In those days a porno movie was always shown on registration day at MIT (no, I don't remember what the movie was...). I remember walking back from the movie and being astonished by how fast the snow was falling - and I grew up in upstate New York, so I was no stranger to winter.

MIT had never canceled classes before because of weather, but this didn't qualify as regular weather by anybody's standards.

I worked on The Tech, the college paper, that was supposed to come out on Tuesday. It didn't.

We worked on a four-page paper for Friday, but there was a problem: How to get all the papers back from the printer in Revere when driving was banned.

Well, there was a dire need for blood during the emergency, and MIT had always done very well in blood drives, and one was scheduled for Friday, as I recall. So the back page of our paper became a full-page ad promoting the blood drive - which hopefully helped bring out donors and got the cops to let us through.

Most of the rest of the time was pretty much being cooped up in the dorm - so many people cooped up long enough that year to have a really bad Russian flu epidemic. I had a 104 fever but the infirmary just sent me back to my room because there was no room there.

One of my suitemates had a girlfriend at Wellesley. After a few days he got impatient enough to put on some cross-country skis and head out. Somehow his trek should have inspired a winter equivalent to the Boston marathon ...

I remember how the MIT tennis bubble collapsed - and seeing pictures of the Hartford Civic Center's fall as well.

I was impressed at the way Boston and environs handled the storm - closing all the roads completely enabled many of them to be remarkably well plowed when traffic was allowed to return.

This was a lesson Chicago did not heed the next year, when the Blizzard of '79 crippled that city for weeks.

Yes, I was also there for that storm (I was at Northwestern for grad work).

I also managed to be in New Jersey for the storm that shut the Turnpike down (I think that was also a first), and of course managed to be back here for the big storm two winters ago.

I just have a knack that way....