I remember snow, more than I remember snowing
This week’s Brainwashed podcast (#96, featuring releases from Giorno Poetry System), contains an excerpt from “More I Remember More”, a long, rambling set of reminiscences from Joe Brainard from an album entitled Disconnected from 1974. It included this line:
It only snowed about twice a year in Tulsa and, as I remember now, usually during the night. So, I remember snow, more than I remember snowing.
I grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, not far south of Tulsa, and I think that was my experience of snow as well, although I’d never really thought of it that way until I heard him say those lines.
I suspect that’s why I was often thoroughly amazed in our early years in Minnesota by the sheer volume that would be falling. And we actually live in a quite dry part of the state, and so don’t really get that much snow. Still, it would be coming down in big waves, and I would stand there staring out the window instead of lecturing, much to the amusement of my students (most of whom grew up in the frozen north).
Brainard goes on to talk about not understanding why they had to shovel the snow, because it would melt so fast anyway. In Wichita Falls, we didn’t even bother, for exactly that reason. The whole town would just shut down and wait the 24 or 48 hours needed for winter to pay its respects and move along.
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