When I moved to North Carolina from Texas over the summer, I was consumed with anticipation: For the first time in over 20 years, I was going to have a REAL winter!

Columns By J. Scott Wilson Diary Of A Fat Man Ask The Cook Short Orders The Weird Chronicles

And, true to plan, the leaves here began to turn, then fall (and fall and fall), and by mid-November I was wearing at least a jacket every morning when I took the dogs out. After Thanksgiving, finding the birdbath iced over was a routine morning occurrence.

During the second week in December, the first real snowstorm of the year approached. The ski resorts up in the mountains got a fair dumping ... and I got not so much as a flake. Over the next few days, the same thing happened twice more. I should have known then that something was deeply skewed.

The week before Yule (the Winter Solstice to you non-Celts), a meterological phenomenon well known to me from my Texas years manifested: the Gulf flow. Up from the Gulf of Mexico came a stream of warm air that banished the morning ice and soon had me raking the still-falling (and falling and falling) leaves in shorts, much to the horror of my neighbors who thought the sight of my pasty-white calves had been safely banished until at least May.

On Dec. 23, the day I flew out to visit family back in Houston for the Christmas holiday, it was 68 degrees.

Of course, as anyone who's lived in the Lone Star State can tell you, relying on Texas weather is like juggling sea urchins: It can only end in pain ... or at the least surprise.

Christmas Eve, my partner and I went out to the Houston suburb of Richmond to have dinner with my parents. As we left her parents' house, I saw the snow pellets I'd seen all day flicking off the windshield. By the time we got to Richmond, they had almost stopped.

A couple of hours later, with the turkey done and my cornbread dressing ready, I stepped outside to get some fresh air and discovered that the snow pellets had completely disappeared ... and been replaced by real, live snowflakes. Yes, Virginia, it was snowing in southeast Texas on Christmas Eve.

I called everyone outside, and much ado was made over the falling flakes, which were just the sort of big, fluffy ones I remembered from my youth in Philadelphia. Knowing it was a transitory phenomenon, and that the turkey was getting cold, we trooped back inside and had a hearty meal.

Back when I was a smoker, stepping outside for a post-meal smoke was one of the great pleasures of my life. I still like to get up and move around a bit after eating and shake off the post-feast lethargy. So, following dinner, I stepped out onto my parents' flagstone patio to find that not only had the snow not stopped, it was coming down at a rate that would have made a Great Lakes native proud. It had accumulated on the leaves of the sago palms and myriad other plants that my father maintains in the yard, and even piled up nicely on the hood, trunk and roof of the car I had driven to the house.

This was my chance to prove to the universe that I still wasn't quite completely a grownup, and I grabbed it with both hands, using them to scoop snow from the hood and trunk onto the roof of the car. A quick search of the ground yielded abundant twigs to give my snowman, named Rufus (on the car roof, get it?), his arms, eyes, nose and even a curved smile.

Sadly, I forgot to get poor Rufus off the car when we left. He died a glorious death at 60 mph along Highway 90. Fortunately, there was no one behind us.

When I woke up the next morning, the snow was still there. It melted shortly after noon, when the temperature finally got above freezing, but I got my white Christmas, although not where I expected to find it.

Take from that what message you will. I'm going to see it as a good omen for the coming year, and a promise that my own child will have a dad who still seizes every opportunity to make a snowman ... even in Texas.

Previous Stories:

• Jan. 7, 2005: The Weird Year In Review!
• Dec. 17, 2004: When I Was A Kid ...
• Dec. 10, 2004: Grinching It Up
• Dec. 3, 2004: I Lost On 'Jeopardy,' Baby
• Nov. 19, 2004: Mustard Fans, Unite!
• Nov. 12, 2004: My Life As A Rennie
• Nov. 5, 2004: Why Can't They Be Like Us?
• Oct. 29, 2004: The Haunted Column
• Oct. 15, 2004: Going Ghost Hunting, Part 2
• Oct. 8, 2004: Going Ghost Hunting, Part 1