The Snow is Falling! The Snow is Falling!

It’s supposed to snow here tonight, 2-4 inches. In Minnesota or New Hampshire they call that a nuisance snow. Here we call it- HOLYMOTHEROFMABELTHEWORLDISCOMING TOANENDHEADFORTHEBUNKERS!! While our winters are kind of a crazy mix of sun, clouds and rain, they’re mostly just chilly with one or two bone chilling spells. Occasionally, we even get some mild temperatures. It’s just one big mixed up ball of wax that plays havoc with everyone’s sinuses for four months. We don’t get much snow. In fact, it usually snows just once or twice a season. Sometimes not at all. Which means we don’t handle snow very well. We’re not as bad as my friends in Alabama and Mississippi who drive in a ditch if a flake hits the road, God bless them, but we’re pretty darn close. It takes only a little snow to have us sliding off the roads like penguins on a glacier, but our panic starts well before the first snow hits the ground. As soon as the weather man starts predicting snow, we act like Chicken Little and start stocking up on food, cigarettes and beer.

Granted, we’re all a little shell shocked from last year’s ice storm and three week power outage. The occasional flicker of the lights makes us wince and worry. In fact, one of my neighbors fired up his generator during a short power outage recently “just in case”.

We don’t want to get caught with our pants down. EVER. AGAIN. And we don’t want to be without the necessary provisions, but this panic is nothing new. The two days before any snowfall will find every Western Kentuckian in the grocery store buying bread, milk and eggs. While we may pick up a few other items, we mostly buy bread, milk and eggs. It’s not that we adhere to the theory that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s just what we buy. We don’t know why. We just do it. I’ve asked people to explain it to me, but they can’t. Our mothers did it. Their mothers did it. (Their grandmothers just went out back and reached under a chicken, but that’s another post.) It’s just tradition that no one questions.

The shelves at the local Wal-marts and Kroger’s are picked clean of those items right now. A friend of mine went to Wal-mart last night, and the only thing left in the giant egg case was four cartons of organic eggs. I’d show you a picture of the empty shelves, but that would require a trip to the store, and I’m trying to avoid that zoo at all costs. Besides, store management gets a little nervous when you drag a big Nikon in there to photograph the bread looting.

I’m not worried. The Hula-gen’s keep a well stocked pantry because we cook most of our meals at home. I have a freezer full of beef, corn on the cob, school fundraiser cookie dough and half eaten ice cream. We have half a loaf of wheat bread which should last us until Saturday, unless we get on some kind of crazy toast kick. And we sometimes go for two or three days at a time without cracking open our milk jug. (Which might account for the osteopenia developing in my left hip.) I think we’ll be fine, but if we get desperate we have those fifteen jars of tomatoes I canned this summer.

I’m no fan of winter, but I am looking forward to taking a few pictures of the snow tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to hunker down in my nice warm house and wait for the mayhem to get really wound up tomorrow morning. Sunrise should bring some school closings even if we get only a couple of inches of snow, but maybe not for Teen Angel’s school district. Their superintendent used to live in northern Indiana.