CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Sometimes old man winter looks more like a doting father.
Matt Ferguson’s got dad jokes for days.
“Who won the neck decorating contest?” he asked his kids and nieces
“It was a tie, ha-ha,” he revealed.
Every punchline slayed.
“Dogs can’t operate MRI machines, but cats can,” he said, reading from a list of dad jokes on his phone. The raucous laughter hit a crescendo after that one.
All kidding aside, Ferguson is serious about making the children happy.
“We’ll give it a shot,” he said Thursday night, with the temperature in the 20s.
He was just getting warmed up.
“It’s a good sign; I can hear some water in it,” he said, cranking up some equipment in the front yard.“And there she goes!”
All we can say is snOMG. He actually rigged his own snow-making machine.
“It makes snow, you know. I look at it and say, ‘I built that!’” Ferguson told Queen City News.
“He builded a snow machine for me,” his little girl Ann Parker Ferguson says.
“The fan motor in here, this will blow the plume up a little bit higher and give it some hang time,” Ferguson says, detailing the finer points of snowmaking.
He sets it and mostly forgets it but can’t help but check on it occasionally.
“It’s going to be a good night for making snow,” Ferguson said Thursday night.
The perfect storm starts with compressed air from an air compressor in the garage.
“It gets cold. You mix a little bit of water with it, and it creates ice crystals,” he said.
You know what else it creates? Flurries with a chance of pure glee.
“Yeah… snow!” girls scream as they run into the freshly whitened yard.
By Monday, that house near Midwood Baptist Church was up to about three and a half feet of snow.
Matt’s daughter, Ann Parker Ferguson, is a fan.
“So, this is the first time out so far in the snow with my cousins,” she says.
“Making snow and playing in the snow, ha-ha,” said her cousin, Ada Krejci.
“Um play with it, have a snowball fight,” Lillian Krejci says.
Ferguson’s machine makes about two inches per hour. But the real measure of success is memories made.
He’s made flakes fly in the front yard for the past four years. Enough to sled, make snowmen, and take him back to his childhood.
“I grew up in Virginia and we had snows,” Matt says. “It was a great memory, and I wanted to my kids to experience the same. And it had been so long since it snowed here, I said, ‘I’m going to make it happen.’”
There’s only one downside that Ann Parker can see.
“It’s very annoying because there’s cold water that blows in your face, ha-ha! Like what’s happening right now!” she says, adding a little dramatic flair for comedic effect.
Hopefully, a blast of water in the face is a small sacrifice for what’s become a community attraction each winter.
“Around the neighborhood, they come up and say, ‘Thanks, it didn’t really snow, but we knew you would have it at your house,” Matt says.
“They say wow how did you make that?” said Ann Parker. “Some people ask, ‘Can my daughter have that for her birthday?’ and it’s literally in the middle of summer ha-ha.”
Replicating the work of old man winter sounds like a lot of work. But if you think Matt doesn’t love every minute of it, well, the dad joke is on you.
“That makes him the fun uncle ha!” said Ada.
The post No dad joke: Plaza Midwood man is the ‘fun uncle’ who makes snow for his family first appeared on Enegxi News – News As It’s Happening.
