Town Crier: Snow ball

DALTON — As the Town Crier walks the streets calling out the news of the week once again, he finds himself announcing the snow. We’ve had bigger snows, as anyone that lived through the Blizzard of ’93 will recall. Humvees couldn’t get through the streets. A week after the snow fell it was announced on the national news that the last places Fed Ex still couldn’t get into were Chattanooga and Dalton. But it has been years since we’ve had so many different snow days over a winter. And winter isn’t over yet.

This last snow came down with giant, cluster snowflakes, like gardenias falling out of the sky. It never got below freezing here on the ground but the endlessly individual snowflakes were forming a few thousand feet up in the air and dropping so thick and fast that the ground couldn’t melt it. Once the snow stopped falling though, the temperature did its work and the next thing I know, I’m getting clumps of wet, mushy melt-off dropping on my head and down my neck from the branches of the trees as I’m trying to refill the birdfeeder with seed. It was like being in a snowball battle with the Invisible Man. There was no body to throw the snowballs back at. Which is rarely the case once the snow falls.

Snowball fights have surely been around since Little Cain and Little Abel looked out of the cave and asked daddy Adam what the white stuff was. Daddy Adam said “I don’t know, we didn’t have this cold wet stuff where your mom and I used to live.” The boys ran outside, figured out you could make a ball of the sticky wet stuff and “wham”! I’m not saying who might have thrown that first snowball, but whoever the recipient of it was could have held a grudge for a long time.

Around here, because of the moisture, we usually get really good snowballs. If it’s too cold, like way up north, or too dry, like way out west, the snow won’t cling. It’s got to be a little wet and mushy. If it’s a little on the dry side sometimes they fall apart when you throw them. A little on the moist side and they’re mushy and icy like somebody grabbed a handful of a smoothie and hit you in the back of the head with it. The worst is when you’re out of snowballs and running away and somebody gets you right in the back of the neck and the snow runs down inside your coat and shirt. Because you’ve been running around having a snowball battle you’re hot on the inside even if your fingers, nose and toes are numb. That slush going down your shirt is as pleasant as getting a filling without Novocain. And then the melted runoff goes down the little trough of your spine and the next thing you know your long johns are wet. And the other person is laughing at you. And don’t think I’ve forgotten who that was either. I can hold a grudge for a long time.

As a kid, I was at my cousins’ house when it came a big snow. He and I are the same age, so we kind of counted as a single unit in his neighborhood. The older boys came up with the idea of throwing snowballs at cars as they went by. We’d hide on both sides of the road and then ambush drivers as they went by. Fun and funny. They told us to take our positions in the ditch that ran by the road. It felt safe and protected like a WWI trench. They got on the hillside across the road and hid behind trees. It looked like a lousy hiding place to us. With light traffic we had plenty of time to make lots of snowballs and stack them in a handy pile.

Finally, one of the lookouts on the hill yelled “Car!” and so we hunkered down and waited for the unsuspecting target. As the car eased by, driving carefully on the snowy asphalt, the volley was loosed! Low and close, my cousin and I clobbered the car. Thump, thump, thump the snowballs sounded as they hit the sides of the thick-metalled Chevy sedan. From the hillside all the other older boys stepped from behind their trees and let loose with snowballs flying through the air. Thump, thump, thump from the other side as their missiles struck the sides and top of the car, some even flying over it and landing near us. Boys vs. car equaled a massacre for the car! Victory!

But then something my cousin and I had never thought about happened. The driver stopped his car. The driver backed up his car. The driver got out of his car. The older boys (and of course when I say older I also mean “wiser” or “wise-guysier”) ran away laughing. My cousin and I realized we were in a ditch with no place to go. The drivers’ wrath at a dozen boys for throwing hard, icy snowballs at his car was focused on but two. The Town Crier can report that the man yelled profusely and with great anger. The Town Crier cannot, however, report exactly what the man yelled as it would be indecent. Our faces reddened and we were sure we’d be spending that night in jail. The guy eventually drove off, leaving us standing in a mush-filled ditch, his language having melted our stash of snowballs. The rest of the boys eventually came out of hiding to laugh at the joke they had played on us. They called it a gag. I call it human sacrifice.

Since then I’ve been in all kinds of other snowball battles, from front yard skirmishes here at the house to battle royals on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains that left me gasping for air in the high altitude thin atmosphere. But being from Dalton, even though we’re from the South with mild Southern winters, I guess it’s just in our genes. For you see, Dalton has an unexpected and little known legacy. The world’s biggest snowball battle took place here.

In the winter of 1863-1864, the Confederate Army had its winter camp here in Dalton. More than 60,000 men were camped here waiting for the spring campaign season to begin, resting and recuperating in expectation of that Yankee scoundrel Gen. Sherman’s advance. Although the Southerners had lost Chattanooga in the fall, the army had been re-building itself and spirits were growing as the end of winter approached. Then, on March 22, 1864, five inches of snow fell on the area. And it was snowball-making snow.

Throughout the Confederate Army, young men started throwing snowballs. In one part of town, units from Georgia on one side took on Tennessee boys from the other. Some things never change. They formed up in unit lines and charged back and forth. The battle lasted for hours. Gen. Gordon, at that time a Colonel, was requested to command the Tennesseans. (Gordon has descendants still in the area here) He charged onto the battlefield on horseback with a dirty bandanna on a stick as his flag. The men went wild. Then in answer, the Georgians got a mounted leader and they cheered back. Hundreds of spectators were by now watching from surrounding hillsides and rooftops. Gordon led a charge and he and his horse were hit with hundreds of snowballs. He kept the flag, but lost his hat. In this one part of town, more than 5,000 men battled it out with snow instead of bullets. Gordon got the nickname “Col. Snowball” from this action and he wrote that in the years after the war, the old veterans asked him about that battle more than any other.

Meanwhile, Gen. Pat Cleburne, (who recently got a beautiful statue in Ringgold), was leading Arkansas troops in a desperate charge through the white. He was captured, released and re-captured. He was put on “trial” by his captors and, known as a stern disciplinarian, threatened with some of his own punishments by his good-natured judges.

On a snowy day, much like the one this past week, tens of thousands of men, men who had been through the horrors and madness of war, were brought together by the beauty and fun of nature. A white, fluffy Southern snow had turned a gathering for destruction into a party filled with fun and laughter. The next time we get a snow here, think of the air full of snowballs and the sound of 10,000 laughs and cheers going up in our town. Dalton, the home of the world’s largest snowball battle. Go ahead and throw one, it’s our legacy!

Mark Hannah is a native of Dalton and works in film and video production.

Features

Search Results

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us