SNOW DAYS

There was that tantalizing rumor.  It would float around school on gray, cold days, like a promise.  Snow!  No School!

Could it be true?  We would speculate.  Plans were made.  We all knew exactly what we would be doing once the white stuff started coming down and choking our little part of heaven North Carolina.

Gastonia is situated right smack in the middle of The Piedmont.  No, not the (long-ago-really-cool) airlines, I meant the region. Don't ask, it's geography, and we'd have to get off in a whole other direction--I'd rather not digress.  If you live there, you have already accepted that you live in the Piedmont.  Otherwise, you should not really care.

I've come across a wide number of Northerners (Those my grandfather deemed Yankees) who find it difficult to believe that someplace so far south ever receives any snow, worthy of mention.  But I'm here to declare that we did indeed.  At times we beheld blizzards, banking snow over doorknobs.  While most years brought no more than ice.  The dreaded ice storm is what our little part of America is best known for, ask any trucker.

Most of us Gardner Park kids can remember the winter when little Davy McCool, Dr. McCool's youngest son, waded out into the drifts that had formed on the night of the February storm of  '70.  The little sucker saw how the snow was up to the car windows and wondered if he could walk on it.  His ears were blue when Joey, Davy's older brother, and a good friend of mine pulled Davy out, a shivering, chattering pop-cycle,  was how he told me the story on another snow night, standing round a fire at the top of one street or another.

I remember those bonfires the most...

Riding Radio Flyer sleds at break-neck speed down twisting, turning neighborhood streets.  Smoke at the tops of the hills hung thick around us.  The way the girls' breath hung moist in the wet-cold of the air, the smoky smell that permeated our jackets, Boone's Farm wine--you name the flavor--are pasted all over that memory.  Oh yeah...there's music too.  There has to be music in this memory.  Everyone still remembers those songs: Have You Seen Her... tell me have you seen her?  Stone Love, Color My World, Stairway to Heaven...

Once the flakes began to fall, we would stare out the windows of school, watching, waiting, holding our breath collectively.  Even the teachers watched, wondering just how much of a wild scatter an early release would cause.  An hour, two, and the accumulation reached a decision level: Bus 'em home before it gets bad!

There were winters when school had to close for an entire week.  Those were the days...

We took over the streets.  Any street with a good hill became candidate for a sled run.  The trick was to get out there before anyone's parents could get on the street with a car.  On really great days of ice, sleet and then deep snow, we could simply pull a large section of plywood behind us, smashing the snow down until it formed a good five inches of solid ice.  Now, the street was ours... No way anyone would even try to go down such a hill in a car--suicide to even think it.

We would then build fires at the tops of such hills; they were signals to everyone for miles around: Over here!  Good sledding!  Tons of fun!

Hours and days of it, a lifetime's worth of memories that still tickle me when I see or hear mention of snow...At least the snow that was always so much fun.


Adulthood came with the clobbering realization that snow, actually sucks!   Time clocks and bosses care less about whether or not you get to play in the snow.  Traffic, obviously does not enjoy snow.  Everyone remembers when Marcy Abercrombe got stuck in a twelve hour traffic jam in Atlanta when the blizzard of 1977 blew through.  She was on her way home from classes and just got caught out there as it came down and paralyzed the city.   Her mom told me Marcy cried her eyes out; who could blame her?

When I took a management position that required me to move to Ohio, I really saw how winter bites.  I don't see how folks can stand it up there.  One March I had to make a drive up I-75 to Port Huron Michigan.  It's not a bad drive, usually, straight up through Toledo, Detroit and finally the 'thumb'.  My son wanted to ride with me that Saturday, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem, I was just picking up some materials, after all.  Junior is a smart kid, easy to talk to and he listens to every word I say, most times.  We left Dayton at around nine that morning and by ten thirty, we had run into flurries that began to increase.  The wind began to drive against us; this is lake-effect snow, cold air blowing over the Great Lakes and picking up cold moisture that simply dumps over the next available land mass.  Think Buffalo, or Syracuse, even Cleveland, it can get deep and dangerous quick. 

I had left the house in a ski sweater and jeans.  My son had the same on, both of us carried light jackets as well.  But I had not thought to pack any survival gear; no blankets, no water, extra food, hell, I didn't even think to check my flashlight to see if the batteries were still good.  I just took off and now, as the red light on the dash board indicates that my radiator is getting blocked by the caking up of ice, I can see just how easy it can be to get stranded, then frozen.  I had heard several stories, but never took them all that seriously.

Now I've got a nine year old boy in the car with me.  It's not just my ass if I don't make it... That's when you begin to think differently about snow, altogether.  That shit is a dangerous beast.  It has teeth and can be deadly.  Despite the beauty, the danger must be considered.  I moved back to the Carolinas after two years of that.  Snow on May 8th, during a Cincinnati Reds game.   Snow that winter was as bad as we had ever had.  By the time I moved to Houston, I was ready to avoid snow forever.

In twenty years, it has snowed, and stuck, only once that I know of.  Christmas of '04 brought snow to Southeast Texas; it even snowed on Galveston.  People built actual snowmen on the beaches!  (We're on the same latitude as Daytona, so accumulating snow is not the norm.) 

Snow on Galveston '04 (Fort Crocket)

I miss the fun we all had as kids in the snow.  Spin outs, bent fenders and numb fingers and toes have turned my ideas about snow around.  I don't mind seeing it, as long as I don't have to do much more than watch, or see it through pictures from my old friends back home...



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