These days we watch the pink line on The Weather Channel.

In the old days, there was a time and temperature number to call at First National Bank.

For young people (and not-so-young people) longing to see some snowflakes, there have always been more misses than hits in Vicksburg.

Whenever skies threaten, I remember the basement — or semi-basement — of the house where my sisters, brother and I grew up. The access was from outside the house, by lifting a metal lid and clambering down a short ladder and into a dank world of dust. The only reason to go down there was to light or otherwise service the furnace, a job my father did. But the crawl space did provide some storage, too. And it was there that the family sled collection was kept.

We had three sleds. One, I think, was my father’s when he was a child. The others were from Sears, one short and one long. When the clouds got low and the air was cold, my brother and I would start pestering our mother about getting the sleds out of the basement. We didn’t particularly appreciate her perfectly justifiable response that there would be plenty of time if and when flakes started falling — but she was the boss.

Snow comes to Vicksburg one of two ways.

Most common — three out of four times — there’s rain in front of cold, dry air blowing down from Arkansas and North Louisiana.

It’s a matter of timing. The rain will be steady with a temperature in the mid- to upper 40s. Then the wind will pick up and the clouds can be seen to start moving to the southeast. The temperature will start falling and fall fast. But the speed of the clouds will pick up, too.

If the rain doesn’t move out before the magic mark of 32 degrees is reached, we get a few flakes. They’re pretty to see, but they melt on contact because the ground isn’t frozen. More often than not, however, the rain stops completely — and there’s no snow, just a windy, sub-freezing day.

The other approach — one out of four times — is more like an end run. That’s what happened last Thursday.

We awake to hear of overnight snow in Dallas. Then as the morning progresses we hear it’s snowing in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lake Charles, McComb.

This is insulting, of course, because if it’s not going to snow in Vicksburg it certainly shouldn’t be snowing 150 miles south of Vicksburg.

The radar image on the Weather Channel was fascinating to watch last week. Extending across the base of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi was a white-shaded area, indicating snow, with it’s constant companion, the pink line, indicating mixed precipitation. The white blob grew and ebbed during the morning, sending out bulges in various directions, including one that reached Jackson and Edwards and promised to reach Vicksburg any minute — but it didn’t. Instead, the undulating mass started shrinking as the day wore on. And even as the rain continued, the temperature held at 36 degrees — just four clicks from the magic mark.

Forty-five years ago, my brother and I would have been pestering our mother all morning long. She may have been as excited as we were, but she never chose to show it.

Of course, there was no such thing back then as weather radar or a whole TV channel devoted to nothing else. All we had was Bob Neblett and Woodie Assaf and Forrest Cox on the Jackson channels.

While she rebuffed our requests to liberate our sleds from that dark dungeon, Mom would make several phone calls on mornings like last Thursday. But she wouldn’t say anything, just dial a number, listen a minute, then hang up.

Everybody likes snow, at least when it first starts falling.

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Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail cmitchell@vicksburgpost..com.