Being a real native-born Vermont Green Mountain boy, living here all my life, I’ve seen a lot of snow during my almost 69 years of winter storms here in Vermont. It was around the 15th or 16th of December 1969 that weather reports from the north and west a cold front and monster coming from the Middle Western parts of the country was to collide over the Northeast. Weather reports back then were not what they are today.
We just shrugged it off and just buckled down and took it in stride of winter life here in the mountains of Vermont. My father, Goustof Gregory Viens, was the elected road commissioner of Fayston, with my brother Fred Viens on the Austin-Western four-wheel-drive road grader with wing, our father driving the International dump plow truck and the same truck driven by Blacky Bennel and Bernard Viens.
The snow started coming in slowly falling on December 17 and fell about 5 inches or so every day into the week and before Christmas. I had gotten a job working up to Mad River Glen packing trails and being put into the restart shack at the top of the T-bar bully wheel, in case some got dragged into it or the T got hooked onto the framework. Some of the offloading skiers would let the T go swinging badly and I had to give them hell for it. I remember one time the T swung so bad it hit and broke a glass pane of my viewing window.
By the end of the weekend, 2 or more feet had fallen. It was constant and picked up as another storm came after the last storm. The snow just kept falling after a Nor’easter came up the coast and merged with the last storm. Then it really snowed.
My father would start out at 3 a.m. and my brother Fred soon after that. It was day after day of keeping the roads plowed. My father plowed the North Fayston and South Fayston main roads and my brother Fred did the odd side roads and Center Fayston roads.
As the snow built up it had to be winged back with the side wing on all the roads. One time early in the storm, he was plowing German Flats and had to plow the road to Glen Ellen at about 8 a.m. As he was winging back the road there was a line of cars of skiers following him. The cars could not make the corner of German Flats up to Glen Ellen and were getting stuck due to not having winter tires. One driver was told to move his car elsewhere because he was blocking the way trying to put on chains.
The state had already proclaimed a state of emergency for the whole state. My father was town constable and ordered them to move or they would be pushed off the road by the grader. My brother was getting ready to do that when one of the men in the car pulled a pistol and pointed it at my brother Fred. Fred backed over to where my father was in his truck and told him that one of the men pulled a gun on him and made out like he was going to use it on him.
My father told my brother to wing them and their car off the road because they now posed a threat. Fred was not too keen on doing that and getting shot at. Back in 1969 there were no cellphones, just landlines and two-way radios. So my father got his wife on the radio and she called Sheriff Frank Brown who was on patrol. He was told of the problem, but by the time he got there the man had fled.
My brother had to go elsewhere to do other roads. He had to raise his blade and angle it so to the least resistance angle and drive out beyond the snowbank around past the blocking cars straddling the ditch of the road and back onto the road. He had cleaned up that mess before leaving the area of where is now the White Horse Inn.
I had to use my new 1969 Bombardier Ski-Doo to drive down North Fayston Road due to the so few cars and the people who lived there at the time. The first time I did that I had to park my snow machine at my aunt’s house and hitchhike up to Mad River. A good few times I was able to get a ride by chance with Ken Quackenbush, who drove his new International Scout SUV like he was trying to drive a Sherman tank. He moved about in his seat so bad, I feared he would drive off the road. Or fall out if he opened the door leaning on the wrong side to try to drive and stop. He was one hell of a neat guy though.
The snow had built up and packed down at the bottom of the old T-bar so much that the cross wood T’s were now dragging in the snow. The area had to be bulldozed out and shoveled smooth. The same up at the bully wheel at the top. Someone had to drive me up to the top of the T-bar in an old WWII-style Dodge power wagon. There was no place to turn around, even at the top of Route 17. The driver had to drive the front end up onto the pushed back snowbank to get the back end around enough to turn around. The state had closed the road down.
I had to dig out 2 feet of snow at the top of the T-bar to get into the door. I had to light the propane heater which was not vented and I almost passed out from the carbon monoxide fumes. I did not like being there. By the time I got back to the bottom of the North Fayston Road and my Ski-Doo covered with 2 ½ feet of snow, I dug it out enough to get it going but found myself unable to turn around. I drove it down over the bank to Route 100. I dropped it careful down over the steep snowbank to find out it was over 5 feet tall and getting taller each of the remaining days. I drove my Ski-Doo down two more times before it was low on gas.
The storm petered out by New Year’s of 1970 and we all finally got to rest till the next storm. We got 6 feet of snow, but it settled to 5 feet.
Gregory Viens lives in Fayston.
