Finally, February folded. But cold memories of not only the "longest month" but the entire wicked winter linger on. Remember Robert Frost's dilemma?:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say ice

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

From what I've tasted of winter, I prefer the fire of summer. Apparently so do many of you.

"Here we go again with our sixth 'weather event,' " wrote one reader. "And I just heard on TV that familiar refrain: 'Southerners don't know how to drive on the snow.' Some guy is saying, 'Now I'm from (name any blip on the map north of Virginia), and up there we know how to drive on the snow.'

"Right, guy. That's because you HAD snow all the time, which is why you moved here! And pardon me, it's not that we don't know how to drive on the snow (after all I grew up in New Jersey and Ohio and went to school in Wisconsin). We just don't invest in snow tires in the middle of August and we don't have battalions of snow plows, as we'd rather invest in sure things, such as hurricanes, er, I mean, education.

"Just once I'd like to say back, 'Yeah. Well, Northerners don't know how to make sweet tea, either! Now how many brain cells does it take to make sweet tea?' They probably used theirs up putting on snow tires."

Next day, at a department store checkout counter, a woman was announcing at the top of her voice, "I hope I never see another flake of snow! The reason we moved down here from Buffalo, New York, was to get away from the snow!"

On the matter of Southern drivers in snow, she said, "When they're in the South, Yankees drive just like Southerners drive on roads that haven't been scraped or plowed. No better, no worse. My complaint is over those idiots out there trying to drive on ice! And they can't all be Southern born. But let me tell you one thing. Things will never get bad enough here for me to go back to Buffalo!"

The minister said it was the first time in his 21 years of preaching that he had seen it -- the two recipes on the back of the program at the Raleigh funeral of a longtime friend and foothills native.

Our friend, in addition to being cited as a devoted wife, mother, grandmother and aunt and a caring, generous neighbor, was praised as an excellent cook. She had mastered many of her mother's recipes, including one for the hot yeast rolls I savored when, as a kid growing up in Surry County, I was privileged to occasionally slide my feet under her mother's table.

Her granddaughter, Elizabeth, pointed out in a loving tribute that her grandmother was always taking boiled custard to friends and neighbors during times of distress.

Boiled custard is a Southern thing. Like the nectar of the gods, it is good for whatever ails you, whether it's Asian flu, a pinched sacroiliac or someone just having a bad hair day.

Good recipes can be pearls of great price. The late Red Balentine, of the famous Cameron Village cafeteria, often told how he came by his renowned buttermilk pie recipe.

After his father's death, Red's mother, dividing up the farm, allocated 40 acres of rich bottom land to Red.

"Mama," Red protested, "if it's all the same with you, I'd way druther have your buttermilk pie recipe than that tract of bottom land." We who ate with Red for decades thought he'd made an excellent choice.

Thanks to her family's decision to share them, Mary Cooper Dobbins' custard and cheese straws recipes will live on, no doubt to be passed on by relatives and strangers alike from generation to generation.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.