When I see pictures on Don’s Borculo website of the residents of Borculo digging out the roadway in 1936, I remember many stories I heard as a boy of the blizzard of “36”. The blizzard began on the second week of January 1936. Snow and more snow came down in blizzard like conditions, and soon most secondary roads were blocked for weeks. The Ottawa County Road Commission tried valiantly to keep the main roads open. They would use a truck with a V-plow mounted on it. It was sometimes pushed by another snowplow to get through the deepest drifts.
My parents were living my grandfather’s farm on Van Buren St., one mile south and ½ mile west (of Borculo). My parents concern at this time was that my mother was due to have a baby at any time and the road they lived on was already blocked to auto travel. I was born on January 22, 1936. Fortunately 96th Ave. was still open at this time and Dr. Masselink from Zeeland was able to get to the corner of 96th and Van Buren where my father met him with the horses and sleigh and took him to our farm house. The next morning Dad took the doctor back to his car. I was one of 5000 babies delivered by Dr. Masselink. All the babies were born at home with the exception of two who born in a hospital. The doctor’s bill was 7 dollars for the delivery charge.
The next week some drifts were so high that a person could sometime stand on the tallest ones and touch a telephone line. Soon farmers were traveling across the open fields with their sleighs where the snow was not as deep.
The winter of 1936 was severe, but the summer that followed it was also severe. The Summer months turned out to be one of the hottest ones on record for West Michigan. The heat wave began on July 8 and for the following 7 days, the official high temperatures in Grand Rapids were 101, 101, 102, 99, 106, 103, and 102 degrees. Some people suffered heat strokes and some horses died. Not much farm work got done that week. There was no electricity at the farm house. No electric fans or air conditioning. Somehow we survived the year of 1936.
Bob Essenburg