to accommodate even more basketball. The pick-up games went on all night – and I do mean all night. Some classrooms that had AV equipment (TV/VCR on rolling carts) had movies, but I don’t recall too many showing much interest in that. One room had a computer, a TRS-80 maybe, that had one popular, hand-jammed BASIC game: Mow the Lawn. A few others may have worked on projects in the shop. But most of us wandered around, doing a little bit of everything, making the most of the freedom that came with having the run of the school. Teachers tried to chaperone, of course, but on the whole, given that there were fewer than 200 of us at most, things didn’t get too bad. The parents need not have worried about those poor kids stuck overnight at school; hanging out all night with friends, making the most of what was probably a bad situation, we were having a ball. A few people eventually did try to find quiet corners to sleep, but truth be told, not many of us really tried. At one point during the night, a couple of us went down the hall to the elementary pod to check on siblings. Most of these young ones had curled up to sleep in various places on the floor. I have no idea what else these teachers did to keep order down there, but I am certain they had their hands full.
By 2 a.m., the storm had finally passed, even clearing enough to allow the brilliant white moon to be seen shining overhead. Word got around that buses would roll at 7 a.m., as soon as the plows had cleared the worst off the roads. School was off the next day, of course. Sure enough, the sun came up on another frigidly cold morning. We loaded the buses and made our way home. And promptly went to bed. Well, at least I did.
Having lived in the South since the summer of ’86, I’ve seen what passes for winter weather here. Some years feature actual snowfall, a bit of ice, and the general disruption of life in a place ill-equipped to handle such things. And each time winter pays us a visit, I cannot help but to recall, retell, and romanticize the story I’ve come to call “The Great White-Out of Midway High”. For the better part of 24 hours, it was winter at its worst, but through the eyes of youth – the time of our lives, and a memory for a lifetime.
