Memories of Rain

This morning we are getting rain in Mesquite. Jennifer liked to lay in bed and listen to rain storms. She found the sound comforting. Some of our houses were much better than others for doing that. This house is probably one of the worse for being able to hear rain because of the way it is insulated.

As I lay here this morning I was thinking back to when we first moved to Louisana right out of college. That was quite a trip. We left Butte in April 1991 in our 1979 Mercury Zephyr in of those wet spring blizzards. The ones where the snow flakes are almost the size of small pancakes and very wet. Of course once we got over Homestake Pass the blizzard was pretty much over.

We worked our way south and saw some pretty interesting country. I remember we stopped in Salina Kansas and there was a London Fog outlet clothing store there. We both bought trench style dressy raincoats to have for work. I believe we still have Jennifer's and she got a little use out of hers over the years. I think I wore mine a grand total of one time and we got rid of it many moves ago.

During that trip we made our first stop at a Marathon "Starvin Marvin" gas station somewhere in Oklahoma. I will always remember that stop, because I went out to the car and Jennifer had went to use the restroom and she came back to the car and she was almost crying from laughing so hard. There was this group of large ladies in the store and they were pretty loud and had deep southern accents (Jennifer's Dad would say they were mush mouths) and they were talking about the pralines they had for sale in the store. It was something like "Girl! will you look at the size of these pralines". It just tickled Jennifer how they annunciated things. She could do a pretty good imitation of it and we occasionally would say remember that time we stopped at the "Starvin Marvin" in Oklahoma and she would do her little imitation of those ladies and we would still have a good laugh about it.

We damn near got lost in Farmers Branch Texas. This was pre-GPS days where you had to navigate by maps. During that trip Jennifer got pretty good at reading a map. However we both agreed that Texas (at that time did not do a good job on road signage) and we had a few little arguements as we navigated thru that area. There was a little hollering and "God Damnit Jennifer's" and threats of tears, but we made it.

This was our first exposure to big city traffic as we motored our way South. Some guy had lost a pretty good sized boat right in the middle of the Interstate which snarled up traffic. It literally fell of the trailer and was sitting on the pavement.

We finally got to northern Louisiana and could tell they had some pretty serious rains as all the ditches were flooded right up to the road.

I will always remember our first big rain storm in Lafayette, Louisana. We were living in an apartment complex and this storm rolled in. It was like someone turned on a fire hose, it was raining so hard you could barely hear each other talk. Also the rain was very warm. If you had a bar of soap you could have showered in it. I remember we called our folks and put the phone up to the window so they could hear how hard it was raining. Well come to find out that was pretty much a normal rain shower in that part of the country and you got one almost every afternoon.

When we started work out of college we barely had a pot to piss in, but we were better off than a lot of folks. We saved up our money and bought our first house. We drove that old Mercury Zephyr for just over a year down in Louisiana with no air conditioning. We pretty much went from our apartment straight to work and back to the house. It was too damn hot and muggy to take any long trips. We finally bought a Mazda Navajo (basically a Ford Explorer) and life got better.

Then we had our first big scare as home owners. Lafayette got this huge rain storm in January. It rained 25 inches in 24 hours. We had went to work that morning and it was raining cats and dogs and the streets were somewhat flooded. Well it kept raining and management finally pulled the trigger and sent us home early. We we started driving home and the water kept getting deeper and deeper. Fortunately there was a Mormon church about 6 blocks from our house. When they built that church they had raised the elevation of that lot. So we pulled up into its parking lot and parked and decided to walk home from there. Well the water in the street was just below waist deep. The reason I remember that is because I was "on call" that week and I was carrying our departments on call pager and I had to take it off and put it on my shirt collar. Anyway, we are sloshing our way home and seeing the houses we are walking past are flooded and we are sweating bullets that ours was going to be the same. So we are dodging the balls of fire ants that are floating on the water and watching for snakes and as we get about a block from the house the water had gone down a little bit and then we got to our Culdesac and there was our house sitting high and dry. The water was about 3 feet from our door. We were so happy, because we were trying to prepare ourselves for the worse.

Well enough reminiscing for today, I better try and do something productive.