Every now and then, eating your words just isn’t that painful.
I mock the weather often in hopes that it’ll prove me wrong and do something totally unexpected—like dump a whole 1/16 inch of snow on our lovely city of St. George. Yesterday it snowed here from 9 am to 8 pm. I hear that the surrounding communities—those at a slightly higher elevation, got inches of snow—even up to eighteen inches in Silver Reef. That should keep our one snow plow busy for a week!
All this brings back memories of my childhood here in southern Utah. Snow was rare, and when it did accumulate enough to cover the grass, that was really something special. As children, we had building snowmen down to a science. You had to have at least 1 inch of snow to build a small snowman, and at least 3 inches to build a big one. The most important rule was that you must never, ever mess up the snow in the front yard (any more than you had to, anyway). We’d only use snow from the back yard to build the snowman. First you’d scrape off the top layer of snow and set that aside. Then with the bottom layer, you’d build your snowman—which always ended up with dirt clods and dead leaves and grass stuck to him. You’d carefully roll the pieces around to the front yard, where you’d carry them to the middle of the lawn and place them one on top of the other to build the snowman. Then you’d get your clean snow (set aside earlier, remember?) and pat it over the dirty snow. Last of all, you’d make a flying leap from the snowman to the front porch to keep from stepping on any more snow.
Then the hard part would begin as you’d defend your yard from all the neighborhood kids who wanted to steal your snow to make snowmen of their own—but that’s another story.
(You think I’m exaggerating? I’m not.)
So even though I moved to sunny southern Utah to get out of the snow, I was excited to see it yesterday. For one thing, it’s still a novelty to me. And for another, I know that it won’t stick around long enough to create that slushy, brown, slippery mess that hangs around for months in colder parts of the country. So snow is good. :)
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3 comments:
I grew up in the Mojave desert. Every couple of years, we'd get a good snowfall...but on the off years, people would wire together tumbleweeds and decorate them like snowmen!
I have family in St. George and their kids had SO much fun in the snow (well, except the one niece who is such a skinny little thing that she has no body fat to keep her warm!)
Here in CA, we haven't gotten snow, but we got frost last night, which brought the leaves from our ginko tree down in a deluge. It was very cool--looked like it was snowing leaves, and they even piled up on the car.
Yeah, my son in St. George sent me pictures of my 2-year-old grandson standing by a snowman nearly as tall as he was! Then little Connor laughed when his dad hit him in the head with a snowball.
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