Comments for sursumcorda.salemsattic.com/post/the-great-ice-storm-of-1964

Comment #5036

2026-01-25T18:43:06Z

Yes, Warren was a good writer. A good verbal storyteller too.

As to why the phones worked, at that time all the COs (central offices) had their own backup generators so even if the grid went down the COs would be good for days, especially in a town like Schenectady with important defense work going on at GE.

As an aside, many of the COs were rebuilt after WWII to be bomb proof, as in atomic bomb proof. Who knows if they really were as this was, happily, never tested - but they were advertised as such.

Comment #5035

2026-01-25T14:11:06Z

Yes, it was always fun spending the night together, even if at that time I wasn't so impressed by warmth and hot water.

I have no idea if we ate your mother's homemade soup on that occasion—it certainly would have been appropriate with an outdoor temperature of 4 degrees—but one of my vivid mental pictures is of her standing in the kitchen by the stove, stirring chicken soup. I think that particular image stuck in my mind because you were complaining to her that we didn't want homemade chicken soup, we wanted Campbell's chicken soup. Your mother calmly replied, "This IS Campbell's chicken soup," thereby going up another notch in my estimation.

Comment #5034

2026-01-25T13:22:58Z

This is one of my most treasured childhood memories as well. I thought it was exciting and wonderful that we all "camped out" at our house. A great adventure for sure.

And yes I also remember the great Northeast power outage; impressive, SO wide-spread.

Comment #5033

2026-01-24T20:56:11Z

I remember that one, too! Not in detail like the ice storm, though. Maybe in my digging through Dad's letters I'll find one about that, too, to jog my memory.

Comment #5032

2026-01-24T19:11:53Z

Your father was a good writer!

I don't think that storm hit us in Providence. But I remember the great Northeast power outtage that happened the next year (our eighth-grade year).