Snow

Snow

Well, had a whole big post planned, where I'd get to document the piles and piles of snow we've had in the past couple of days, down in my little corner of East Tennessee. Gonna take pictures, gonna document the winter wonderland that would have emerged.

But, there was none.

I was still gonna take pictures. All the gray and brown. But caption it like I was thrown headlong into that aforementioned winter wonderland. But then I got to watching television and reading, and, well, I'm a lay zee mofo sometimes.

Maybe I'm weird. I'd like a little snow.

That might make me especially weird, since most of you know I work in the grocery business. And, in most places, and in this place especially, the mere whisper of the word will send the world scurrying to the grocery store to buy the milk and the bread (and the Little Debbies and the Cokes and the Cigarettes...). We like to make the joke that Jimmy Joe Cottonbottom's not bought a gallon of milk nor drank a glass of the stuff since before the turn of the millennium, but upon the grumbling of the word by the guys on Channel 3, he's gotta speed over to the Stop n' Shop to buy two gallons.

Maybe milk wards off snow. That's a thought....

In March of 1993, we had a blizzard in this neck of the woods. Now, a couple of you northern folks may scoff, but by most definitions, I think you could pretty easily call 18-22 inches of snow, blowing drifts five feet high up here on the hill a blizzard. Now, I said you northern folks may scoff, but it was a rough one to dig out of, for the local authorities. I was 16, and living up on the cabin on the hill--we were without power for a week up there. Never lost telephone service, so that was cool. I remember Mom whiling away some of the time, at least, talking to relatives in other necks of the U.S.

Me? I spent a decent part of that week seeing just how big a hole I could melt in the snow, in a corner of the woods near my house, by peeing there. It was an odd game, but nobody else was allowed to take a whiz there. Only me. I apparently get territorial. It was a good sized hole, before it was said and done.

It was a couple days before we could get out and about--my folks have a quarter-mile long driveway, and it took that long for Dad and me to cut a path through the three dozen trees that had fallen across the driveway. We were able to get out, go to the grocery store. There, we were able to obtain the bread and the milk that we were out of at the house, that we hadn't been able to procure before the snow (the volume of which was a huge surprise).

Anyway, I said all that to say this: Even if it snows and ices, we're gonna be open at the grocery store. And the dairies and warehouses will be running. If there's interruption, it's gonna be slight. Definitely not so much that you'll die without the milk or the bread.

I also said all that to say this: Maybe the milk keeps the snow away. Because, in the 15 years or so since, I can count on one hand the number of really good snows (or ice events, as the news likes to call them) since. Maybe the friction of the tires on the road as people are running back and forth to the grocery creates enough heat to warm the temperature enough to keep snow from falling...

Anyway. We've had two snow scares in the past week, neither of which amounted to much. Today's amounted nothing. Wednesday's was about an inch, which mostly melted in the night as it turned to rain. Granted, Wednesday's event could have been rough, if it had been four or five degrees cooler (it stayed around 32 and 33 the whole night). Sleet and and freezing rain are less desirable than snow...at least with snow, y'all won't be picking my big ass out of the Hiwassee River after I've skidded across black ice to run into it.

So. No snow. Yet. I hear tell that there's a front that's stalled somewhere west of here, but the local weather guys are just calling for flurries and cold.

Which is maybe a shame. Because aside from the lemming rush for bread and milk, I really dig snow. Covers up a little bit of the winter gray and brown, which becomes so prevalent round these parts.