There have been plenty of times in my life when lessons learned growing up on a dirt road in south Alabama have come back to aid me later in life.

There’s the lessons of never buying a white car if you live on a dirt road; red clay is a material not easily removed from most clothing, or vehicles for that matter; and that when learning to drive on a dirt road, the art of fishtailing is an art form that must be mastered.

It was that latter lesson that came in handy Tuesday when driving to the office.

Ice is a marvelous thing when it is in a tall glass of iced tea, or used in combination with cream to make ice cream, but iced over highways, roads, bridges and streets is something nobody ever wants to face.

Unfortunately for those of us who live in central Mississippi, iced over highways is exactly what we faced Tuesday when we woke up.

I have friends and family who live far above the Mason Dixon line, where snow and ice occur more frequently. And, whenever we have a slight dusting of snow or a thin layer of ice and we start running for the grocery stores and cancelling school, they are quick to email me or take to Facebook to make fun of how we as Southerners react.

What I often remind them is that we simply are not built for snow and ice. We could not for the life of us give the steps on how to properly install snow chains on our tires, or where to even get a set of snow chains.

When the weather falls below freezing, we frantically search for every possible long sleeved shirt, thin jacket, sweater and poncho we own to get warm. Our thin Southern blood simply isn’t made for cold weather, much less few if any of us really own a true winter coat.

As for driving on the ice and snow, we are quick to overreact and forget just about every lesson ever taught to us in driver’s education or the tips offered in manuals. We over-steer, hit our breaks, go into corners way to fast and expend too much worry and effort concerned about why our windshield wipers are not working.

Then again, I doubt any of my northern friends and family now how to properly cook a great mess of greens, whip up a batch of sweet tea or have a true appreciation of cornbread.

So, as I drove to work Tuesday, with my truck’s tailgate trying to beat the rest of the truck down the road, I quickly reverted back to the days of hot dogging a much older and smaller truck down Woodhaven Dairy Road.

It might have been a much different scenario, but it was nice to have those dirt road lessons to fall back on.

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Tim Reeves is publisher of The Vicksburg Post and can be reached by email at tim.reeves@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545 ext. 122.