Snow Days and Bank Robbers
School was out that day because of the snow. We loved snow days and so did Mama. She loved it when we were all home. It had snowed all night long and there must have been three or four inches on the ground. That’s enough in the south for almost everything in town to shut down. Almost everything. Daddy still had to go to work. Police officers never get a snow day and he had been up and gone long before we ever got out of bed. But for us this day was pure fun. It was the embodiment of what was, looking back now, a childhood filled with carefree days.
When we woke up, Mama already had the oven warming. On cold mornings, snow or not, she would turn the oven on high before she woke us up. The stove in our kitchen had a built-in oven on the top with a door that swung out and up. When we all woke up and stumbled in to the kitchen, Mama would open the door and we’d stand in front of the oven to get warm. Sometimes we’d get dressed there. Not on this day though – we didn’t have to go to school. Sometimes I can still feel the heat from that oven on my face and sometimes, when nobody’s home, I open my oven door.
Mama had fixed breakfast that morning as she did every morning. There was a pot of grits on the stove and she was making cinnamon toast. We all ate and left the mess for Mama to clean up, as usual, and then ran back to our rooms to put on layers and layers of clothes, tow pairs of socks on our feet, and one pair on our hands. We thought of nothing but sledding, snowball fights, and snow angels. We also knew by the time our hands were soaking wet and numb and we came back inside, the oven door would be open again and hot chocolate would be waiting. It was a typical snow day, but it didn’t stay that way long.
Sometime around the middle of the day, we had all come back inside, had our fill of hot chocolate, and were planted firmly in front of the TV. Mama was in the kitchen of course when the doorbell rang. She wiped her hands and went to the front door expecting to find the neighborhood kids outside wanting to play. But when she opened the door, she didn’t’ find a crowd of kids jumping around tying to get warm. There was a young man at the door, a young man she recognized.
His name was Jerry Jackson and he was the oldest son of a family that lived in the neighborhood. To her, he was still a kid, probably no more than 18 or 19 years old. She noticed his car was parked at the curb in front of the house. He politely called her Mrs. Wade and asked if he could use her phone because his car had broken down. She opened the door wide and told him to get inside where it was warm - of course he could use the phone. She asked about his family as she led him to the kitchen where she showed him the phone and fixed him a cup of hot chocolate. He called a tow truck, thanked her, and told her he would wait outside in his car. She told him he absolutely would not wait outside, it was freezing and then she did what she always did. She fed him. He sat at our kitchen table and ate a sandwich while he waited. It wasn’t long before the tow truck arrived and determined his car just had a dead battery. They jumped off the battery and Jerry got in his car and drove away, but not before he thanked Mama and called her ma’am.
The afternoon passed quickly. After our clothes dried, we went back out and played until we were soaking wet again. Mama got supper cooked and we all waited for Daddy to get home. We ate supper together at our house and when Daddy got home from work, we all ran to the kitchen table. As we ate, Daddy turned to Mama and told her it had been an unusually busy day. He asked her if she remembered Jerry Jackson from down the street. Before she could answer, he told her that he had robbed a bank on High Point Rd. around lunchtime, and it had taken them all day to finally find him. Mama’s expression never changed and I don’t think Daddy noticed that we had all gotten very quiet. When he finished, Mama simply said, “You know Daddy, you probably should have come home for lunch today.” When he reminded her that he had been out looking for this kid all evening, she didn’t bat an eye. “Well, if you’d a come home, you would’ve found him” she said. “He was sitting at this table eating a sandwich.”
As it turned out, Jerry was making his getaway when his battery died right in front of the house. The stolen money was evidently in the car. Of course, there’s no way Mama could have known that and there was no way it would have made much difference. She still would have brought him in out of the cold and she still would have fed him. She probably would have also called Daddy. But she didn’t know and so she helped him get his car started and sent him on his way. And then Daddy chased him all over town the rest of the day.
From what we were able to find out later, he had robbed the bank because there was no food in his house and he had hungry brothers and sisters. It didn’t make it right of course, but it does make you wonder. Is it better to be there and be hungry or not be there at all? It was a question we never had to ask, but Jerry’s brothers and sisters did because Jerry went to prison.
When the snow finally melted, we all went back to school, Daddy went back to work, and Mama went back to the ever-present force of nature that she was. The only thing that really changed was that from that day on, Daddy always came home for lunch.
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