Southern Armageddon

The South operates on a philosophy of perceived strength. It may not have won the so-called War of Northern Aggression, but it survived and still has a Confederate flag to show for it. It turns up its nose at those northern supercilious types and vocally opposes the northern way of doing...things.

Stretching from the Piedmont of South Carolina to the Boot Heel of Missouri, a different form of northern agression reigns. In the south they call it Armageddon. In the north they call it ice.

If you've never lived in the north, the denizens of the great white parts kill ice with salt.

Funny thing about ice: It is the same color as salt. Southerners are suspicous of that. They like to be able to tell the difference between their elements. Salt belongs on food. All food.

To conserve on salt (because there is one meat-and-three eatery for every four people in the south), southerners dredge their beaches and cover the roads with sand. By the end of this ice storm, Interstate 85 will look like Folly Beach, SC. I've heard an industrious entrepreneur is already setting up umbrella and puppy rental stands around the Greenville exit.

As a result, the ice doesn't melt until the sun melts it and there are several thousand cubic meters of salt left for the fried chicken and fatback soup.

As an aside, I think it's time we start naming winter storms in the south. They come even more infrequently than hurricanes. As a birthday present to myself, I now shall begin naming all winter storms that hit Upstate South Carolina.

Please welcome, Winter Storm Addo (according to a baby name site, it's an African name for King of the Road).