Winter Musings

I moved to Georgia in 1978 to escape the snow. The winter before I moved we had over 100 inches of snow in the Cleveland area. My day started by cleaning the 3 inch accumulation of snow off of my car. Then I had to clear the snow the plow had pushed up behind the car. The day I gave my manager my letter of resignation, we were having a blizzard in March. He jokingly asked me how I could leave all of this while gesturing to the snow covered window.

The first winter in Georgia we had an ice storm. My then husband and I had doctor’s appointments that day. Foolishly we made the trip to their office only to find it closed. What should have been a 10 minute drive took about 45 minutes. It wasn’t us who were having the trouble; it was the rest of the traffic. We should have been ashamed of ourselves laughing at drivers spinning their wheels in hopes of getting some traction. We had a front-wheel drive car and winter experience. I should have felt bad slowing driving around stuck cars. Cleaning the car was fun too. We were very optimistic about the weather and had disposed of all of the window scrapers and brushes. I ended up using a credit card to scrape the ice off the car windows.

The children in Georgia know how to enjoy even a dusting of snow. I’ve seen pictures of kids sliding down hills on pieces of cardboard. The snow was so light that the grass was still visible. It didn’t stop them. My own son goes out whenever there is snow to play in it, and he is 24 now. Somewhere there is a picture of the snow duck he made at 1 am when he was 7 or 8 years old. I got him up in the middle of the night to see the snow and there was only enough to make a duck.

This is the second time in 2 weeks that we have had wintry weather warnings. This time there is snow in the mountains to the northeast of Atlanta. I will bet the dairy sections of the grocery stores were stripped of milk last night. I am not really being facetious about this. I do remember a winter storm around 1981 that had Atlanta frozen for about 3 days. I was able to get to work on the third day and needed to man the telephones since the admin people were not able to get to work. Atlanta is the corporate headquarters of the company I was working for and I took many calls from other parts of the country. People were irate that they had not been able to reach corporate for two days. I don’t know how many times I explained how an ice storm cripples this area. I felt for them because I remember being expected at work under the same conditions in Ohio. They just aren’t prepared for winter weather here.

I wanted to include some real winter weather pictures. Too bad these are all from my childhood. By the time you are an adult, it gets old.



Notice that the snow is up to her knees.



Valentine's Day:
I had to add to this. I just got off the phone with my sister-in-law. They had to have their driveway plowed this morning after a 20 inch snowfall. I am so glad I live in Georgia!