Blow My Snow!

When I was 13-years-old, my father’s company transferred us to a part of the country where generations of our family— a combination of Irish, French, English, Dutch, and Cherokee Indian—had never been: Ohio. My God, we were north of the Mason/Dixon line!

I was an Atlanta suburban kid with a heavy Southern accent, yanked from the midst of my first long-awaited year of high school in Georgia, only to be plunked into something called a “middle-school,” a non-entity down south until way later. I could write an entire book on the prejudices I experienced upon my arrival in this state of provincial people, but right now I’m just going to talk about snow.

Why? Because the subject of “snow” just PISSES me off!

Just as one example, stoned out of my mind in the 1970s, I found myself and a friend of mine in a tunnel-vision blizzard out in the country. All I could see was a snow funnel and no road. “We’re going to die!” the Ohio native screamed. “Not helping,” I replied, but I drove safely through the storm.

You see, she had never experienced the road trauma of “Black Ice” that I had survived on, albeit rare occasions, in the South. Snow ain’t got no fear compared to black ice.

Now, whenever the South has snow, the Yamn Dankees down here can’t stop commenting about how stupid we are about this phenomenon that is as rare to us as a hot day in January is to them. Yeah, we’re stupid. We take a holiday and enjoy ourselves when we experience a beautiful anomaly in our region. We use it as a reason to go out and enjoy life with our loved ones, even using the smallest accumulation to try and build a snow (person), throw a snowball, or hopefully let our kids experience the fun of sledding over even the slightest, whitest clump we can find.

We haven’t invested in extensive snow equipment for road clearance, because that would be stupid. And if the rest of you are so hell-bound to get to work every day, just view some of that footage of multiple-car pileups from your region of people who just had to get to work on time. Smart. Really smart.

I recall years ago when a certain Northern transplant sped past us with a condescending glance as in his BMW, he passed us in our hilly suburban neighborhood. His car hit the invisible ice, so often prevalent in our Southern climes, and he lost control and hit a tree. As he sullenly walked past us, we were courteous enough not to say a word. If only our Northern transplants had the upbringin’ to do the same.