Living in Nashville, winter has brought on a whole new experience when it comes to weather.
The city is currently almost completely shut down (the mayor has asked everyone stay off the roadways for the past three days) due to inches of ice on roads and temperatures below freezing, topped with new fallen snow.
The snowcessories most Tennesseans use to clear their cars (maybe minus the Captain).
While this seems piddly compared to what other Americans are experiencing to our north, this slight winter weather halts an entire city, as there is a lack of city equipment to care for the roads, citizens can hardly handle driving in the rain, let alone freezing precipitation and quite frankly, current weather conditions happen about once every 15 years.
It was a 90 minute workout and half a tank of gas to get my car de-iced yesterday.
And while businesses, schools and folks everywhere are turning into Jack Nicholson from The Shining due to cabin fever, I find myself feeling sorry that the city is shut down due to ice, not snow. Because snow days are fun. Snow days are for play.
Being from the Midwest, it was a very rare treat to get your ass out and actually play in the snow when you were supposed to be sitting in a social studies class.
Helping Dad shovel the sidewalk. The broom was a big help.
Growing up in rural Iowa, no one batted an eye when several inches (or feet) of snow, high winds and freezing temperatures were included in the forecast for the next day. No one rushed home early from work clogging up the streets, made a mad dash to the grocery stores buying all of the milk and bread in sight and no one abandoned their vehicles on the side of the road due to the frozen flakes falling from the sky (as people tend to do in my current state of Tennessee).
Anytime winter weather is in the forecast, the South freaks the fuck out.
Bread and milk aisles in Nashville when snow is in the forecast.
Where I grew up, school was never, ever cancelled the night before predicted winter weather – which often included blizzards, sleet, hail, ice accompanied by subzero temperatures and wind chills (in Tennessee, entire counties and districts will call off school if any meteorologist utters the word “snow” during the weather segment).
Getting a snow day in Iowa was about as possible as Martians landing in the community park.
I wish I may, I wish I might, please let the snowfall cancel school for my delight.
So it was a rare treat when the phone (that was connected to the kitchen wall – oh the good ‘ol days) would ring in the wee hours of the morning announcing that school was cancelled (mostly because the buses couldn’t make the trip to get kids in the country). Instead of sleeping one moment more, my sister and I got our asses out of bed like it was Christmas morning, adorned ourselves in all kinds of snow gear and headed out to play in the wonderland of white (usually with our cousins, who lived right across the street).
This kind of snow won’t merit a school snow day in Iowa.
Documented below is one of the funnest snow days in history (well, my history).
First we got to sled in the road, which felt like we were breaking all kind of societal rules.
How ’bout my mom’s shit kickers? So warm in subzero temperatures.
Second, my sister and I built snowmen complete with cute, cozy accessories (mine came off of my body).
Sacrificing my warmth for a fashionable snowman, naturally.
Then my cousins, the Morris boys, thought it would be a good idea to dig through the snow to Timbuktu. I would rather have made snow angels and bedazzle my handmade snow creatures but of course I agreed to help excavate (as I had a cute shovel I wanted to put to use – and by I, I mean my cousin Derek. Let’s remember my fingernails are jewels, not tools).
Can we live here?
I thought it was nothing short of a winter miracle when my dad and Uncle Lewis came out to play with us, constructing a snow fort out of a drift in my backyard, complete with a tunnel – diverting the dig to faraway lands (thank GOD – I was getting tired of being the project manager).
All these years later, I long for a true snow day to build (well, rather sit on my ample derriere and watch my cousins, dad and uncle construct) a fort.
But then again, I live in a state that has snow days with no snow.
Anyone want to road trip it to Iowa?
C’mon!
CBXB
Cowboys and Crossbones 
