With apologies to Dangerous Dan McGrew

With apologies to Dangerous Dan McGrew
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Blizzard of ’78, a thousand-year northeaster that buried New England under four feet of wet snow in a span of a little more than 24 hours. The vortex of that storm was a little town called Mansfield, Massachusetts. The snowfall measured 53 inches there.

The storm moved so swiftly that it trapped people in their cars on highways in the Boston area. Several died. Public services froze. Driving was forbidden. The U.S. Army was called in to help clear the snow. Governor Michael Dukakis’ effective management of the crisis made him a national figure.

I was the editor then of the Mansfield News, where I presided over the first missed edition of the weekly newspaper in 145 years — because the roads to the press were impassable. However, our next edition, covering the blizzard, eventually won for the News the highest award — General Excellence — given out annually by the New England Press Association. My modest contribution to the town’s recovery was to write a lot of news copy, shoot photos and write a Robert Service parody about a fictional local hero.

The Ballad of Hockomock Dick

’Twas in the Blizzard of ’78 I heard of the death-bound leap
Of a drift that loomed like a mountain, by a man in a pea-green Jeep.
’Tis the tale of man who heard the wail of a voice over Rumford Crick,
A hero who left it all behind… the heartbreak of Hockomock Dick.

The hurricane’d just begun to shriek when CD went to war,
Their snowmobiles snorting and belching over the blizzard’s roar.
Their coffee urns and sleeping bags filled the Town Hall quarters;
They terrorized the townies with their paperwork and orders.

Into this brassarded chaos a swarthy stranger strode.
His eyes were like a cougar’s stare — above his beard they glowed.
He spat upon the carpet and said, “I want the man in charge.”
His voice was soft, but it quickly drew the copper known as Sarge.

He said, “My name is Dick and I drive that old green Jeep.
She can four-wheel a drift as tall as you. And me? I never sleep.
There’s folks out there that’s dyin’, and I can save a few.
I’m headin’ south ‘cross Kingman Pond, if that’s okay with you.”

Sarge could only nod up at that stony, dusky face,
And then the wild man turned and left that silent, frightened place.
Later, those who saw him go remembered that he seemed
Like something dark and best-forgotten all of them had dreamed.

What I know of that mad trip I only heard from those
Who rode inside that pea-green Jeep, ones who would’ve froze
If Hockomock Dick, riding the drifts like a sailor on a swell
Hadn’t plucked them from the quicksand snow in that whistling winter hell.

They say Dick stopped to help a man shoveling out his Ford,
When he paused, his face a streak of pain, and cried out loud, “Oh, Lord!
I hear the wail of a dying babe away above the trees.
I have to drive, and whip this storm, or surely she will freeze.”

The man said he had heard no child, no newborn’s desperate cry,
Only the hum of the blizzard blast and the cracking limbs on high.
But Dick was rushing toward a drift that rose up like a tower,
Pulled by the plaint of a stricken babe, drawn by an infant’s power.

A policeman in a snowmobile saw Dick pass like an oily wraith,
His Jeep a shuddering hulk pushed on by a hero’s faith.
“The child will die! Turn ‘round and help!” he shouted to the cop.
But hearing no baby, nothing but wind, the officer didn’t stop.

They say the last to see him was an ancient crone with a staff.
As he passed on the wheels of madness, the wizened hag said with a laugh,
“The child you seek is the child you are. There’s nothing in the snow.
You’ll only find your grave out there in drifts that build and blow.”

When the storm cleared at last, they talked about that specter in the Jeep.
They dug for him, but he wasn’t there — not in the snowy deep.
Folks who’d met his gaze that day were haunted by a vision wild,
And spent their days afraid of hearing the voice of that dying child.