Raindrops were falling on a lot of people’s heads yesterday if they were out in it. I was, but I was in the protection of my trusty car. Sometimes rain is fun to drive in and the only time I uncover the sun roof in the top of the car is when it rains. (I keep the glass closed ’cause I don’t enjoy that close an association with rain.) It’s childish, isn’t it, to like to see the drops splash down on the car. It’s like being in the rain and not getting wet.
Not everyone was so lucky. School was dismissed. Children, like little ducks, ran splashing and squishing down the sidewalk. Some had umbrellas, some had raincoats; some didn’t have a thing between them and the raindrops except their school clothes.
A little rain didn’t faze the city workers, those stalwart guys who were laying a new line for something or other. With ponchos over their heads, they kept working, looking like colorful moths as they walked back and forth through the raindrops.
Music from the big band days accompanied my drive. Jimmy Dorsey and “Let’s Get Away From It All.” (Now, that’s a song with some history. “I’ll repeat, I love you, Sweet, in all the forty-eight.”) A couple of states have been added since then. And, “a weekend in Dixie.” Could anybody sing that nowadays without being roundly criticized? Dolly Parton took Dixie off her Dixie Stampede and now it’s just “Stampede.”
Anyway, Billie Holiday, the Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, they all went with me as I drove through the downpour that was soaking NW Arkansas. Puddles formed and over-flowed, ditches ran like small rivers, the temperature dropped and I wondered if roads would turn icy.
It was a good day. A rainy day. Driving through the raindrops was almost like Walkin’ in the Rain (Johnny Ray) only I stayed dry.
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