I haven’t lived any further north than Knoxville, but that was enough in terms of ice and snow to learn how to drive and live and survive several times a year in East Tennessee. Knoxville is also north enough and under snow and ice enough to deal with the roads. The road-treating trucks roll when the forecast calls for them, and the salt and brine are spread on the roads and mitigate some of what God decides that Knoxville should be buried under for a while.
That’s not so anywhere I’ve seen in Mississippi. It just doesn’t happen often enough to merit the planning, infrastructure and the money to spend to deal with it. Mississippi relies on the idea that ice and snow simply don’t exist. So, if it does happen, then Mississippi shuts down until it melts and goes away on its own. For the most part, this works.
Fear is the emotion in play. Fear is justified in that the snow and ice are unknowns unless you’re a Northern transplant or have spent enough time up there to be used to the idea of what happens when the water freezes and falls from the skies.
Even in Knoxville, where snow is common, the people still empty the grocery stores of milk and bread. I worked in a grocery store chain as a pharmacist for around 10 years up there, and I still don’t understand the behavior, even when I could stand at the end of the aisle and watch it happening. Fear and panic are in the eyes of the people grabbing the bread and milk. The weather is coming, it’s going to be hard to drive, businesses and schools will close, so the solution is a fridge well-stocked with white milk and a pantry with a new loaf of white bread. Why these two items? They’re perishable, they’re ingredients as well, but why these two? Nothing soothes the fear of snow and ice like milk and bread, it seems. I ask people about it, and I never get any answer that makes sense. I’m beginning to think that it’s just fear that comes out. You’re preparing to be shut in your house, so be sure you have milk and bread while you’re there. I spent some time after one snow threat asking my friends, and none would admit to having bought milk and bread — except as “having bought other things I needed at the same time”. In the Deep South, snow just freaks people out.
One year when I was a older teenager, ice and snow blanketed central Mississippi. It was bad enough that the power lines were down all over the place. Only 4-by-4 trucks were sure to get around, and my dad thought I should try to get to work at the pharmacy in Madison where I was a technician. I was willing, at least since he was going to drive. When I got there, the emergency lights were all burned out. The Jitney grocery store next door had power, people were bringing in asthmatic children and setting up nebulizers on the floor by power outlets and getting it done. Jitney was the only power for miles around, and many thought since Jitney had power, that meant that we did, too. Wrong answer. We were doing business with flashlights, candles and notebooks.
My favorite story was the guy who came in to use the copy machine. He knew what he was doing, opening the lid, correctly placing his original, and pushing the “copy” button, while asking, “Is it out of paper?” We had walked him back to the register where the copy machine sat through a pitch-dark store with flashlights, he could see the candle burning on the pharmacy counter, and he thought the copy machine would work. “It’s not going to work without power, sir,” I finally told him, “Jitney has power, but we don’t. The copy machine is down.” His reaction: not anger at his misjudgment of the situation, not exasperation at the trouble, but just curiosity. “Do you know when it will be up?”
“I heard the power was going to be down for a few more days.”
“OK. I can wait, I guess.” He left, again escorted with a flashlight through the pitch-dark aisles to the door.
Later, one other familiar customer made it in. He was happy to see us open, and he had the sale circular in his hand. The pharmacist and I shared a look of confusion. He came in through all this to shop the sale paper? We helped him, finding five or six things that he had marked on his copy of the circular. When we were “ringing him up” with notebook paper and calculators, he told his story. He and his wife lived way out in the sticks. He had to get out of his truck more than once during the journey to move fallen trees and other debris off the road, and this was his goal, shopping the sale paper. I wasn’t believing it.
“You can’t tell me the sale was that important. There’s nothing in there that’s helping you in the blackout,” I said.
“You don’t understand, son. We’ve been up there, my wife and I, for two days now, with no power and nothing to do but stare at each other. We both had cabin fever, and the solution was that I should get out and get some stuff from the drugstore sale paper.”
Pharmacist: “No way. I know how far away you are. No WAY.”
Customer: “That’s how bad the cabin fever is out there. I have to get this stuff or I can’t come back.”
Me: “I live down in Jackson, but my dad brought me up in the truck. I can’t imagine getting out in this for five or six things in the sale paper.”
Customer: “I’m not going back until I spend some time over in Jitney, too. I intend to be rolling back into my driveway just as night is falling, and not before. Maybe she’ll be over the cabin fever by then.”
- Christopher Reves is a retired pharmacist who lives in Greenwood.
