{"id":69979,"date":"2017-01-26T11:49:18","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T16:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=69979"},"modified":"2017-01-26T11:49:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T16:49:18","slug":"baby-its-cold-outside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=69979","title":{"rendered":"Baby, it&#8217;s cold outside&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_69980\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-69980\" style=\"width: 199px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-69980\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Jan-1967-after-blizzard-Mt-Zion-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Jan-1967-after-blizzard-Mt-Zion-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Jan-1967-after-blizzard-Mt-Zion-768x1159.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Jan-1967-after-blizzard-Mt-Zion-221x333.jpg 221w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-69980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">January 1967 \u00a0Central Illinois<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Yes, I know you&#8217;re all bored silly, but it is, after all, the 50th anniversary(?) of the Great Chicago Blizzard of 1967, which shut down an entire city and the surrounding counties of people who commuted from the suburbs to work in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>What does this have to do with military stuff? \u00a0Well, this is no shit. I was not in Chicago just then. \u00a0That was yet to come. But the weather guessers back then based their forecasts on the chinook, the warm spell prior to January 26th, which had raised the temperature to a springlike 65F. \u00a0They knew a cold snap was coming, but they predicted 1\/2&#8243; of snow for Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.<\/p>\n<p>The actual snowfall totaled 22.5&#8243;, not including drifted snow as happened in Boston a couple of years ago. Remember that one? This link is to a video of the aftermath of that storm. \u00a0I hope it works for you.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Great 1967 Chicago Blizzard\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e8UTJ_xuw74?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><template data-arve_cachetime=\"2026-01-12T23:31:09-05:00\" data-arve_iframe_src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e8UTJ_xuw74?feature=oembed\" data-arve_url=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/e8UTJ_xuw74\" data-author_name=\"ChicagoFD1\" data-author_url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@ChicagoFD1\" data-height=\"375\" data-provider=\"youtube\" data-provider_name=\"YouTube\" data-provider_url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/\" data-thumbnail_height=\"360\" data-thumbnail_url=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/e8UTJ_xuw74\/hqdefault.jpg\" data-thumbnail_width=\"480\" data-title=\"The Great 1967 Chicago Blizzard\" data-type=\"video\" data-version=\"1.0\" data-width=\"500\" class=\"arve-data\"><\/template><\/p>\n<p>My home town was 250 miles south of Chicago. I was trying to persuade my parents to let me go to Chicago and look for a job there, because I knew they had friends there. They kept saying &#8220;N-O, no&#8221;. \u00a0So I went and talked to the Navy recruiter. \u00a0I liked the WAVES&#8217; uniforms, navy midnight blue with a white blouse and a black tie. I liked the bucket hats, too. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t like the WMs hats, and the WAFs uniforms were a sort of wimpy blue. No offense meant, ChipNASA. The WACs and the WMS offered green, but\u00a0I liked dark blue. Don&#8217;t ask me why, but when I found later, reading John Molloy&#8217;s &#8216;Dress For Success&#8217; for women, he said a navy blue suit with a white blouse is an authority symbol. \u00a0(Oh, stop laughing.) So, yes, I went with the wardrobe. \u00a0 The Navy also offered more for girls to do than the WMs and the WACs did at the time. I know that&#8217;s all changed now. \u00a0I&#8217;d have better choices.<\/p>\n<p>The southern edge of that storm hit my hometown with snow followed by sleet, which is now called freezing rain, and high winds. The topsy-turvy phone pole in that photo was only one of many, snapped off at ground level. \u00a0Wind force must have been fierce, because there was little to stop the flow, despite the rows of hedge apples planted as windbreaks in the 1930s. \u00a0I went out with my camera to get a bunch of shots, thinking that it might help at the recruiting station if I had a few recent slides to show the recruiter. \u00a0That was before ASVAB testing. \u00a0He just gave me basic English and arithmetic skills testing and told me to come back on my birthday, gave\u00a0me some forms to fill out with where I&#8217;d been. My mother was meticulous about keeping addresses; her address book on our travels went back to where my father got his PhD in Speech and Theater, the University of Denver.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t say a word to Mommy and Daddy, but dammit, I was going to get a job and leave, whether they approved of it or not! \u00a0Yes, I had just turned 21, so that makes me an old fogey now, but dadburnit, I was old enough to make up my mind what I wanted to do with my life, wasn&#8217;t I? I had 3 semesters of boring required classes behind me and I was bored and restless, and joining the Navy offered me a chance to do &#8216;my own thing&#8217;. \u00a0I could finish college later, and I did, in barely two years, by carrying extra hours and taking summer school classes. I crammed in every credit I could get. \u00a0But that was after my first hitch, and that&#8217;s another story.<\/p>\n<p>So, like an idiot, I went back to the recruiter&#8217;s office. \u00a0\u00a0The streets were pretty well cleared out when I went back and signed on the dotted line. \u00a0The recruiter\u00a0shook my hand, gave me those forms, said something like &#8216;Welcome aboard, you go to Chicago in March&#8217;, and I went home. \u00a0My mother was fixing dinner, so I set the table. While we&#8217;re all sitting there, my mother gives me a card, because it was my birthday. \u00a0I said &#8216;Thanks, Mom,&#8221; opened it and there&#8217;s a check. \u00a0She never bought presents. \u00a0My brother was sitting across from me. He was still in high school and hadn&#8217;t gotten his draft notice yet. My sister had already gone off to grad school months earlier.<\/p>\n<p>When my mother asked me what I&#8217;d done today, I said, &#8220;Well, I have a job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Really? Well, what was it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ve joined the Navy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, you don&#8217;t want to do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, I do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I had never seen my mother truly peeved until then. \u00a0When she said she wouldn&#8217;t give her permission for me to do that, I said I didn&#8217;t need it. \u00a0So help me, Hannah, she drew a blank when I asked if she knew how old I was. Come on, Mom, you were in the delivery room gasping and squawking. What year was that? She was just gobsmacked.<\/p>\n<p>Meantime, my father said loudly &#8220;I think it&#8217;s a good idea.&#8221; A little later, he said he was proud of me.<\/p>\n<p>A month later, in March, I was at the Navy Recruiting Station in Chicago, which used to be on South Clark Street, with four other girls who had also joined the WAVES. \u00a0We had to wait until March for our company to form. \u00a0The WAVES recruiter, I think a PN1, drove us to the airport and put us on the plane for RTC(W) Bainbridge, MD.<\/p>\n<p>I never looked back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I know you&#8217;re all bored silly, but it is, after all, the 50th anniversary(?) of &hellip; <a title=\"Baby, it&#8217;s cold outside&#8230;.\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=69979\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Baby, it&#8217;s cold outside&#8230;.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}