QUINCY — Jim McCarthy of Houghs Neck was 7 years old when the storm hit.
“I just remember the wind pounding at the house before the storm was over,” he said.
At one point, his mother took him to the Adams Shore supermarket on Sea Street for groceries.
“We walked all the way up there with $5, and when we got there we found the prices were really jacked up,” he said. Shelves were barely stocked, and bread and milk were unusually expensive.
McCarthy, now a Quincy firefighter, said he doesn’t remember going hungry during the storm, but meals lacked variety.
“Milk and Cheerios was definitely the go-to,” he said. “And oatmeal.”
He said streets in Houghs Neck were flooded with sea water as deep as 3 to 4 feet in some areas. His father and a neighbor rowed a canoe down a flooded street to rescue a mother and son who were trapped in their house by the rising water, McCarthy said.
“I remember my father was telling us there were sparks coming out of the wires,” he said.
When the snow finally stopped, “it was a whole neighborhood event trying to shovel out,” McCarthy said.
When he was outside, near his street, a neighbor used a shovel to flip him into a snowbank.
“I thought it was a game,” McCarthy said.
He didn’t realize that his neighbor had saved him from getting hit by a snowplow.