I really do promise to get back to the political narrative, but it has taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to say, and then I've had other things I wanted to write about.

Yesterday it snowed in Dallas, which is always fun and funny. And treacherous since no one can drive and they do nothing to treat the roads or bridges.

No one from Texa or Central Oklahoma ever seems to believe me that we had more snow in NE Oklahoma (and also NW Arkansas) and that I learned to drive in winter weather while in high school.

Now NE Oklahoma didn't get as much snow in my childhood and youth as it did in my parents' youth. The grandparents Jones actually owned a horse-drawn sleigh that they had ordered from Philadelphia. They used this sleigh to get around in the winter when roads were otherwise impassible to automobile traffic. My Dad had great memories of riding the sleigh. There was never enough snow in my childhood to use the sleigh, so it sat rotting in the barn.

We didn't get tons of snow in my, but we got more than Central Oklahoma or Texas. Our first snow always came in October (my grandpa says that the latest snow he ever remembers was April 17, 1953). I remember various blizzards through the years, often at Christmas-time (like the gorgeous, but dangerous blizzard of '79). Or the times when we'd get 24 inches of snow in one week and have weeks of snow to play in (like that time the Akers got snowed into our house for a week while moving from Arizona to Kentucky). See, in central Oklahoma or Texas, the snow is usually gone the next day or two days later. In NE Oklahoma it would often stay for a week or two.

And school was usually not cancelled, so even in high school I had to drive. I remember the last day of the fall semester either my junior or senior year when I got to school after a week of snow and ice and the school parking lot was a solid sheet of ice so thick that it wasn't cracking even when the cars drove on it. That was a fun day to park.

We had some gorgeous snow and ice days in Fville. There was a lovely ice storm not long before I moved. Driving up Mt. Sequoyah trough the tunnel of ice-covered trees was glorious.