The big snow

Our senior year had something special: A big snow.

It wasn’t the typical 2 inches of slush that melts 3 hours after the sun comes out, like is more typical of Arkansas. What fell on January 6-7, 1988, was 8-10 inches of ski-quality powder that stayed on the ground more than a week. In fact, some of you did ski Stroud hill.

Having just come back to class the previous Monday after the holiday break, we got out Wednesday through Friday, leading into a weekend.

We probably shouldn’t have been out that Wednesday. Superintendent Bill Beasley decided to cancel classes that day in anticipation of the big snow on its way. But the snow didn’t start until about 4:30 that afternoon. I guess he made up for it the following Monday when we went back to school even though most of the secondary roads were still covered by snow and ice.

The photo above from the yearbook shows our classmates Meredith Fairhead, Stephen Watkins and Ashley Lincoln, along with Meredith’s junior class sister Margaret Fairhead, trudging back to class one of those early days the following week. Looks more like Duluth than Jonesboro!

Many of you who were in band have an unhappy snow memory later in 1988. What was a pretty puny snow in Jonesboro in February was much heavier to south, and the band was prevented from making a trip to an event in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. If my memory serves, the bus made it as far as Trumann before the decision was made to come back to Jonesboro. Perhaps some of you “band geeks” can enlighten this “weather geek” about that.

We only had a few little snows during our sophomore and junior years, but our ninth-grade year had so many snow days that we had classes on some Saturdays – Janice alluded to this in a comment to the entry on David Hawkins’ death.

The JHS band had an interesting experience returning from the Fiesta Bowl parade that year, and a few of our more musically inclined freshmen classmates got to be part of it. The band got delayed on its way home by heavy snow across parts of New Mexico and Texas. They finally got home to find half a foot of snow here as well.

Do you have any snow memories from high school?