A year or so ago we had a fairly decent amount of snow. The kids were off school for a few days. Snow covered trees keeled over and blocked some streets. The power was off for a couple of hours. Photo opportunities were everywhere. Folks kept referring to the big snow of 2010. But for some Northsiders (those who carry Medicare cards) our thoughts went back to The Big Snow, the Thanksgiving Snow of 1950.
Snow began falling the day after Thanksgiving. It did not stop until late Saturday when it had reached an accumulation of two and a half feet. That Monday Governor Duff declared a state of emergency as well as a bank holiday for two days. The Pitt vs. Penn State football game was postponed twice. Mayor Lawrence appealed to all “able bodied citizens to volunteer for emergency duties.” Those duties were mostly shoveling snow so that the main streets of the city would be clear for fire trucks and ambulances. Judge McNaughter closed all the courts of the county. Pittsburgh’s postmaster announced that if folks wanted their mail they should “start shoveling.” The National Guard cordoned off the downtown district to expedite massive snow removal.
During the snowy days of this past January I’ve asked folks who were here on the Northside during the The Big Snow to recall their experiences.
Peggy Toomey-Uruza still lives in the family home in Brighton Heights. That home was beside Campus Street, a terrific hill for sled riding. During The Big Snow, though, kids and “would-be kids” of all ages could sled from Campus Street and Davis Avenue down Acacia Lane onto a snow closed Brighton Road all the way to Woods Run Avenue. With schools closed for the entire week after Thanksgiving and no vehicular or trolley traffic, every day was a great day for sledding.
Right: The National Guard was called in during the Big Snow of 1950 to help clear snow and keep the streets safe. (Photo courtesy the Photo Antiquities Museum)
“Doc” North vividly describes the sled run from the top of Stayton Street down to Marshall Avenue and then all the way down to the intersection of Marshall and California avenues. They had to drag their feet as they neared the end of this run to prevent heading across the Island Avenue Bridge toward St. Andrew’s Church.
The region’s widely acclaimed “Ice Ball Man,” Gus Kalaris, was a recent graduate of Allegheny High when The Big Snow landed on the region. At the time, the Kalaris family lived on the upper blocks of Sandusky Street ( just above the present footprint of Allegheny General Hospital). Gus recalls a group of twenty or thirty neighbors, mostly men and boys, shoveling Sandusky and Fountain streets to make them passable for emergency vehicles. That “shovel practice” was put to a much more profitable use during the following days as Gus and his buddies were hired to clear off flat roofs as well as many sidewalks and driveways. These young men made more money during the week of the snow than ever before. In the evenings, Gus recalls, they spent some of that hard earned cash at local sandwich shops and theaters.
Stella Kalaris, known now to many Northside kids as Yia-Yia (Greek for grandmother), was a school girl at Columbus School, a block or so from her home on McCullough Street. She recalls that her dad trudged through the 30 in. snow drifts to get to work near the Allegheny Market House and Library. She and her friends stayed warm and dry inside or enjoyed playing in the snow drifts along Brighton Place. The schools were closed until Monday, Dec. 4. That week combined with the Thanksgiving holiday gave all school age kids an 11 day vacation — one that many snowbound parents happily saw come to an end.
And end it did. By the second week of December the snow had turned to dirty soot-covered slush. As in Dan Fogelbird’s ballad, “The Same Auld Lang Syne” the snow had turned to rain. Yet memories of “The Big Snow” remain as vivid as yesterday, perhaps a bit romanticized given the fact that we old timers were just kids 60 years ago.
