It's hard to believe that it's been a year since 'The Big Snow of 2010'

It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since that huge “snow storm” that we received last February. Many of you will remember this weather event, which dumped an unusually large amount of snow on Southwest Alabama.

I think we had five or six inches at my house, and my kids got a bigger kick out of it than I did. To be honest, I hate snow, but my kids and I had a big time building a full-sized, bona fide snowman. I’m just left wondering how old they’ll be (and how old I’ll be) before we see snow like that again in these parts.

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Many of you probably saw the picture that Ronald Randolph brought by the paper of the buzzards roosting on and circling around the water tower in downtown Evergreen. (The picture was published in the Feb. 3 edition of The Evergreen Courant on Page 7.)

I’ve been told that this unusual activity has continued at least through this week, and it may be something that our city officials might want to look into if they haven’t already.

One theory is that the buzzards are drawn to the water tower because it’s the highest point in the city and gives them a good place to “sun” and dry out their feathers.

I don’t subscribe to these theories though because I’ve known buzzards to congregate in one area for only one reason – something has died. For those birds to have hung around for so long and in such great numbers, I’m almost afraid to imagine what they might be catching a scent of.

I can tell you some very unsavory stories that you will not want to hear about dead animals and water towers that have taken place outside of Conecuh County in the past. You’d rather not hear them, I’m sure.

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I want to thank one of Evergreen’s finest citizens, Bert Cook, this week for putting me on to a great book with obvious Evergreen connections, E.O. Wilson’s 2010 novel, “Anthill.”

Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard University professor, was born in Birmingham and grew up in several southwest Alabama towns, including Evergreen and Brewton.

In “Anthill,” much of the story takes place in the fictional town of “Clayville,” which Wilson admits to having based on Evergreen. I’m only about 100 pages into the book, and other towns mentioned include Monroeville, Thomasville, Brewton and Mobile.

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The Alabama Tourism Department released last week its list of Top 10 events for the month of March. Events that made the list included the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma on March 3-7, the George Lindsey-University of North Alabama Film Festival in Florence on March 3-5, the BRAVO! Birmingham Music Festival on March 5, the “Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Scottsboro Boys Story” exhibition in Birmingham on March 8-May 22, Mardi Gras Day in Mobile on March 8, the Alabama River Festival in Franklin on March 10-12, the 59th Annual Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival on March 18-20, the Trasher Brothers and Neil Thrasher concert in Montgomery on March 18, the 197th Anniversary of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alexander City and Daviston on March 26 and the Piney Woods Arts Festival in Enterprise on March 26-27.

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Five-star defensive end Jadeveon Clowney – the No. 1 college football prospect in the nation - made his big announcement Monday about where he plans to play football next fall.

Prior to Monday, most experts believed that Clowney had narrowed down his choices to Alabama, Clemson and South Carolina. In the end, he ended up picking South Carolina, where he will play for “The Great Visored One” himself, Steve Spurrier.

Now that Clowney’s made up his mind, we can review the final college football recruiting rankings.

According to ESPN, the top 10 signing classes were as follows – 1. Florida State, 2. Alabama, 3. Auburn, 4. USC, 5. Texas, 6. Georgia, 7. Ohio State, 8. Clemson, 9. Notre Dame and 10. LSU.

Here’s the top 10 according to Rivals. Com – 1. Alabama, 2. Florida State, 3. Texas, 4. USC, 5. Georgia, 6. LSU, 7. Auburn, 8. Clemson, 9. Oregon and 10. Notre Dame.

The other major college football recruiting service, Scout.com, had its top 10 as follows – 1. Florida State, 2. Auburn, 3. Ohio State, 4. Texas, 5. USC, 6. Alabama, 7. Georgia, 8. Notre Dame, 9. LSU and 10. Oregon.

For Alabama and Auburn fans in the reading audience, this gives Alabama an average finish of No. 3, and Auburn an average finish of 4.3. In other words, they were neck in neck in recruiting when you average out their finishes among the three major college football recruiting rankings.

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From the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” file this week, I read on Monday that the U.S. Olympic team almost missed the 1896 Olympics in Athens, Greece because Greece was still using the Julian Calendar, which was 12 days ahead of the calendar used by Americans.