Pinochle and possum - A tale from the blizzard of 1949

By all accounts the blizzard of 1949 was a history maker and a monster. For a young teacher in her first year in Kimball, January 1949 offered the opportunity to learn.

That young teacher, Dorothy Christiansen, lived with the Lewellen family while in Kimball, though her home was in Wheatland, Wyo. at the time.

She recalled going home for a visit and was returning to Kimball for the start of classes in the new year.

"I went to Cheyenne early and had stayed on with some friends," Christiansen recalled. "They took me down to the bus at 2 p.m., when it left from Cheyenne to Kimball."

She left Cheyenne on time but she said the bus had not gone far before the blizzard began.

"It was terrible! You could see nothing," she said. "It was bitterly cold and the wind was howling."

The driver stopped, she said, because he could not tell if he was on the narrow highway because at that time they were not lined with reflectors.

"The bus driver gathered up extra clothes that everybody had and he had somebody go out of the bus, they wrapped him up with mufflers and every bit of warm clothes they could get on him," she said. "He walked outside of the bus and tapped on the side of the highway with a cane to keep us on the road."

Christiansen said this is how the bus slowly made its way all the way to Pine Bluffs, arriving around 2 a.m., a full twelve hours after they had left Cheyenne as she recalled.

From Pine Bluffs the passengers loaded onto the last eastbound train and made their way to Kimball, where Mr. Lewellen met her.

"I had a girl that was on the train with me so we took her home with us," Christiansen said. "Mr. Lewellen went down and got the two coaches and their wives, from Michigan I think it was, who had been playing in the Rose Bowl, and he brought them home too."

At the time, she recalled, she and two other boarders were staying with the family as well as their children, in addition to the extra guests.

"Everything in that house was full but we all pitched in. That is when I learned how to play pinochle and everybody helped cook," she said. "Mrs. Lewellen emptied her freezers and had enough food for us, but one day she brought out a surprise piece of meat, and when she did she had a twinkle in her eye."

She served the meat and asked how everybody liked it, Christiansen said. Everyone replied that it was pretty good and asked what it was.

"She told us it was possum, but it was pretty good," Christiansen said.

So it went for days, the unintentional roommates working together and playing pinochle.

"The blizzard roared and howled and roared and howled. When the blizzard stopped we came walking down around town," she said. "Across from Larsen's you could walk on the street on the tops of the snowdrifts and the snowdrifts were almost to the tops of the buildings."

As the blizzard subsided, Christiansen went to work to ready her classroom, in the old stone school that once sat where West Elementary was later built, for students' return. She found her basement classroom, once used only for storage, was drifted with snow.

"I always told them my room was cold and then it was decided that it was a cold-room," she quipped. "It was a mess, but I got it cleaned up and taught my kids what they needed to know."

She recalled that Bob Christiansen, the man she would eventually marry, also lived in Kimball during that time and was also caught out in the monstrous blizzard.

"He was coming from Cheyenne. He had taken his sister to Cheyenne and his was the last car into Kimball," she said. "They were going out running back and forth to Nelson's corner where they gathered cars and they brought 32 stranded people into town."

Many accounts have been written of the blizzard of 1949 and though the toll on livestock was tremendous, no lives were lost to this monster and one school teacher learned what she needed to know of pinochle and possum.

"I was in the middle of all of it," she said.