Tuesday/Wednesday, January20/21, 1987

This year (2015) and 1987 have the same day/date correspondence (that is, the dates fall on the same day of the week in both years). And it was exactly 28 years ago tonight and tomorrow that my view of snow changed forever. I was 18, nearly 19 and early in second semester of my freshman year of college in January of 1987. I was going to a small college in the North Carolina mountains and was a little over two hours from my hometown in upstate South Carolina, just south of Charlotte, NC. It was a small country town of just over 300 people which we had moved to in June, 1969 when I was a little over one year old. And we lived in the same house there for 27 1/2 years, until January, 1997 when we sold it and moved. And it snowed there every so often in the winter (January, February, March) in the 1970s and first part of the 1980s, when I was in elementary, junior high, and high school. And I always loved it when it did, getting out of school and going outside to play in it and just being out in it. And during those years I always wanted to live in the north when I grew up where it snowed a lot in the winter. Then I decided to go to this college in 1986, right after high school, though not because it would snow there, but just because I was attracted to it (which was a big mistake). But on Tuesday, January 20, 1987 I was there and the forecast was calling for it to snow heavily that night and early the next morning. I went to bed that night around ten o'clock as I usually did, then woke up early the next morning, on Wednesday, January 21 and looked out my dorm room window and to be sure there was about six inches to a foot of snow on the ground and all over the trees, cars, and buildings.

The Super Bowl was going to be played the following Sunday, January 25 in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA between the New York Giants and Denver Broncos, and I had planned to go home that weekend to watch it, my mother was going to come and pick me up on Saturday, then take me back on Monday. I wondered if this snowfall would alter those plans, and later that morning called her at home and she said it had also snowed heavily all over our hometown county and in the Charlotte area, and school had been cancelled (she taught fifth grade at the local elementary school). I asked if she would still be able to come and get me that Saturday as there was a chance the snow would be melted and cleared enough by then, and she said she did not know, would have to wait a day or two and see. I then went to my 8:00 class the following day, Thursday, January 22 and it looked like some of the snow had disappeared from around the campus and I heard people talking about snow plows clearing it off the interstates and other roads. That really raised my confidence and I thought she could come and get me that Saturday, and after this class I went back to the dorm and called her and said I thought it had cleared up enough for her to come and get me, and she said it had not, there were places on the interstate where it was just impassable, and there was no way she could make that drive.

I was disappointed, but just planned to watch it on the TV in my dorm room. But a little over half of this snow did melt that Friday and Saturday, though the forecast did call for more snow that Sunday. I then did start watching the pre game show that Sunday at 4:00, on CBS with Brent Musburger anchoring it, and it was obvious it was completely sunny and in the 70s in the Los Angeles area then, and he opened it by saying they did not want to make the rest of the country jelouse but they were having absolutely beautiful weather there. Then a little over an hour later snow started to fall heavily again there on campus, which I noticed outside my dorm window as it was still light outside. It then got dark and I watched the game and then went to bed after it was over. I then woke up the next morning, Monday, January 26, and looked outside and again there was about a foot of new snow on the ground and other things, it was more than the first snow. I then called home later that morning, after I had gone to my first class, and she said it had snowed heavily there again as well and they were out of school again, and she seemed aggravated about it, saying "Enough of something is enough". It then did get mild and clear that week and most of the snow melted and was mostly gone by the following Friday (January 30), on which she did come and get me and bring me home for that weekend. But this period of snow completely changed my view on it, and after that I never liked it again, and every winter after that I always hoped it would not snow. And after this Miami became a very appealing place for me to live, and I always wanted to live there, partly because there would be no snow. And I did live in Miami for about a year in the late 2000s, and I had planned for it to be permanent, though it did not turn out that way (though I really did like it for the time I was there).

"I happen to be a vegetarian". Lex, from Jurrasic Park