Snowbound

Snow was general over the Southern States last week. A high-pressure area sweeping southeast from the frozen Mackenzie Basin of northern Canada brought in a week of sleet and rain, of wintry winds that ruined the tomato crop of the lower Rio Grande, killed cattle in the Kissimmee Valley of Florida, and spread a blanket of snow over the red clay of Georgia hills, over the pine woods of Alabama and the low Louisiana marshlands. Snow fell at Laredo on the Mexican border, beginning one midnight and falling until 5 the next morning, to the wonder of the natives; in San Antonio it fell gently on the adobe houses, on the cactus and the palm trees, on the children who had never seen it before. The heaviest snow in 33 years fell in Houston. And in mild astonishment the Texas newspapers reported that people were throwing snowballs in Port Lavaca, which lies on dreamy Matagorda Bay in the same latitude as the Canary Islands.

It was a strange week for Southerners. Outside the South it was cold enough, but not unseasonably so, as snow covered most of the Eastern States. It was so cold in Lincoln, Neb. that, according to one scientist there, the University of Nebraska's Memorial Stadium shrank four inches, reducing its seating capacity by 29. Little grumbling went with bad weather there; Nebraska's drought had been so bad that a heavy snowstorm brought Statewide rejoicing. Miles City, Mont, was reported the coldest place in the U. S. last week, with 27DEG below.

But for Southerners with emotions and water pipes alike close to the surface, with houses built for warmer winters and with crops like oranges, lettuce, satsumas, grapefruit still unharvested, it was a week of sore trial--a week of raw winds, raw tempers, busted water pipes, frozen radiators, sniffles, skids, tumbles--a week of frustration when auto-supply houses ran out of tire chains, when hot-water heaters blew up, trains were late, mails delayed, and cases of influenza (10,000 in North Louisiana) closed schools that few children could reach. Snowbound New Englanders of Whittier's day might be undisturbed at seeing No cloud above, no earth below A universe of sky and snow!

For the long winter days indoors were prepared for and expected. But ice on the bayous, icicles festooning the palmettos, and sleet blowing through the cracks in Negro cabins, made a snowbound Dixie that no poets praised. Unused to driving in such weather, Southern motorists banged fenders, skidded into telephone poles, stalled in ditches and drifts along the highways. Manhattan Columnist Ward Morehouse, driving across Georgia and South Carolina, reported that abandoned cars lay along the roads all the way. Unused to walking on such streets, Southern pedestrians sprawled and staggered, were late to work and filled the personal columns of their newspapers with accounts of broken shins, sprained backs, bumps and bruises. Negroes in Atlanta wrapped gunny sacks over their shoes as they worked to clean the streets. In most Southern cities there was no regular snow-removal machinery, and hastily rigged-up road scrapers did not work very well.

Storm high lights:

Florida. Hard hit was the great, black-soil Kissimmee Valley of central Florida that lies north of Lake Okeechobee. There, though no snow fell, 1,300 head of cattle perished in three days -- in part because heavy rains in the late fall soured the grass, left cattle weakened when the cold nights came. Set back were the strenuous Florida efforts to make the State a great cattle-raising area; range riders of the big Ikes Brothers Ranch (25,000 head) were on the job 48 hours at a stretch. Florida natives damned as propaganda the story that birds numbed by the cold were falling in Miami streets. But they admitted that the price of firewood jumped from $3 to $15 a cord.

Georgia. After the weather man had predicted light flurries of snow, Atlanta awakened to find itself buried under 10.3 inches, heaviest in the weather bureau's history. Schools closed, department stores closed, a local radio station broadcast continuously, as during a flood. In Dahlonega, famed old mining town that has lately reported a new gold strike, 18 inches of snow fell, gave the mountain city its worst weather in 40 years. Snowbound Georgians scooped snow off their windowsills, mixed it with cream and sugar, added whiskey or rum to suit, and drank it down. Said the Atlanta Journal: Bad weather makes good people. There were no arrests during the worst spell, and passers-by turned neighborly, pushed cars out of drifts, helped the stranded.

Alabama. At Birmingham, centre of the Southern steel industry, there was a coal shortage. John Lewis' United Mine Workers of America, appealed to by the Governor, agreed to let miners work a long week to help out. At Fort Payne (pop. 3,375) in the Lookout Mountains of Alabama, snow piled silently on the roof of the McGee Cotton Warehouse. When it reached a depth of 13 inches, the roof caved in, the walls collapsed, and snow and debris splashed out to block U. S. Highway 11, which runs through the town. At Selma a Finnish-born contractor astonished townspeople by climbing a snow-covered hill and skiing down again. Isaac Burton Tigrett, president of Gulf, Mobile and Northern Lines, sent out notices to his station agents: "When you go off duty at night, leave the waiting rooms unlocked, have good fires going, see there is enough coal on hand to last the hoboes all night."

Tennessee. The swift and treacherous Cumberland River froze over for the fourth time in its recorded history. At 15 below, Tennessee got its lowest temperature on record. In the little town of Jellico in the mountains a group assembling to discuss ways of increasing Tennessee's tourist travel was frozen in, could not reach the meeting.

Louisiana. It was within one degree of New Orleans' lowest temperature in 56 years, and telephone calls reporting frozen pipes reached the city engineer's office at the rate of 250 an hour. It was so cold that fish, benumbed, rose to the surface of Bayou St. John, to be captured by hand and net. The rice and cane fields of southwest Louisiana were under a coating of ice; snow reached out to the coast; herders milked cows on the Louisiana levees hovering over fires and dragging driftwood from the river in slides. In the teche country, ice and snow clustered on the moss-draped live oaks that grow in green and grey roofs over the roads.

Texas. In Houston the plumbers' union (A. F. of L.) won much-needed public good will when it agreed to drop overtime, work straight hours repairing plumbing. The Rio Grande Valley was hard hit: half the citrus crop near Brownsville was still on the trees, and Brownsville, at 29DEG, was colder than Nome, Alaska at 33DEG; 75% of the tomato crop was believed killed; beets and cabbages in the coastal bend near Corpus Christi were damaged. Estimated value of endangered fruit: $7,000,000.

South. Curious to Northerners was a heady exhilaration that spread over the South despite losses, annoyances, discomforts and downright suffering. There was misery enough in cold cabins, but Negro boys in Mississippi had a wonderful time hunting rabbits with fast dogs and hickory sticks. Off the front pages of Southern newspapers went accounts of war and politics last week, and in their place appeared proud pictures of sternwheelers being crushed in the unprecedented ice, parks glinting and glistening in the heaviest snow, pretty girls being pushed into the deepest snowdrifts anybody could remember. There were some reports of snowfights; there were pleasant countrified editorials discussing the ethics of snowballing and speaking out strongly because reports had come in "that some rowdies had placed rocks in their snowballs." The South last week was full of frozen pipes and howling winds, but it was also full of snowmen, slides, sleds, and a great sense of novelty. On Peachtree Street, in Atlanta, art students snowsculpted Scarlett O'Haras, painted them with insect sprayers. Although his paper contained stories about oil heaters that had exploded, people who had been hurt in falls, gallant old Frederick Sullens, editor of the Jackson, Miss. Daily News, refused to be downcast, summed up a lot of Southern feeling: "No form of weather is more fascinating than a heavy snowstorm," he wrote. "To be moving about in the open when the great fat flakes are falling is something to delight the soul. ... A beautiful woman snugly clad on a snowy day is a delight to tired eyes--more attractive by far than any nymph in a bathing suit. The wind whips color into her cheeks and tingling air lends sparkling brilliance to her eyes. . . ."

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