It's Really Coming Down

One of the gifts of ministry God has given me has been the joy of living in different parts of this great country. I have been blessed to meet new and wonderful people and learn about and experience regional cultural differences.

 

Memphis is as far south as I have ever lived. My first few weeks here have been amazingly wonderful. What warm and wonderful people and warm and wonderful food. Memphis is known for its food and music and I have been enjoying both. The musical talent in the church I serve is awesome with some brilliantly talented musicians in both traditional and contemporary arenas of worship music. I have also been enjoying the western Tennessee winter. Or, at least, what they call winter around here. Yesterday (Monday) it was 63^o. Saturday it snowed. Or, at least, it tried to snow.

Snow is viewed and handled very differently in different parts of the country. When it was snowing Saturday I had several people point out to me that “It is really coming down.” I soon discovered that there definition of “really coming down” was not my definition of “really coming down.” I ran to the window and looked out expecting to see a sheet of white. Instead I had to adjust my glasses just to focus in on the few miniscule “flakelets” of snow drifting to earth. I am talking teeny tiny sparkly dots glittering in the air. It took me a while to realize that these people were serious. They thought it was really coming down.

Like most people, I have a history with snow. I grew up in Kentucky and it didn’t snow often or snow much. Occasionally we would get a few inches, but that was not the norm. Anytime it did snow, the folks in my carpool would call and insist that I drive. Snow really scared them. Me, not so much. I just adjusted my driving to the road conditions. No problem. Winter weather is much the same in the area of Ohio I have lived the past 20+ years. I always laugh because when the weather man says it is going to snow, everyone rushes out to the store and stocks up on bread and milk. Even if they don’t use much bread and milk, snow triggers in them the “I’ve got to have bread and milk” reflex. Invariably the shelves are picked clean.

To help you understand how snow is seen differently in different places I have lived let me share some information. The average annual snowfall in Louisville, Kentucky, is 12.5 inches. In Memphis the average is 5.3 inches and the average snow fall in central Iowa is 43.6 inches. After spending my first 25 years of life in Kentucky, I moved to Iowa. It was in Iowa that I learned about snow and what a snow storm is.

We moved to Mitchellville, Iowa, in September and in late October my next door neighbor asked which door I was going to keep shoveled and open for the winter. I looked at him like he had three heads. After the first few feet of snow had fallen – before January – I had decided to keep the back walk shoveled and the backdoor open. It was a different world. The high pitched whine of snow blowers and snowmobiles could be heard all winter long. We went ice fishing on a regular basis and I often left my car running when I went into a store to make sure nothing froze up. Our second winter in Iowa the temperature never rose above 0^O for 31 straight days. And it snowed a lot.

So, my neighbor’s question should have been a hint of what was to come. But my clearest indication of the winters that awaited me was some information I picked up while visiting Don Stevenson. Don was a very successful Iowa pig farmer. Well education, Don held U.S. Patents on several pieces of farm machinery he had invented and developed. While taking a tour of his operation, I noticed a cord that ran from his back door to the nearest pig barn. When I asked why Lorna, his wife, had such a long clothes line, he gave me one of those famous Iowa farmer smiles that said, “You don’t know much for a boy who went to college.” Don explained that what I was looking at was not a clothes line; it was the line he held on to when he traveled between the house and the barn during a snowstorm. When I continued to look at him with a quizzical expression, Don said, “Sometimes when it snows around here, it really comes down.”

Within a couple of months, I found myself looking out the kitchen window during a snow storm and thinking of Don’s “clothesline.” As I looked out the window I realized that I couldn’t even see my car in the driveway. You see, it was really coming down. It wasn’t coming down Memphis style… it was REALLY COMING DOWN.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved