Snow

02/12/10

The weather man says it will snow in Macon today.  Snow is rare here in Middle Georgia, and it always causes a sort of panic among its residents.  They storm grocery stores, stripping bread shelves, cleaning out refrigerated cases of all the milk, stocking up on beer and wine and bundles of firewood.  One would think that we will be snowed in for weeks, when in fact the snow will be gone by Sunday.

I like snow in Macon precisely because it falls and looks beautiful, then it’s gone.   Oh, there was the storm back in 1973 when we got 16 inches and were snowed in for days.  Maybe that explains what I like to call snow dementia.

Snow reminds me of the days when we went on family skiing trips out west every winter.  Every year when we were getting ready to go, Clint went into a funk we named his “trip mood.” He was cranky, fractious and just plain shitty.  I never did figure why he got that way, but over the years, he mellowed and stopped turning into a sonofabith before trips.  The trip mood was not exclusive to ski trips.  He did the same thing before summer vacations.  Once on the plane or in the car, he relaxed and had more fun than any of us!

I have a studly photo of Clint on the slops at Beaver Creek. We always came home exhausted but exhilarated, having skied ourselves into a near-coma every day.  One year we actually went to Austria to ski  Kitzbuhel with some folks from Columbus  On the way back to the States, we spent a couple of days in Munich.  That’s where one evening we wandered into a restaurant where no one spoke English, and he threw caution to the winds and closed his eyes and put his finger on the menu and ordered the item under his finger.  I had sense enough to order veal.

In many European restaurants, it is common for strangers to share tables, and a nice man joined us.  Our food arrived, Clint’s in a large crock and looking like beef stew.  Our table mate spoke a little English, and after Clint started in on his stew, dunking his bread in the gravy, he asked the German what he was eating.  “Ahh,” said the German.  “You are eating a favorite dish here, stewed beef hearts.”  (I shared my veal with Clint).

The photos above are from Beaver Creek.  I'm calling them "Posing on the Slopes" and "I want a martini and I want it now."