Wet Weather Woes

By Kenneth Boone (Contact) | Alex City Outlook

Published Friday, September 25, 2009

My truck smells like mildew.

I haven’t watered my garden in weeks and weeks.

I’ve rescheduled and re-rescheduled numerous photo shoots in the last month due to rain.

Don’t we live in the place that only a year ago was pulling out of “the worst drought on record?”

According to folks who were in Alexander City yesterday, it only sprinkled.

Where I was in Childersburg, I got soaked to the bone participating in a charity sporting clay’s tournament that benefited Children’s Harbor. The other members of our team almost unanimously decided the rain was here to stay so we “played through” the course. Almost everybody else on the course headed for shelter.

I learned one thing – if it’s raining hard enough, you can see the pattern from your shotgun zipping through the sky. And then, of course, the sun came out and I finished the tournament trying to hold up sodden Levis and shoot at the same time.

Today it’s supposed to rain again. In fact, I called and discovered that there’s an 80 percent chance of rain in Tuscaloosa during the game today.

The good news is that according to the forecast, Alexander City has a warm, sunny week ahead … one of the first in a long, long time.

All this made me think of Mark Twain’s famous weather quote, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Of course, when I double-checked the quote I discovered it was not uttered by Twain, but by Charles Dudley Warner. In the process, I also discovered a large number of weather quotes that made me smile. So I thought I’d share a little verbal sunshine on rainy weather this Saturday morning.

“Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.” – Kin Hubbard

“Rainbows apologize for angry skies.” – Sylvia Voirol

“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.” – Mark Twain

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” – Robert Frost

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather.” – Ilka Chase

“Barometer, n: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.” – Ambrose Bierce

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.” – George Carlin

“Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.” – Unknown

“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.” – Roger Miller

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” – Mark Twain

“Concrete is, essentially, the color of bad weather.” – William Hamilton

“I once dated a weather girl, we talked up a storm.” – Jay London

“It’s best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.” – Mark Twain

“Walking through puddles is my favorite metaphor for life.” – Jessi Lane Adams

And finally, one from an Alexander City native:

“It doesn’t matter what people say about me, I weather the storm.” Terrell Owens.

We all do.

Kenneth Boone is the publisher of The Alexander City Outlook. His column appears each Weekend Edition.

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