I don't remember too much about snow plows in those days and I don't recall any snow blowers.

Winter and summer in the 1960s
By Bob Cudmore

Amsterdam native Liz Andryszczyk Biondi has come across diaries from her youth describing a snowstorm that blanketed the Mohawk Valley in the winter of 1965-66.

What a time of freedom that was, Biondi wrote. I still remember it, do you? Snow piled so high that cars couldn't fit in the streets. I don't know where we put them, since very few people had garages on Jay Street. We were happy enough to have a car. That is, one car per household, not one car per person.

I don't remember too much about snow plows in those days and I don't recall any snow blowers. Certainly nobody on my street owned one. All the families, parents and kids, were out shoveling, although we kids were mostly playing, jumping from high porch banisters and landing safely in soft, pillowy snow. It was like a big winter festival--and no school!

According to newspaper accounts, there was one a Mohawk Valley storm that began Sunday, January 30 in 1966, depositing nine inches of snow with winds of 50 to 60 miles per hour. Roads could not be kept open because of drifting snow until Tuesday of that week. Route 30 was closed for 28 hours between Amsterdam and Perth. Snow drifts as high as 15 feet were reported.

Snowmobiles owned by Steve Mormile and Glen Gay were used to bring a doctor and at least two patients to Amsterdam Memorial Hospital, which had opened just over two years earlier on Route 30. One man who had taken sick was transported by snowmobile from Galway Lake to Amsterdam. The same mode of transportation took engineers to the WAFS radio transmitter on Route 30 in the town of Florida to get the station, now known as WVTL, back on the air.

About 60 people spent Sunday night at the Thruway rest stop near Amsterdam and local motels were full of stranded travelers. On Monday night eight visitors and 65 staff members spent the night at Memorial Hospital.

SUMMER FUN
Biondi also recalled fun in the summertime in the 1960s, Sundays were spent with families at Caroga Lake riding the Ferris wheel, spending a day at the beach on the Great Sacandaga or at my aunt's house playing Monopoly.

When ice cream from May's News at the corner of James and Hibbard Streets was on the bill, Biondi liked and licked coffee, pistachio or peppermint. Her sister preferred chocolate.

On hot summer nights (no air conditioning, of course) we played hide and seek until almost midnight with a gang of kids that ranged from about age 7 to about 17, Biondi said. We were never at a loss for someone to play with and despite the lack of computer games, we were never bored.

Our parents hardly knew where we were during the day. Where could we be but somewhere in the neighborhood on our bicycles or roller skates, only a "whistle" away? We played in the street and very few cars chose to interrupt our kickball games. We didn't wear helmets and I don't remember anybody being abducted either.

Parents spent their summer evenings outside on the porch visiting with each other with only one eye on the kids. Two eyes weren't necessary, not on Jay Street in Amsterdam, New York.

I also don't remember seeing my parents looking stressed. Time ticked slowly in those days. We took our lunch to school in brown paper bags. We saved our money for a rainy day.

Biondi also saved love letters and other mementos from those days, If you want to call passing notes in between class periods in high school, love letters.