[Congressman Billybob]

This replaces my earlier column for this week, when I got hoaxed on a transcript. This one I know is right, because I was there.

John / Billybob

[Red Badger]

[nbhunt]

I just love snow. But living in the most Southern part of the US, we rarely get any. But when it does....oh, the quiet sounds are just so wonderful.

[Budge]

Beautiful, John!

[One_American]

Thanks for sharing your childhood memories. I have similar memories growing up in the Chicago area. The first snow of the year was a wondrous thing when you were about 4-10 years old. I remember my mom dressing us with layers of cloths, those old rubber snap up boots and leggings. You could hardly walk while wearing all that stuff, but we were dying to get out there and get on the hill with our sleds and dishes.

One of my greatest childhood memories was when I was about 6 or 7 years old. We went to a White Sox night game at the old Comiskey Park. I had been to many day games before that but when we walked up to the grandstand and walked out of the tunnel to go to our seats I was truly amazed. The colors of the lights, the blackness of the sky, and how green the grass on the field looked just mesmerized me. I will never forget the magical feeling I had when I walked out to see that field on my first night game.

[Species8472]

A little different here in "Southern" Alaska. Starts to fall in October and you are lucky to see green again until April or May.

Species8472 shovels 20+ feet of snow off his roof

[Beagle8U]

Your story about fresh snow reminded me of how I always felt late muzzle-loader hunting in Michigan when it stays 10 below zero with a brisk wind all day.

I can go out and there wont be another soul anywhere in the woods. You can hike and hunt from sunrise to dark and never see a human footprint.

It was like there wasn't another person on earth, just me and the deer over the next ridge.

[Red_Devil 232]

I remember my first real snow fall! My family had just moved from Hawaii to Woodbury, New Jersey. It was 1960. I was in the sixth grade. I was a Blond(greenish from pools), Blue eyed kid with a very dark tan. My mom says I came home from my first day of school upset because the kids asked if I was Black (not the word they used). Turns out the problem was I was just a shade darker than the Italian kids who teased me.

My mom told me to just wait a few months. :)

The evening it snowed was magic. My Mom, my Dad and Me watched it fall from an upstairs window. My Mom opened the window and it was so eerie ... not a sound and all this activity in the air! The next day everything was under about a 6-8 inches of snow! Wow!

N.J. is where I leaned about the Revolution. I visited Independence Hall, Valley Forge and all kinds of other famous places and battle sites.

I went as a Patriot with a Tri-Corner hat, trick-or-treating, on Halloween.

Before we moved from N.J. My parents took me to Boston to see the Old North Church, Old Ironsides, Bunker Hill and many other historic sites.

My first snow fall. Wow! It lead to me learning and being taught about this great country.

[OldMissileer]

The snowfall I remember most is the time we went up to our second home (the house in which my Mom was raised) in a little village in the woods of Northern Michigan. We usually closed the house up after deer hunting and did not return until March but we went in January once when I was about 11 years old or so.

Around midnight I walked outside and it was snowing at a pretty good rate. The village had street lights but was so small and with the snow coming down each light was an island within the darkness and it was so quiet you could hear every flake hit the ground.

As I stood in one pool of light in the infinite darkness I looked straight up and watched as the snowflakes would appear out of the black night and fall toward me.

I walked the 100 yards to the woods and stood in the dark just listening to the snow fall knew that I was as close to heaven as a human on earth could get.

Yes, I did have those kinds of thoughts at the age of 11.

[Deaf Smith]

Man from KAOS: I blame my activities on my childhood. No matter how much I begged, my Mom wouldn't give me a sled. I begged and begged but she wouldn't do it.

Get Smart: Why wouldn't she give you a sled?

Man From KAOS: I don't know. Maybe is was 'cause we lived in Florida.

[grey_whiskers]

Salisbury and environs have a certain beauty to them -- I've done century bike rides around there.

...but it took your writing to bring out what it must have been like 50 years ago, with a blanket of new-fallen snow.

D@mn, that was a nice piece of writing!

Cheers!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Lovely article.

[patton]

Well written.

[SuziQ]

We've lived 'up North' for 29 of our almost 34 years of marriage. Our first year out of the South was in Indiana, west of Lafayette. I'd never seen that much snow in my entire life, and only a couple of years here in MA have equalled, or surpassed it. I told SirKit a few years later that the Lord must have planned for us to spend a while up North, because anything after that winter would be a breeze, and I was right!

I do love looking at the snow, and the silence, before the plows arrive is so peaceful. But we're tired of the cold, and we're planning to move back to MS, or somewhere much more South than here!