Sam Venable  

Special Contributor

I have a love-hate relationship with snow. It’s been that way ever since I became an adult.

Snow is great when you’re a child. It closes school, often for days at a time. True, this “gift” can come back to haunt school kids several months later, when that blessed Last Day extends well into summer vacation. But what 10-year-old worries about those details in January—especially when he has a math test scheduled the next day?

I gotta admit snow is pretty to look at, too. I love to walk in it. Matter of fact, if you have never eased through deep woods on a silent, snowy day, you have no concept of contentment.

What’s more, a dense blanket of snow around Christmas is nostalgically gorgeous, even if it does make a mess out of holiday travel. I can even abide two snows per winter—sometimes as many as three—if they’re of short duration. But 10-below thermometer readings and six or seven new inches piled up every time you part the curtains quickly grows old.

Enough, by Celsius, is enough!

If you watch winter weather forecasts on TV—and who doesn’t?—you know how those meteorologists go berserk when the S-word is spoken. They pull out all manner of charts and maps and radar pictures that are colored like something you’d see in a three-pizza nightmare. They start speaking in tongues and batting their eyelashes. They would have us believe snow comes from highs meeting lows and cold fronts from Canada riding moist air, blah-blah-blah.

What sort of fools do they take us for?

You and I both know where snow comes from. It comes from grocery store owners. Here’s how the process works:

Mister Big Britches Merchant—who, of course, is vacationing in the Bahamas—calls the home office and asks for a stock boy. He discovers there is an oversupply of rutabagas, guava paste, anchovies and water chestnuts.

“This is terrible!” he sputters around a $12 cigar. “Put out the word!”

So the kid starts whispering, “Did you hear what’s coming tonight? Three inches of snow and 20 degrees.”

The guy he tells it to bumps into a friend on the street. “Five inches of snow and 12 degrees,” he says. “I just got the word.”

Then it goes to 12 inches and 4-below and—well, you get the picture. Chicken Little herself couldn’t do as good a job.

People leave work. Schools turn out. Everybody speeds to the store in a nervous panic. A primeval spirit, the will to survive, awakens throughout society.

“Give us bread, milk, eggs, cereal and beer!” they scream to the store manager.

“Sorry,” he replies, “were sold out of those. How ’bout some nice rutabagas, guava paste, anchovies and water chestnuts?”

Of course they buy. At twice the price.

The TV weather people hear what’s going on and take a spin to the store. They see checkout lines stretching to the meat counter. They stay just long enough to buy a six-month supply of rutabagas, guava paste, anchovies and water chestnuts; then they boogie back to the station to spread the news that 15 inches of snow and a low of minus-18 are on the way.

Hey, can 300,000 East Tennesseans be wrong?

Sam Venable is an author, stand-up comedian, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. He may be reached at mahv@outlook.com.