Dean Shalhoup

Looking leisurely through Telegraph archives and tapping various other sources for things that went on around here when I stood about knee-high to a grasshopper, I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck we did to tee-off Mother Nature so badly.

Sure, we’ve had plenty of spates of bad weather up here in what we can still refer to as a temperate zone, but we’re also used to watching the worst of the worst stuff from afar, as in online or on TV.

But whatever teed-off Mother Nature back in the winter of 1960-61 must have bordered on a high crime or misdemeanor, or perhaps a Class A felony, because she meant business when it came to handing down the roughly two-month sentence she decided she would impose commencing in mid-December 1960.

While I still harbor a handful of snowstorm-related visuals in my seen-better-days memory banks, it’s hard to say exactly which storms those memories are attached to. But I bet a couple of them have to do with the big blizzard of Jan. 20-21, ’61.

Today the storm would without question have its own name, heck, maybe even two or three names, if ferocity is connected to number of names. I don’t think this one even had an informal name, such as those that headline-writers and adjective-starved TV people sometimes bestow upon impressive weather events.

The 22-inch blizzard that hit Greater Nashua 60 years ago this week actually ended up as a 25-incher, but when you can measure snow in feet, what's three more inches?

And impressive it was.

The middle storm in a trifecta of wicked winter events to slam New England and other parts of the Northeast that season, it is often referred to as the “Kennedy Inaugural Snowstorm,” and if you’re not sure why, I suggest you sign up for a remedial American History course.

As the storm approached Washington, D.C. on the eve of the inauguration, forecasters predicted the snow would change to rain but guess what.

From one report: “The unexpected snowfall resulted in chaos, and thousands of cars were marooned or abandoned, triggering massive traffic jams.”

Ah, to have a United States presidential Inauguration Day descend into chaos because of … a surprise snowstorm.

Even though the youngsters who delivered the Nashua Telegraph some 60 years ago were a predominantly resolute, conscientious lot, the Jan. 20, 1961 blizzard made it too risky for them to venture out that afternoon.

Happily, there was no chaos, weather-wise or otherwise, throughout last Wednesday’s festivities, which, unlike the Kennedy inauguration 60 years before, were blessed with near-perfect weather.

Aside from the weather, the Kennedy and Biden inaugurations probably had a bunch of things in common. One of the more unfortunate ones involved each era’s eldest living former president Herbert Hoover then and Jimmy Carter now.

In ’61, the snowstorm thwarted the elderly Hoover’s plans to fly to Washington for the event; he would pass just 9 months later.

At age 96, Jimmy Carter’s health prevented him from attending Wednesday’s ceremonies, according to reports. It was the first inauguration he’s missed in 44 years.

But back to Mother Nature and her ’60-’61 reign of weather-terror.

The top of the front page of the Dec. 13, 1960 Nashua Telegraph describes Greater Nashua's efforts to recover from the first of three big snowstorms that hit the region that winter.

The second of the three storms, the Jan. 20-21 event was the largest in terms of snowfall accumulation, having dumped 25 inches of snow by the time it finally decided to move on.

“Blizzard, whipped by a hard-hitting nor’easter, continued at full force late this morning, leaving in its wake one death, two fires and snow drifts up to four and five feet,” the late reporter/editor John Stylianos wrote in the Friday, Jan. 20 Telegraph.

Mayor Mario J. Vagge appealed to Nashuans to “please keep cars off the streets tonight, so the Public Works crews can plow.” He didn’t elaborate as to what could happen to those who didn’t heed the request, but told his city that “if motorists cooperate with us, we’ll cooperate with them.”

Fire Chief Albert Tanguay declared a state of emergency, ordering all off-duty firefighters to go to their stations.

Here’s some nostalgia for us of a certain age: “The 5-5 bell alarm sounded at Central Fire Station … cancelling all schools,” Stylianos wrote, referring to that melodic tune from the “boodang” that generations of Nashua kids loved to hear on winter mornings.

The stories paint a picture of a classic nor’easter that, thanks to its high winds and frigid temperatures that never got out of the teens, qualified as a blizzard. Drifts were common because the lightweight snow was so easily blown around by the winds.

I have an image perhaps from that very blizzard of standing in our garage in my bright red “PJs” (with feet, of course) to bid Pop adieu for work.

I expected to see quite a bit of snow in the driveway as he began to raise the garage door, and I’m sure he did, too, but neither of us had any idea we’d see so much snow.

Pop wasn’t a tall man, but I’d never seen snow so deep it reached above his waist.

He muttered something, glanced at a couple of snow shovels hanging on the wall, then at the old Ford station wagon, before pulling up his collar, stepping into the massive drift and pulling down the door behind him.

I went to a window and there he was, barely visible in the sea of white as he fairly waded his way up Atherton Avenue destined for 60 Main St.

According to the compilation of storm observations that accompanied Stylianos’s story, Pop was among the hardier Telegraph employees.

“Only two Telegraph staff members were unable to get to their appointed tasks this morning,” which he called “a remarkable record considering that many had some distance to cover.”

Indeed, there was no such thing as “working from home” in 1961.

Greater Nashua was probably still bidding the blizzard good riddance when their next weather challenge arrived: A cold snap that set records and motivated “weather observers” to proclaim January ’61 was “well on its way to recognition as the worst winter month in Nashua history.”

You might think it’s “wicked cold out” this weekend, and you wouldn’t be wrong if you’re comparing the current temperatures to those we’ve experienced so far this winter.

But on Jan. 23, 1961, as residents were still working on digging out from the blizzard three days earlier, the mercury plummeted to 28 below zero. It was 17 below the next day; the pattern would continue right up until the next big snowstorm would arrive on Feb. 4.

As the end of January neared, reports of frozen, and subsequently broken, water pipes were in the hundreds. Everyone either had a car that wouldn’t start or knew someone who did.

This succession of big snow events began with a nor’easter that struck the region on Dec. 12, 1960, dumping 16 inches of snow that “paralyzed some industrial and mercantile operations” and halted most transportation services.

As a matter of fact, the Telegraph reported, the storm created a traffic situation that “was the worst in recent years.”

The story painted a “Blizzard of ’78-on-Route-128” scenario, as hundreds of cars “were marooned and many streets clogged with cars,” the paper reported. Vehicles were stranded bumper-to-bumper on Canal Street from the old Sanders Associates to Main Street.

Complaints to city officials about un-plowed streets prompted the mayor and some Board of Public Works members to accompany Superintendent of Streets Romeo Anger “to trouble spots” in the city. Ouch.

More than a few homeowners called City Hall in a rage after plows “left piles of snow 4-5 feet high at the end” of their driveways.

But the stretch between the Jan. 20-21 and Feb. 3-4 storms was the most brutal. Temperatures averaged below zero for a good two weeks, and thermometers didn’t break the freezing mark for nearly three weeks.

By early February, even the hardiest of New England’s rugged individualists had just about had it with Mother Nature and her shenanigans.

“Nashuans disgustedly wound their scarves a bit tighter this morning as a blustery nor’easter edged its windy way into New Hampshire, threatening to drop up to a foot of snow,” the Telegraph reported on Feb. 4.

So, winter weather lovers, be careful what you wish for.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.