Snow day

It snowed a bit here last night, just enough to make us go crazy and to make all the transplanted Yankees make fun of us for closing school due to a half-inch of snow.

Well, anybody complaining about our snow excitement can do what Jerry Lee Lewis told England to do back in the ’50s. If we want to go insane over a few flakes, that’s our right. We ain’t hurtin’ nobody.

I can remember as a child getting so excited at the prospect of snow. My mother would look up at the sky some times on cold winter days and pronounce authoritatively, “Those are snow clouds.” Now, my mother was born in Hawkinsville, Ga., and never lived outside of central Georgia her whole life. So she wouldn’t know a “snow cloud” from a snow pea, but I believed her back then.

She would also say sometimes, “It’s too cold to snow.” I guess maybe she was just saying that to help me deal with my disappointment, in case nothing happened. It didn’t strike me until years later that it snows quite a lot at the North Pole, for example, and it gets pretty stinking cold up there. Colder than it ever got in Hawkinsville.

The prospect of playing in the snow was always better than the reality. Because once you got out into it, you realized that this stuff was cold and wet and pretty much unpleasant. I’d be good for about 15 minutes, and then I’d be banging on the door to come back in and drink some hot chocolate.

The reason we didn’t have much fun playing in the snow is we weren’t equipped. We didn’t have big heavy coats and galoshes and gloves. There was no need for them. So my mom would send me outside with empty plastic bread wrappers tied over my tennis shoes. Instead of gloves, she would put socks on my hands, and I would be wearing my dad’s too-big coat and a stocking cap. I looked like something out of a Dickens’ novel.

I can only remember a couple of really major snow events in my life. In 1982, a snowstorm hit in the middle of the afternoon unexpectedly, and it was followed by several days of sub-freezing temps, so the roads could never get passable. I was stranded at a friend’s place and spent three days in a small house with five people and a surly Chihuahua. There was no Internet or cell phones or Playstation then, and most people didn’t have a satellite dish, so we ate Little Debbie snacks and watched re-runs of “Meadowlark Lemon and the Bucketeers” on cable TV. Good times.

The other big snowstorm happened in March of 1993, part of a major storm that affected the entire Eastern United States. That one wasn’t much fun because I had a baby, a pregnant wife and no electricity, so we had to stay at my brother’s house for a while. At least he didn’t have a Chihuahua.

I guess we’re about due for a good, old-fashioned snow event that shuts down the whole state for a few days. All it will take is maybe two inches of snow. Well, bring it on. I have firewood, a supply of Little Debbies and a big dog with a good disposition to ride it out with.