Snowing Down South: Anomalies of Southern Folk Culture

SNOW WAS SO RARE IN MY HOMETOWN OF BEAUMONT, TEXAS THAT I WAS EIGHT years old before I first saw a few flakes drifting down and leaving a light dusting on our front yard on Adams Street. My little brother and I worked hard to scrape up enough snow to build a snowman. I still have the photograph Mama took of Bubba and me standing proudly beside the midget snowman on our front porch. This is the story I would have told Jocelyn Donlon had she interviewed me for her book on porch life in southern culture. I tell it here in keeping with Donlon's argument for the inclusion of personal experience in folklore research and to establish my credentials as a southerner, albeit one who has lived in Ohio for the last thirty years. Donlon and I are both southerners and folklorists who are interested in