the rain is raining all around

many years ago now, by anyone's reckoning, i moved to a small city in pennsylvania that prided itself on two things as far as i could tell - its moravian heritage and its annual musikfest. the moravian heritage i found as entertaining as any other kind of history, musikfest got old fast. im from a small town by the jersey shore, after all, and im bred to despise shoobies* of any kind.

so when busloads of them starting treking through my backyard, armed with sunglasses, lanyards and water bottles, tying up my parking spaces, elevating the already frenetic tempo of my life into a veritable tarantella, i could see it wasn't something i was going to be able to embrace long-term. the first year, i enjoyed musikfest, the second year, i tolerated it. the third year, i'd had enough.

the fourth year, i announced - in may - it was going to rain on musikfest.

natives and fans laughed at me. oh, it NEVER rains on musikfest, they assured me. we've NEVER had more than a day or two AT MOST of REALLY bad weather. you'll see. it NEVER rains on musikfest.

we'll see, i muttered, mostly to myself.

it started raining a few days before the festival and continued, through seven of the nine days. (the other two the sun shone watery and faint-hearted through thick layers of lowering gray-white clouds.) and when i say it rained, it didn't just drizzle or shower. it RAINED, with a deliberation that verged on biblical.

i said it was going to rain on musikfest, i remarked with grim satisfaction to a friend as we watched the soggy 'festers slogging sodden through the torrent from the shelter of my front porch.

there're small african nations that would pay you large sums for this kind of ability, she observed.

maybe i've missed my calling. ;)

*shoobies, sometimes shortened to shoob, are tourists. traditionally, day-trippers to the south jersey beaches brought their lunches in shoeboxes... hence the term "shoobie."