Snow Fell on Alabama

There's a rare mingling of sensations with a new-fallen snow.  Fresh yet familiar.  Excitement mixed with a remarkable quiet.

And every time feels like the first time.

Only a few things in life are like that, I think.  Christmas is like that.  The day you feel the first hint of fall in the air.  Sunsets are a bit like that. The beginning of college football each year is like that for me.

And here in the South, snow is like that.

After many letdowns and missed predictions the past two weeks, we finally got a beautiful, snowman-able snow on Wednesday.  And it was even more than they had predicted.  (I like to think of our local weather forecasters in terms of a Dos Equis commercial: "We don't always correctly predict when it's going to snow, but when we do, we severely underestimate the amount.")

It began around 2 o'clock in the afternoon and by sunset (when I went out to measure) we had nearly seven inches.  It continued to snow, though a bit lighter, until I went to bed.  My guesstimate would be we got around 9 inches.

So deep it was that I didn't go into work Thursday morning.  Anyone who knows me knows it takes an act of Congress for me to miss work.  (OK, so I actually did go in for about two hours around lunch.  Apparently there was a filibuster.)

Here are a few pics from our veritable winter wonderland...

"In the lane, snow is glistenin'..."

Where there's snow, there must be snow creme.

This looked like a postcard, except with poorer resolution.  Much, much poorer.

Hard to believe in a month, this yard will be covered with grass. And mosquitoes.

With apologies to Arthur Miller, I call this one "Death of a Snowman." (Biff Snowman?)

I'm sure it's comical for those in northern climes to see how we in the South react to snow.  Schools close.  Roads close.  (All roads were deemed impassable sometime Wednesday evening.)  Heck, even the Walmart closed this time.

People scurry to the store to stock up on milk, bread, and eggs like it's 1848 and they're at Independence, Missouri, stocking up the wagon for the arduous, months-long trip to the Willamette Valley.

And then there's the driving.

One guy had gotten stuck attempting to back out of his driveway.  This idiot had foregone shoveling any snow and somehow maneuvered his car to where it was now nearly perpendicular to the driveway.  So he was out there shoveling (It was more of a spade, really.  I mean, let's call a spade a spade, eh?) and had some poor woman out there attempting to help him, except she was using a garden hoe.  I can only assume she felt sorry for the hopeless sap.

It's not difficult to imagine every single person that passed during that twenty-minute ordeal were laughing heartily.

As for me, I didn't laugh.  But I was pret-ty sore the next day from all the shoveling.

"Forty-six, anechoic / Forty-seven, blown from polar fur / Forty-eight, vanishing world / Forty-nine, mistral despair..."

Sweet Home

Sweet home
Red state
My boy ain't gay
Wasn't raised that way
Don't care what you say

Sometimes
It's not black and white
Most times it's gray
But we were way
Too black and white
For too many days

School door's closed
Church bombs blow
Marchin' on for right and fair
Some still choose
To close their eyes
But I wish I
Could have been there

Would I have
Hidden in
Safety of my home
Would I have
Had courage to
Join in that glorious throng

Sweet home
Red state
But some of us
Are blue

Judge not
Lest ye
Grew up
In Dixie
Too

Let us bow our heads
And pray for all
Humankind
'Cause I believe God is love
And heaven is gonna be
Colorblind

The Snow & The South

Snowpocalypse.  Snowtastrophe.  Snow-anu Reeves.  Whatever you want to call it, the latest winter disaster has come and gone.  And while we only got a few flakes here in Boneville, parts south and east of here were left paralyzed beneath two inches of snow and ice.

Personally, I prefer to call it Snownado, if only because I would hope to get Ian Ziering to star in the documentary.  In fact, I would like to copyright "snownado" at this time, as much as it is possible to copyright a thing by writing it in a blog.

Some have even chosen to use the occasion to poke fun at the South.  Oh sure, first we lose the Civil War, allegedly, and now this.  That's piling on a bit, don't you think?

I wonder if any of these union sympathizers are aware that a human being can drown in less than two inches of water.  And we all know where snow comes from, right?  Hang on, let me Wikipedia this....  Ah, just as I thought: frozen water! 

To understand snow in the South, you must first understand that actual snow and the possibility of snow are two very different things.

The possibility of snow is the more common occurrence.  Far more common.

Several times per winter -- I'd guesstimate twelve to fifteen -- our trusty local weathermen will call for a chance of snow.  This despite the fact we only get one or two measurable snows in a good year.  Is trusty the right word?

This forecast of snow sets in motion a semi-chaotic, yet selfsame response akin to kicking an ant hill, wherein thousands of people flock to their local supermarket to purchase two items:

Milk.

And bread.

For reasons I've yet to fully understand, this seems to be the number one key to surviving a Snowmageddon in the South.  Salt trucks, portable heaters, generators -- those things are nice.  But you first must have your milk and your bread or you will find yourself in an unspeakable state of... something... terrible.  I guess.

And if it's supposed to snow on Friday, don't wait until Thursday night to try and purchase your milk and your bread.  For then, my friend, you will have found yourself a real life character in one of Aesop's fabled... well, fables.

You will be the grasshopper, left with no bread and a pint of half and half, if you're lucky.  While the rest of the ants who prepared for the winter (storm) will be drinking their gallons of 1% and eating Sunbeam for days! 

Now once the possibility of snow is put forth by those prognosticators of nature, as you might guess that becomes the main topic of conversation anywhere you go.  "Do you think it's gonna snow?"  "Are y'all ready for the snow?"  "Man, I hope it snows!"  And of course, "Have you got your milk and bread yet?"

Another occurrence that has become popular in recent years is delaying or canceling schools at the mere mention of snow.  A few weeks ago, several school systems announced on Friday that they would be delaying school by two hours on Monday morning because there was a chance of snow on Sunday.  Which for some reason just makes me want to tell someone I'd gladly pay them Tuesday for a hamburger today.

I think just maybe we're paying a little too much credence to these extended forecasts.  As my friend (as I'm sure he would be if we had ever met) and Super Bowl commercial star Jerry Seinfeld once said, "If the five-day forecast were accurate, we'd only need to watch the weather every five days."

Now let's talk about that rare and wonderful phenomenon known as actual snow, as it pertains to the Deep South.

Actual snow dominates the conversation even more than the possibility of snow.  "It's snowing!!!"  "Is it snowing there yet?"  "Have ya'll been out to play in it?"  And of course, "Thank goodness I got my milk and bread yesterday."

If there is snow on the roads, even as much as a quarter of an inch, businesses close, schools close for days!  No one goes anywhere.  Quite simply, everything shuts down.  And we're fine with that.

We don't have some Joe Road Grader coming by every ten minutes to clear our roads.  You wanna know what we use to clear our roads if it snows?  Only a little ball of burning gases known as the sun.  Perhaps you've heard of it.

So without trivial things such as work, school, or driving to contend with, we are free to enjoy the snow as I believe it was intended:  As the central ingredient of snow cream.  That's basically some parts snow, some parts milk, some parts sugar, and a touch of vanilla.  Good thing we bought that milk.

We make snowmen, and snow angels. We go sledding, even though we have little to no sledding experience.  This sometimes leads to injuries and trips to the ER.  And we're fine with that.

But we don't drive.

That's what made last week's snownado aftermath so perplexing at first.  And yet, once I really thought about it, it made perfect sense.

We were driving.  ("We" meaning Southerners.)  It started snowing.  So we stopped our cars in the middle of the interstate, said "Eff this crap," and waited for somebody on an ATV to come and get us.  Fortunately, based on some raw data I accumulated by driving down a back road the other day and looking in people's yards, like 87% of Southerners own an ATV.

I did see on Twitter one of the Birmingham weathermen was apologizing for badly botching the forecast last week. That might help explain why so many were on the roads as if there were no possibility of snow whatsoever.

Naturally, there is another chance of snow in our forecast for this weekend.  Thereupon, I am reminded of one of Aesop's lesser known tales: 

The weatherman who cried wolf.

"April, all an ocean away / Is this the better way to spend the day / Keeping the winter at bay..."

Snow, patrol

I'm not sure wherefore to beginneth today. Dost I tellest thou about my latest run-in with the law (yes, I'm serious), or my real-life Christmas movie moment?

I'm guessing you want the deets on my most recent legal troubles first. So here goes. It was Friday night and we were putting up my Christmas tree. Or as they say on the streets, laying down evergreen on a vertical tip. I had TSO blasting at a moderate level of 7 on my Phillips 10-inch SFS's (street slang for Standard Factory Speakers).

Next thing I know, fuzz be ringin' my doorbell again. And by "again," I mean, "for the first time in ages". Apparently, the neighbors complained that the music was too loud and they were trying to sleep. On Friday night. At 10 PM. "I'll take care of this," I said to the popo. Then I promptly went straight over to the stereo and cut the volume down to an only-dogs-can-hear-it volume of 3.

If you're keeping score, or just entering data into my personal criminal record, that's two confrontations with police in the last three weeks -- one "following too closely" and one "disturbing the peace."

Basically, I'm the bad boy of the blogosphere. I just hope they have Wi-Fi in the hoosegow, because that's obviously where I'm headed.

PART DEUX

Sunday afternoon, I attended the TSO concert in Nashville. It was another phenomenal show. TSO is one of those groups that, when you see them live, makes you want to become a musician. And they must have brought the weather with them from Siberia because Nashville wound up getting two to three inches of snow.

Two to three inches of snow in the South is like a foot or more anywhere else. Restaurants close early. Schools close at even the possibility of snow. And if it's snowing, then the stores have already long since run out of milk and bread. Not to mention the traffic. Cars are sliding everywhere. People are out pushing. We must have passed ten cars that had run off the road.

And all I can say is it was, in a word, gorgeous.

It's not often, if ever, that I've gotten to enjoy a white Christmas. But walking down the streets of Nashville -- with the snow-covered roof of the old Ryman towering over the bars of Lower Broadway, the stores all in their holiday trim and with Christmas music playing, and the snow falling fast and almost sideways -- for a moment it was like a scene out of virtually every Christmas movie I've ever seen. An image from any of a thousand Christmas cards.

No, it wasn't quite yet Christmas Day. But it was most definitely Christmas.

"And maybe down in Memphis, Graceland's all in lights. And in Atlanta, Georgia, there's peace on earth tonight. Christmas in Dixie. It's snowin' in the pines..."

Now entering sports purgatory

The Super Bowl is over. (How's that for a snazzy opening line to catch your attention, pique your interest, and leave you salivating for more?)

I just couldn't get excited about the game this year. No Brady. No Mannings--even though I root against them. No America's team. No perfect season on the line. No gratuitous luxury box shots of Kim Kardashian. (Even though I prefer Kourtney but she's not currently dating any NFL players that I know of.)

Don't get me wrong, it turned out to be a nice little game. But still, the Cardinals versus the Steelers? Maybe in years like this they should change the name from Super Bowl to the Best We Have To Offer Bowl. Or the As Good As It Gets Bowl. Jack Nicholson could have been a guest commentator. You can't handle the truth, Al Michaels!!

Anyway, returning to the line that titillated your senses to begin this post, the Super Bowl is over. We now enter February, or as I like to call it, sports purgatory. Football is over. Fantasy baseball doesn't start until April. Basketball isn't relevant until March Madness. And... did I mention football is over?

It has been said that in the South there are but two seasons: football and spring football. I understand and appreciate the sentiment. But calling spring football a season is kinda like calling the cute girl who smiled at me at a red light yesterday my girlfriend. It's wishful thinking and in the end leaves you with a hollow feeling. Not to mention some girls get all hostile about it.

I've been trying to fill the empty spaces. Last week, I watched some tennis--the Australian Open. I like tennis. It's probably among my top thirty sports to watch. But there's only so many times I can watch Serena Williams pound another hapless opponent into submission, or Andy Roddick fall short yet again. Plus, apparently Sharapova is injured. Would it kill them to scroll that across the screen continuously instead of letting me watch three hours of Macros Bagdhatis versus Novak Djokovic before mentioning it?

One thing that always amuses me about tennis is the little "sorry about that" gesture that every player gives anytime a ball clips the net cord. The entire match, they're rocketing 120 mph serves at each other, grunting, yelling, occasionally cursing the chair umpire. But let a ball clip the net cord, and suddenly they turn into gentle lambs with that little apologetic wave. Sorry about that. I didn't mean for the ball to trickle over the net. Actually, my original intention was to permanently embed the ball in your eye socket with my ferocious forehand.

Another undertaking that I have... undertaken to fill the current sports abyss is to try and lead the Chicago Bulls to the NBA Championship on Tecmo NBA Basketball. That's right, the ol' Nintendo. That seemed like a perfectly normal way for a 35-year-old male to kill some time.

The season got off to a rocky start with a loss as I had to refamiliarize myself with which button was jump/shoot and which button was pass/change defenders. Since then, I am on a 30-game winning streak, as evidenced in fig. 1.1 below.


(fig. 1.1: Bone rulz)

Our next game is against the Miami Heat. And I think we all know what that means. That's right. The Heat feature the formidable inside/outside combination of Glen Rice and Rony Seikaly. Oh, did I mention it's the 1991-92 NBA season?

I'm helping the Chicago Bulls relive their glory days! Craig Hodges has been raining three's like it's 1991. Oh, right, that's because it is. Just fifty-one games to go in the regular season. I figure I should be able to knock that out by Valentine's Day.

Two days into sports purgatory, and this is what I have been reduced to.

"Time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days. Hey, they'll pass you by. Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye..."

A blackberry winter?

Some sense of normalcy has returned to the world of Bone over the past week. Well, normal for me anyway. Things have been good. Dad is doing well. We talk more often now. And when I went to visit him last week for the first time since he got out of the hospital, he sent me home with a guitar, amp, tuner, and chord charts. This oughta be fun, as soon as I figure out how to work the amp. Two knobs, two holes, a switch, and a light--how hard can it be?

In other good news, I won my NCAA tournament pool, which is the first time I can ever remember that happening. Go Jayhawks! I'm pretty sure that is the first time I've ever made that statement as well.

I also think I may have become addicted to golf. I played three times last week. My "balls lost" count was zero, one, and I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it. Someone remarked it was better that I be addicted to golf than crack. I suppose that's true, though I can't imagine crack being much more expensive.

The warm bogey-filled days of yester-week have given way to arctic-like temperatures this week. Lows were in the 30's last night and expected to be there again the next two nights. At first, I figured this was most likely the onset of the next ice age. Then I realized if that were the case, we would have seen massive glacier progression by now. How stupid of me.

I began to wonder if this is what the old folks call Blackberry Winter. I wasn't sure, so I called the oldest person I know. I said, "Dad, is this Blackberry Winter?" He said, "I don't know if it's blackberry winter or dogwood winter. Whatever it is, it's cold."

Moments like this are why it's so very important to talk to our elders, learn from their experiences, and listen to their stories. Now I will be able to someday pass that wisdom along to my son or daughter, or nursing home attendant.

Through further research, I have determined that this is more likely Dogwood Winter. Both Dogwood Winter and Blackberry Winter are names given to a period of cold, contrary weather, usually lasting a couple of days and following a lengthy warm spell. Dogwood Winter was so named as it coincides with the blooming of the dogwood trees in mid-April. And likewise, Blackberry Winter is a cold snap occurring when the blackberry bushes are in bloom in mid-May.

I don't know how widespread these terms are, but it would be interesting to know how many of you are familiar with one or both of these terms. I've heard the phrase Blackberry Winter all my life. Coincidentally, or not so, I had some blackberry cobbler for dessert last night. I'm not sure what all of this means, but in the wise words of he who reared me, "Whatever it is, it's cold."

So what have we learned? For one thing, there is no Wikipedia entry for "blackberry winter." You have no idea the kind of existential conflict this creates within my brain. Also, adages that have been around a hundred years have been around a hundred years for a reason.

To summarize the rest, I have prepared a helpful chart:

Blackberry = nutritious fruit; also a wireless handheld device
Cobbler = delicious dessert
Blackberry cobbler = good
Blackberry winter = cold
Cold blackberry cobbler = bad
Winter cobbler = undefined, but I'm intrigued

I guess the bottom line is to not put away your long sleeves quite yet. Dogwood Winter is here. And apparently, Blackberry Winter is still to come. Personally, I prefer the gorgeous weather of last week, which I do hereby officially name Bradford Pear Summer.

"Love and seasons never stay. Bitter winds are sure to follow. Now there's no doubt it's gonna be cold out tonight. I've shivered all day..."