Throwback Thursday: Halloween Memories or the Ice Storm of 1991

Most of the Halloweens of my childhood blur into one big memory of costumes and candy and running around the neighborhood unsupervised. I couldn't tell you what costume correlated with what year, but I know there were a couple "punk rockers", a "hobo" and quote a few "hippy" years.

But if you grew up in Southern Minnesota, you remember Halloween 1991 perfectly.

At 11:00 in the morning on October 31, the snow started.

I was 13 years old and it was probably the last year I would be able to pull of trick or treating. My friend Heidi came over and we tried to go gather our Halloween spoils, but we only made it down to the end of the block before climbing through the blowing drifts made it to exhausting to go any further.  We returned to my grandma's house to find my poor grandmother in an absolute tizzy. She had been terrified the entire time we were out.

Over the next four days, my home town accumulated over 20 inches of snow, accompanied by 5-6 inches of ice.  Sometime around 10 o'clock that night, our power went out. The ice build up started causing the power lines to snap. The Governor declared the county I lived in a State of Emergency. 

It's been 22 years now, but strangely, it is still one of my favorite memories. Heidi, Grandma, and I pretended we were living on the prairie. We played cards by candle light. Since the power was out, we had no real way of cooking or warming water. Instead, we ate all of the frozen cookies and cakes from the deep freeze in the basement. We made a pallet bed on the living room floor and all snuggled together under  piles of blankets to sleep.

We were without power for over five days. My uncles came over to check on us three days later on November 3nd, and had to use a heatgun to melt the ice off the storm door to get in.

This post is brought to you by Throw Back Thursday for the SITS Blogtober Challenge! Head on over there and tell us YOUR Halloween memories.