I spent my early years in Erie, Pennsylvania. around 1975 or 1976, I recall one winter where our family spent a number of nights sleeping together in the family room instead of our separate bedrooms. I recently asked my parents about this, and they can’t remember why we did it. I assume it was something to do with a temporary difficulty in heating the entire house (forcing my parents to kill heat to as much of the house as possible), but I don’t know exactly what the deal was. I have no idea if our house at the time was heated by fuel oil, natural gas, or propane.
Does anyone else recall something like this around that time? Was it a problem of availability, or ridiculous prices, or something else?
Pittsburgh with friends in Erie at the time. I believe there was a fuel oil shortage. The one winter (76/77?) was worse than predicted and deliveries ran short and very expensive compared to what was expected. I seem to recall that that was also when folks went nuts on the Kero-sun type heaters and all basically living in a couple rooms on one floor with those as primary heat. But I am working from memory and no actual cite.
1976 had an ice storm that took out a lot of wires, but 1977 had an awful blizzard and I’m thinking that’s what you are remembering. I know we were without power in Westfield (about halfway between Erie and Buffalo) for a week. Blocked off parts of the house, used the wood stove extensively and melted snow for water (there was plenty of it).
Exactly right. Energy prices skyrocketed in or around 1974-1978, and there were lines for gasoline and limits on how much heating oil you could get delivered (even if you had the money for it). Before 1974, most houses had very little insulation, and the cost to heat your house in the winter went up dramatically. As kopek mentions, those dastardly kerosene heaters became all the rage, and people would heat just one or two rooms up to reasonable temps, letting other rooms remain cold. I’m guessing the OP’s house was either out of heating oil or running low, and his parents decided to heat just one room with either an electric or kerosene heater.
As for just a few nights, then it probably was a power outage, as mentioned above. Oil furnaces don’t typically work if you don’t have electricity.
Fredonia here, in the same time period. I was too young to remember the blizzard however. And my furthest experience west was Brocton to go to day care, and Buffalo was a HUGE city!
I personally don’t remember a heating crisis, I only remember the fact that we lay on a natural gas pipeline and my mom got a whole $20 a year for the pipeline that crossed her property.