Snow in Houston, 1958, by Randy Summers

From MemoryArchive

Who: Everybody at Pershing Junior High School
What: Snow on Lincoln's Birthday
When: 1958
Where: Houston, Texas

Right there at the corner of North Braeswood Boulevard and Buffalo Speedway, at the big sprawling ranch-style house, angularly facing the corner, not facing either one of the big wide streets, just over the bridge across Braes Bayou, every Christmas time he would put up the nicest sets of lights and decorations in the whole neighborhood. The centerpiece was the sign of the big two-foot-tall letters, Old-English-style, spelling out “Seasons Greetings.” It was a tradition. Every year when we would drive in towards town, and cross the bridge, and go through the traffic lights at the corner, whenever we saw that he had already gotten his nice decorations up, and saw the Texas-size “Seasons Greetings” sign, we knew Christmas time was here. That Christmas of 1957 was no different.

Growing up, you soon learn that big days, like the holidays, like Christmas, your birthday, vacations, and all special days can come and go pretty fast. It is cold and bleak in Houston in the winter. But no snow – that is very rare. But there are always “freezes” every winter, where the temperature goes into the low thirties, or even twenties, and your mother would tell your father to cover the plants, or wrap the outside pipes, or maybe even leave a faucet dripping, to prevent the water from freezing, and breaking the pipes. We would wake up to frost, and sometimes ice, with maybe the neighbor’s birdbath frozen over. But no snow expected. Dallas got snow, and of course, the Texas Panhandle, but the regular snowline was somewhere to the north of Houston. Let’s face it: Houston has a very hot and humid climate; except for these raw and freezing days, with a sky somewhere between white and gun-metal light gray, off and on, between New Years and Washington’s Birthday, Houston is hot and humid most of the time. The azaleas will come out in late February. There may be some real fair, merry-month-of-May days of spring around St. Patrick’s Day. But, by the real May, and sometimes all the way to October, it is hot and humid in Houston. Hot as in hot, and humid as in humid, as you haven’t felt before, unless you are someone who grew up within a thousand miles of the equator. To say Houston has the climate of Calcutta is not quite fair; on really bad days in Calcutta, you could say Calcutta has the climate of Houston.

Anyhow, that early 1958 went by. We were in the spring semester of 7th grade at John J. Pershing Junior High School, on Braes Boulevard, in southwest Houston. This was a 7th-8th-9th grade school, so those of us in 7th grade were low of the totem pole. However, by the second semester we were finding our way. Growing up in the Houston schools, we knew that February brought three big things, Lincoln’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, and the big Houston Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, which was always between the two. That winter was no different; it was cold and dreary. We moved through February. Lincoln’s Birthday arrived. It was another cold, cold and dreary day. There was nothing usual, either about the cold or the dull dreary gray-white sky. But, by 7th grade, it was no really big deal. By then, we had colored enough pictures of an honest man named Abe with a big beard and tall stove-pipe hat. School had seven periods. School let out with the bell ringing at three p.m. Just before the end-of-sixth-period bell rang, people were going to the windows and looking out. I heard something. More people kept getting up and going to the windows. The ball rang. Between sixth and seventh periods, I had to walk outside, between one of the temporary buildings and the big main building. What I thought I heard people saying was true.

It was snowing.

And we soon realized it was really snowing. Staying on the ground. Covering the sidewalks. Real snowflakes fluttering down all over the place. Some guys never made it to seventh period. The snow kept coming down. It was lucky the whole school stayed under control. It was a snow day in Houston, of all places. And, lots of kids were just walking out the doors to play in the snow. By the time the three o’clock bell rang, kids like me going out to car pools were treated to a new sight for the first time – windshield wipers swishing the snow away. It was a real snowfall.

Well, it snowed all afternoon and into the night. By morning, the weather must have moved on and the temperature rose a bit. The sky was still gray and dreary, but no more snow falling. On the way to school, driving across the bridge, we all noticed the big house on the corner. In the middle of February, with his lawn a snow-covered wonderland, all the holiday lights were back up and glittering, and he had put back out his big “Seasons Greetings” sign. A “White Christmas” in February!

Randy Summers