COLUMN: The rainy days of summer

By Sage Merritt

Published: June 14, 2008

There have been quite a few thunderstorms rolling over the Valley here lately, delivering much-needed rain for crops and hopefully providing some replenishment for our area groundwater supply. Last year’s severe drought conditions gave me a new appreciation for the value of rain, which can sometimes seem like an unwanted interruption to the parade of outdoor barbecues and camping trips that fill my summertime afternoons and evenings.
When I was a kid, I always looked forward to rain. Rain meant huge mud puddles in our front yard, puddles that became more like swimming holes after three or four consecutive stormy nights.
Since the family ranch where I grew up was tucked in the rolling hills of the Nebraska prairie, 25 miles away from the nearest pool, the chance to play in the mud was always a welcome opportunity for my three siblings and I to cool off on a hot summer day. We’d throw water at each other and catch tadpoles in the knee-deep mud for hours, then report to Mom to be hosed off in the yard before going inside for a more thorough bath at the end of the evening.
Of course, thunderstorms sometimes mean more exciting meterological events. In Nebraska, this frequently included softball-sized hail and, of course, tornadoes.
Now that I’m grown, hail means the possibility of having to replace my car’s windshield and other unpleasant and expensive situations, but when I was a kid, I thought hail was neat. It was something to be marveled at, these spontaneous balls of ice that came plummeting from the lightning-filled, eerie green sky on a hot summer night. We’d run outside and search for the biggest piece of hail we could find, to be saved in the freezer.
Tornadoes were a little more fearsome, a time to go sit in the basement and hope that our house wasn’t going to be picked up and dropped in the neighbor’s corn field. A near-miss when I was about 7 tore all of the shingles off my uncle’s roof and deposited them in our driveway, a mile down the road.
However, fear of being swept up by a twister never stopped us from taking part in one of the oldest and noblest of Midwestern traditions — standing outside on the front stoop, gawking at the oncoming storm as it formed into a threatening-looking, swirling mass, while the blaring radio urged everyone in the path of the storm to get inside and into their bathroom or cellar.
These days, when storms roll through I open up my apartment windows and let the cool air blow into the house, carrying with it the sound of thunder and clattering windchimes on my back porch. My cats scramble from their customary perches on the windowsill and hide underneath the couch. My dog, Moe, who is obsessed with all strange noises, stands up on his back paws at the kitchen door to watch the rain in the backyard.
When the storm clears, I go outside to retrieve the trash cans, which usually blow into the street with all of the other trash cans from around the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Moe frolicks in the fallen-branch-and-mud-filled yard, aka doggy heaven.
It’s not quite as much fun as catching tadpoles on a hot summer day. But I’ve grown to appreciate it.