Snow Moon Diary

Hold on

Snow falls most in my memory. Bent boughs of pine and cedar. Blue cold. And so quiet. Bend your ear toward the sunrise. Listen to the chimes of first rays of sunlight as they dance through ice crystals. Taste the snow on the saplings’ tops. Dark green and pure white. Cold violet shadows creep under the rocks. Nothing moves. Then the sunlight slicks the pine needles and plop, a clump falls. Then another. A chill vibrates deep inside. Delightful. Snow in Williamsville.

Most of my adult life has been spent in the subtropics. Snow exists as mostly memory. But it also pries itself between my ears as part myth and part metaphor. I do remember the delight of the first flake’s drift to earth.

There was a time in Kosciusko. Eastside Elementary. Christmas program. We stood in tiered rows on stage. Dressed red and green. Jingle Bells. Looked out the window. Out of nowhere came a flurry of white. The piano keyboard cover slammed shut. Parents rushed Children to the windows then the door. We filed out. Coats and gloves. No books. Christmas vacation. Hopped into cars then sloshed and slid up the hill toward home. White Christmas. Dreams come true.

The Snow Moon shows full on February 12th this year. I dig deep into the bank of memory and find the metaphor. The myth. The magic of pre-dawn stillness. All is quieted. Washed white. A time of infinite possibilities. A flurry of dreams from skies past.

White ice blisters a cold-fired memory. I close my eyes and hear the clank of chain-looped tires and their slow-grind trail up and down East Jefferson Street. Rare, it was. Snow. Anticipated magic. Illusion seldom experienced. Magnify the flakes. Look deep into the crystals. A universe of infinite possibilities. Each unique. All snow.

Ring camera Little Switzerland

Many Friday nights I spent at my grandparents. We all called them Mama Reynolds and Joe. My grandfather, Henry Clay Reynolds, was universally known as Joe. He was a rounder, philanderer, cock-fighter, woodcutter, and I’m not sure what all else. I do know that he taught me how to drive across Attala County and never hit pavement. He also advised me to keep some cement blocks in the trunk to give you traction in Lobutcha Creek bottom. “Revenooers n’er figured that one out.” His shoulders shook. “They’d fishtail in the sand then bottom out.” A reference to the Internal Revenue Agents who were forever chasing Mississippi bootleggers. “We’d lose ‘em evertime.” I’m never far from cement blocks to this day. Just in case.

Mama Reynolds, on the other hand, was a saint. Good Lord never made a better person. She sewed and cooked. I’ve never known a more intuitive, creative person. The memory of her inspires me to keep going. She was kindly and good but never overbearing. Her light shone through pragmatism. Depression era Mississippi showed her what real poverty looked like. She carried her memories to the grave. Never pious, but the best person I knew. I hear her voice. “Don’t never vote Republican. They’d just as soon you starved to death.” She always voted Democrat out of respect for Mr. Roosevelt. Another of my favorites was said when a man was disrespecting his wife or hurting his children. “Somebody ort (ought) to kill him and just tell God that he died.” Take care of what needs to happen. Right is right.

Mama Reynolds loved Joe with all her heart. She was quick to forgive him for his many transgressions because down deep she knew he was good. He drank a lot but they all still ate. He fed the game birds and pit bulls better than the children, but nobody went hungry. He plowed and planted and grew a bounty. The old shed stayed full of sweet potatoes and there were five deep freezers always stocked to the brim.

Years later after they were both dead I had someone tell me that she remembered them as a child. They sat on a loaded wagon. Flour, eggs, hog meat, tons of fresh vegetables during season. A mule pulled the pair through the country. Hills and hollows and nearby farms. They gave. “We would have starved to death if it weren’t for them.” I heard it once then again and again. Nobody had a red cent. But there was food.

Mama Reynolds would take sacks that flour and meal came in. She would wash the fabric bags, starch and iron them until they looked store-bought. A Sears and Roebuck catalogue served as inspiration. She made exact copies of the children’s dresses. Just figured out how to do it. My mother always was best dressed in school.

I grew up in town. A little fat. Awkward. Clumsy. Waited on hand and foot by any number of African American women. There were few requirements for me other than the store. I started working in Leonard’s Bargain Basement when I was 9. Daddy was a junior partner in a department store. The lower level was where all the kids started. That business dictated our lives. It was on the Courthouse Square in Kosciusko. Three miles away was Williamsville, where Mama Reynolds and Joe lived.

Attala County Courthouse, Kosciusko, Mississippi

Joe loved me and I loved him. His stature was mythic. He could do anything. Fix anything. Make anything. Thinking back I know he felt sorry for me. I was squishy. He did his best to make my life better. Make me into a man.

Whenever I could get a Saturday off at the store, Joe would come get me on Friday afternoon. I’d spend the night at their house in Williamsville and we would get out early on Saturday morning. Take guns or fishing poles and hit the woods. We killed squirrels on occasion but that was about it. Caught a bream or two. He taught me how to clean and eat what we killed. We dressed the rodents head-on being careful to clean out their ears. Apparently squirrel ears are toxic. Something city boys don’t know till this very day. I was squeamish but was Hell-bent on impressing my grandfather so I did what was required. There was a certain basic pride.

Most of those Saturday mornings we would wind up at a plank country store way out red dirt roads. Deep in the county. We all sat in straight chairs around a cast-iron pot-bellied stove. He introduced me as his “running buddy.” He never wanted anyone to know he was old enough to be a grandfather. One after the other the men told stories. Rabid bats. Coon attacks. Out-running the law. Each one tried to out-do the other. Joe was one of the best. I never hunted after those times. I yearn for the story-tellers.

Mama Reynolds put our few skinned squirrels in the deep freeze. Now and again, when we had enough for a mess (more than a couple) she thawed them and fried the gray-pink carcasses for us for breakfast. She laid out a platter of fried squirrel, her famous biscuits and a bowl of squirrel gravy. She roasted at least a half dozen sweet potatoes pretty much every day in the winter. What wasn’t eaten for breakfast stayed on the back of the stove. If we wanted a snack that was it. Life was a continual feast in Williamsville.

I remember squirrel meat being stringy and spare. After they were fried and laid out for a pre-dawn feast we passed around a nutcracker. It was used to crack open the skull and expose the best part of the furry little animal. The brain. Back then and there, I found them delicious. Have not eaten a squirrel brain in close to sixty years. Not so sure if I could stomach one now. Would give it a try to pay tribute to Joe and Mama Reynolds.

There was one Saturday morning I woke up at Williamsville. After breakfast it was still dark. At daybreak I went alone into the woods. My best snow ever.

Snowfall on Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson 1970). Great Salt Lake

February 12, 2025 the Snow Moon will shine full. Let’s embrace this time of cold reflection. My memory holds a hand full of the white powder to my face. I breathe it in. Hidden in the crystals I smell the past and see the future. I think of snows past. The early morning drive from Salt Lake City with Michael Fitzsimmons out to see the Spiral Jetty. We were the first car to plow through the gravel road out to the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake. Robert Smithson smiled on us that day. On another trip hiking at Sequoia National Forest then breaking down and spending a full moon snow capped night within the moon-shadow of General Sherman

Sequoia National Park.

I shudder with a chill. Looking through snow crystals to an uncertain future. I think of those values we held dear back there and then. Now our world is controlled by marauding thugs. They goose-step over the our best and brightest. Black boots choke those who long for a simple time. Players who know nothing about starving. They hunger for power. They try to convince us that there was a time when our country was great and that greatness has been defeated by the poor and the stranger.

I’ll load those cement blocks in my trunk and plow through the loose sand in Lobutcha Creek bottom any day to escape those monsters who have named their prey. I know if they catch me I’ll be dressed head-on. Fried and laid out for a feast.

I hear the term snow flake being used as an insult. Apparently it’s a reference to someone who is weak and delicate. Hope that I am a snow flake. I choose to live in a clump of snow. With millions of other snow flakes. Amazed by the unique neighbor, myself reordered. Each unique. Individual. Looking at a life with infinite possibilities.

When this tragic season of fire and ice melts into the warm sun soaked soft rain of spring I hope things will be different. Better. Can we sit by the stream bank? The snow-melt gurgling bright. And remember our ice toes touching under quilts and blankets. Recall the silent snow falling on our roof. How we waited for dawn. Pulled on layers of coats and gloves. Hoods tied down tight to our chins.

Remember the taste the snow topped saplings and the sound the sunlight made as it danced through the ice crystals. And say, “We survived, life is grand.”

Thank you all for reading. When friends subscribe I know I touched a nerve. Spending time working on these essays and articles is good time well spent. I hope to fill my latter years with quiet time digesting my life experiences. For those of you who take the extra step and select paid subscriptions I am forever grateful. The money helps support the time, effort and equipment needed to keep going. Fuel for that fire that burns in my belly. Thank you first for reading and again for supporting. Love to you all.