SNOWSTORM: Reading about the horse-drawn snowplow in Monday’s column reminded Andy Heffner of Ormsby of a story.
Andy and his wife were invited by friends to attend a watchnight service on New Year’s Eve in Jamestown, N.Y.
Walking the four blocks from the friends’ house to the church, “Oh, you couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. The stars were out. It was warm.” He noted there was no snow on the ground at that point, only grass. After the service, “We had pop and chips and laughed and talked and went to bed.”
At that point, the early morning hours, the stars were still out, Andy explained.
He recalled being awakened at some point by the sound of a loud “ding ding” outside and thought, “What in the world was that?” But he couldn’t see out the window to see what it was.
In the morning, they were getting up and around, when his friend George tried to open the front door. The door was hinged to swing out, but he couldn’t move it.
“I wasn’t aware that they had a terrific snowstorm,” said Andy. “Three feet of snow had come down.”
George called to an upstairs neighbor, and it was the neighbor who explained that the snow was blocking him from opening the door. He had his upstairs neighbor shovel by the door so they could get out.
Again Andy heard the dinging that he heard overnight. “It sounded like a cowbell.”
Andy learned that horses pulling V-plows were clearing snow, and the bells signaled to residents, “You better get out of the way because they will not stop. The horses will just run you over. The bells are a warning.”
Also during that storm, there was a three-story building on one street in which the top collapsed onto the second floor due to weight of the snow. The force of the collapse “shot bricks clear across the street,” breaking windows. No one was hurt, he noted.
Despite the snow, Andy was in hurry to get home that day, as he had to work early the next morning at the Davis Bakery in Bradford.
He and his wife were headed back to Pennsylvania in their Opel station wagon, when he saw a snowplow with V-blades coming. “He had wings down on both sides,” said Andy, explaining that he and his wife saw the plow and knew they were in trouble. When it went by, “We got hit with snow. Pushed us right off the road.”
The Heffners still go up to visit their friends in Jamestown, but they haven’t made the trip in wintertime since.
