In my life, the calendar has been turned to the month of February 73 times; but one particular “February-turning” stands out in 1970, a few weeks short of my 19th birthday, while a freshman at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.
Some years ago (not 1970), also in February, I heard a local TV weatherman say, “It’s snowing a thousand feet up but evaporating before it reaches the ground.” This statement was the vehicle for my memory-travel back to that special 1970 February winter day.
This TV weather personality/prognosticator was well-groomed, wore a three-piece suit, and was followed by many “weather fans.” National attention is given to a Pennsylvania “weather prognosticator” every February 3rd. Although somewhat “grooming challenged,” he was surrounded by an entourage of formally dressed men wearing top hats. In his case, the words “entourage” and “handlers” are interchangeable.
In my freshman year at Appalachian, I lived on the 6th floor of Bowie dorm, next to Kidd Brewer Stadium. One dormitory in which my daughter, Rachell, later lived has been razed. I’m surprised the same fate hasn’t befallen Bowie dorm, because of the long-term wear and tear of the “raising” done in that former freshman men’s dorm.
During one particularly snowy day in the winter of 1969/70, I studied while eating soup from a ceramic mug with built-in heating element. Soup seemed just right for study. Anything weightier might have drawn too much blood from the brain, causing drowsiness, then sleep.
At that time, Appalachian’s “University Book Store” carried a few items of “college survival food”: Campbell’s Soup, Beanie Weenies, etc. Just like Barney Fife’s landlady, Mrs. Mendelbright, I don’t think Appalachian allowed hot plates in the dorm rooms. But I think “hot cups” like mine were okay. And just as with Mrs. Mendelbright, neither girls nor alcohol were allowed in Bowie dorm when I was there.
In addition to the “ingredients”: snowy day, studying, and soup, I added music: The Prelude to Act I of Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” It’s not like the bombastic brass which everyone associates with Wagner, but instead, is filled with violins played softly and “ethereally” in the upper register. (Give it a listen, google: “Prelude to Act I, Lohengrin YouTube”).
A book (not of verse, but of “text”), a cup of soup, and a record, playing sounds a bit like a variation on that famous verse from “The Rubaiyat,” but minus the jug of wine and a woman, since both, as previously mentioned, were “Verboten.”
Glancing out my dorm room window during a break from study, I saw a stream of cascading snowflakes, with the treble strains of “Lohengrin’s” softly bowed violins providing theme music for their stately descent.
It seemed to me those snowflakes were born not much higher than where I was sitting, next to the upmost floor of a high-rise college dorm, in the North Carolina mountains.
As a child, I would look out a window and visually track a single snowflake from where it first came into my view above, down to its eventual resting place on the deposited snow blanket in my yard. It seemed strange that when upwardly viewed against the clouds, the single snowflake looked a light shade of gray; but when landing on the mass of “accumulated brethren,” it became indistinguishable from all the rest. Of course, this kind of snowflake “singling out” was impossible from a height of 6 stories, as my eyes couldn’t follow the flake all the way to the ground.
Looking out my dorm window at the multitude of snowflakes “lilting” down, I was sure of the next day’s snow tracks of squirrels, rabbits and birds. Maybe even something like what I once saw in the snow-covered yard of my boyhood home, looking like a mini “snow angel,” crafted as a joke. Instead, it was the actual impression left by a bird’s wing-and-feather-flapping take off!”
The neighbors’ dogs also left tracks in the snow of my childhood yard. But nothing like those in the snow around Appalachian when I was there. These were the tracks of a Great Dane, which belonged to one professor, and had a complete run of the campus. He sometimes entered the cafeteria, heading straight for someone’s reachable plate (not the professor, his waist-high dog). The snow revealed animal tracks that otherwise would not have been seen (as with those of The Invisible Man (1933). In fact, the snow kind of acted like the lemon juice in the old disappearing and reappearing secret writing trick. Except with it, the words were revealed through heat, and heat would have melted the snow-crafted animal tracks for good, with no return.
On that day, I not only thought about my being 6 stories above the ground of Watauga County, but of Watauga County and the Appalachian Mountains’ height above the “flatlands” down below, stretching all the way to the coast (sea level).
I have lived in these “flatlands” many years since graduating Appalachian. But sometimes, especially during winter, I recall that snow-filled day in Boone.
As to that weatherman’s statement, “It’s snowing a thousand feet up,” I will go on record as saying that I have been there, upwards of a thousand feet, on equal footing with the falling snow.
