It was April 9th. I headed off to school like any other day. I was a 'walker'. Junior High was only about a mile and a half one way. My usual walk was to stop at Carol's house, Penny and Debbie would meet there and we'd all stop at Monica's to round out our group.
It was a normal April day. As I recall, it was chilly, maybe 40ish, a little overcast, but normal as things go in Wisconsin. We arrived at school as usual, headed to homeroom and started our day. About mid morning, maybe the end of second hour, beginning of third hour, announcements were made about a storm. Remember, when we walked to school that morning, there were no indications of any snow storm, there were no reports of storms approaching, but a system shifted and was now apparently heading our way. This storm had the potential of 2 feet of snow. Again, eighth grade, who cares.
The teachers and administrators must have been watching, because they made another announcement, that school would close after lunch. Of course, we can't interrupt lunch! So, after lunch we'd all be sent home. In 1972, a brand new super mall, Northridge, opened. Two stories, expansive, 4 anchor stores, Sears, Penneys, Boston Store and Gimbels, and hundreds of other stores, this was the infancy of super malls. Not to be confused with Chicago's Northridge, this was a mall on the north side of Milwaukee, it's sister mall, Southridge, was on the southside. They were pretty much 'twin' malls, and in 1972, pretty state of the art with respect to malls. What does this have to do with the story.....anticipation.....
After lunch, we all packed up our stuff and preceded to head home. Of course, being in eighth grade, I only wore 'cool' stuff, and my homeroom teacher made a comment. I didn't have boots, or mittens, or a hat..... didn't matter, that wasn't cool. But, since school was being called off, it really didn't matter to us 'walkers' what we had on, we just knew, we could go home. Not so for the bussers.
The snow was so heavy, that is the typical snow in April, it was so heavy, that it clogged everything. Busses were getting stuck because they were trying to head to schools without any additional weight of students. Busses were stuck all over the place, they could not move. So, the bus kids ended staying overnight in school. People were stuck everywhere. Remember the malls? People could not get out of the parking lot and ended up spending and sleeping on demo beds in the mall.
My brother, who was 17, had a snowmobile and was offered $20 per ride to take a person home. He made over $600 that day for driving people a mile.
The weirdest thing was, this was the first time I ever experienced a lightning and thunder snowstorm while walking home. It was snowing so hard, you couldn't see 20 feet in front of you, yet, you could see lightning and hear thunder. I finally arrived home, and my parents had to abandon their car about 2 miles from home, they walked as well. No one was going anywhere unless you had a snowmobile.