When the Rain Comes

Supposed to be a big storm moving in here today, rain, wind, followed by a drop in temperature that could, in theory, put a few wet snowflakes all the way to the valley floor by Friday.


It's all relative, of course. A "big" storm here drizzles an inch of rain in twenty-four hours. Where I grew up, any passing summer thundershower could drop three times that much in an hour or so, move off, and the water mostly dried up and gone by sundown. And those could happen almost every day from June to September, not counting the hurricanes.


In hurricane season, sometimes we'd get a foot of rain in twenty-four hours, more, and it only made the swamps cloudier, and irritated the alligators and cottonmouth moccasins ...


Driving in the rain doesn't bother me, nor most of the drivers up this way. Not like L.A. where, if somebody spits out their car window, everybody goes stark, raving mad behind the wheel.


Use my brakes? Are you insane?! I might skid! The default response to rain in L.A. is to tromp on the gas pedal.


I'm one to talk, though. Even after more than thirty years living here, if a snowflake lands on my driveway, I stay home. If God had wanted me to drive in the snow, I figure I'd have been born wearing skis ...