Through the first half of the twentieth century and into the second, the Great Snow of '88 was a touchstone of shared experience, then a generational boast, and ultimately a running joke among Americans. By the time "'88" could mean something other than 1888, even the joke had become a mark of advancing years.
The snow wasn't funny when it blew in. The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us of a
winter storm that pummeled the Atlantic coast of the United States, from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, in March 1888. The blizzard caused more than $20 million in property damage in New York City alone and killed more than 400 people, including about 100 seamen, across the eastern seaboard.
In later years, though, there were many who could look back on it as a scene of sublime terror giving way to great adventures and prized hardships: being stranded in the impromptu society of strangers on a snowbound train or in a shop; coming and going by an upper-story window of your house because the first story -- or two -- had been snowed in. Walking ever so many miles to school through a trackless white wilderness. The Great Snow generation had memories far out of the ordinary.
When all is said and done, ordinary winters beat extraordinary ones. A holiday season without the hardships of a pandemic is the kind we want, really. But when life gives you lemons, the thing to do is whip up an eggnog of a different flavor. We may not quite relish the thing itself, but we'll relish the memory of it. The feeling will become recondite knowledge, a lost chord of piquancy that can never be reproduced. What, exactly, will we have to hold in mind, and how will we hold it?
The memory starts putting itself into words even now. "In the year 2020, something extraordinary happened all over the world. I was caught up in it. Those were strange times, and this is how I got through them. When I was away from home, I wore a mask and kept my distance from other people. We did such things for the common good. At home, I kept myself company (if one was all alone). I returned gratefully to the old sense of recreation. And when the dark year-end days wore on without festivities or friends, I put on another pot of coffee and took down another book."
