Rain

There’s something about rain wherever we live. This is something I’ve been thinking about for some time now, but haven’t revealed my suspicions until now – it doesn’t rain where we live! 

It all began when we lived in Houston in the late 70’s into the late 80’s.  Oh, it did occasionally rain, but there was definitely a drought when we lived there.  I remember visiting Houston when I was in junior high and it rained every day.  Everybody said it was normal, so when we moved there, I expected the rain and very humid days to be a normal part of our lives.  Nope – we went into a drought.  In fact, we went through a hurricane and it barely rained.  The weather guys reported that it was the driest hurricane in modern history.  Go figure!

We moved to Wylie in 88 and it started out in a drought.  It was raining when we were looking for a home because I remember tracking black mud on some new carpets in the homes for sale.  In fact, it rained so much that the local lake (Lake Lavon) was flooded and we couldn’t use our boat for 2 years.  But once we signed on the dotted line and bought a home, it quit raining.  The weird dirt there was actually shrinking from around our house and we had to circle our slab with soaker hoses and “water our slab” to keep the foundation from cracking.  I put in a fence around our yard and I ended up with tendonitis or tennis elbow from digging the holes for the fence posts because the ground was so hard packed from the lack of rain.  Tumbleweeds were part of our landscaping!

Fast forward to now.  We’ve been living here on beautiful Lake Travis for 10 years now.  The occasional rain will keep the lake actually looking like a lake until the last couple of years – you guessed it, we’re in a drought.  It’s raining like crazy in Houston and Wylie, but not here.  It’s so bad that you can actually see the rain coming at us and at the last moment, it splits, goes around us and comes back together to rain in Austin.  The TV weather guys announce a great rain event in Austin and we’re drier that a popcorn toot.  The lake has shrunk so much that we have to take a bus from the camp down to the lakefront to keep from getting so tired or flipping our ankles on the dry rocks that should be under water.

I wonder if there is a place in the United States that gets too much rain?  We can sell ourselves as rain stoppers and for a fee, we can move there and make the rain stop.  How many times have we seen or heard stories about dry places hiring rain makers to come and make it rain – we are the opposite, but I believe just as valuable a commodity in the weather business!!  Now don’t say Seattle or some crazy liberal place like Portland, Oregon, I’m talking about a nice quiet place in Middle America that could use our services.  We could be “Weather Consultants”  or “Weather Therapists”.  We could be actually appreciated for our talent!