Birthdays 'n snow days.....

Ah, it’s three in the morning.....back in my way back when time, it was, as the ubiquitous ‘they’ used t’say, just the shank o’ the evening....’they’ said it, not me nor anyone I knew talked like that but it was a nice time of nite anyway....the bars were closing ‘n they didn’t care where you went s’long as you went somewhere.....
T’day is Sophie’s birthday....Millyrose ‘n I went to Alabama for her birth....it snowed.....we flew into Nashville, rented a car ‘n drove to Tuscaloosa (Loose tooth)....it was cold ‘n overcast in Nashville ‘n the weather got worse as we headed south....when we crossed the state line ‘n got in Alabama, we ran into sleet ‘n a little futher on, snow.....Southerners have an interesting reaction to snow....the kids, of course, play.... but the adults rush out t’the grocery stores ‘n buy ev’rything on the shelves as there ain’t gonna be a tomorrow....’n they can’t...’scuse me...cain’t drive in the stuff....almost nobody has chains, they slide all over the place ‘n worst of all, they slow to a crawl.....driving down an Interstate highway at twenty miles an hour, in the center of the lanes, hunched over their steering wheels as tho’ they’re facing Armageddon.....’n then (wait for it)
.....then they closed the Interstate! And it ain’t like they had a foot or two of the white stuff....it might’a been an inch....maybe two.....but, they closed the Interstate ‘n forced us off.....
There was an Alabama State Trooper directing traffic as I pulled off so I stopped beside the road ‘n walked up to him.....”Scuse me” I said, “but I’m from California...”
“And you don’t know how to drive in this stuff” he interupted me....”Nah!” I replied, “I know how t’drive in snow. It’s just that off the Interstate, I don’t know how t’get to Tuscaloosa.”
So we followed his directions to “go down this here road for ‘bout a mile, hang a right ‘n that’d be the ‘old’ road, y’see...runs parallel t’the Interstate.”
Which is what we did, stopping for lunch along the way, having a very good chickenfried steak which they do very well all over the south ‘n got to Tuscaloosa in time to take a picture of Ashby ‘n Kellye carrying home a very tiny Sophia Claire Lawson with snowflakes flying all around....
And it don’t seem all that long ago.....Happy Birthday, Sophie Claire.....