Hot Days, Cool Options : A Blizzard of Memories

In August in the Valley, I remember Buffalo, N.Y., in January 1977.

That was the winter we got more than 100 inches of snow, much of it on Jan. 28. The Blizzard of ‘77, as it was immediately dubbed, inspired its survivors to stage both a Blizzard Ball and a Lizard Ball (don’t ask, but, trust me, it seemed amusing at the time).

The storm itself was anything but amusing. It was terrifying. Driving home after an interview, I suddenly found myself in an impenetrable whiteout, completely surrounded by blowing snow, unable to tell right from left, up from down. I went off the road.

For almost an hour, I thought about Last Things, including how stupid it would be to freeze to death in a field somewhere in suburban Buffalo. Finally, a fireman’s beautiful face appeared out of the swirling wall of snow. He knocked on the car window and promised that someone would be back to get me soon.

Assured that I was going to live, not die in some bad real-life rewrite of “To Build a Fire,” I finally started to cry. And I swore an oath that I kept for the rest of the winter--that I would never drive again without a Hershey bar, with almonds, in my glove compartment.

That memory doesn’t actually cool me off, but it makes me considerably more tolerant of the heat. When that fails, I drive 20 minutes to Santa Monica and take a walk on the beach.