With apologies to Stealers Wheel: there was rain to the left of me...and rain to the right...stuck in the middle with no place dry to go...

Please read this...Into every life, lots and lots of rain must fall...

Scripture came to mind one day last week while yours truly was standing in the midst of a veritable deluge.

Allow me, if you will, an opportunity to paraphrase a few verses from the Book of Genesis...

...in the six hundredth year of Noah's life (well, sometimes I feel about that old), in the seventh month, and on the twenty-seventh day of that month, that very day all the springs of the great deep broke through, and the sluices of heaven opened.

Then, there are these words of wisdom from the 48th chapter of Proverbs: "Indeed, the wise man parketh his car in such a way that he can leaveth his vehicle and, verily, go unto The Paragraph Factory; and he shall walketh through the deluge; and he shall not be wet."

Last Thursday afternoon, as in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month, yours truly was heading back to The Paragraph Factory after a bit of a lunch break. 

While I was at home, we experienced a rather brief, but very wet, downpour. Fortunately, yours truly happened to be indoors at the time.

While I was motoring back to metropolitan Anna, it was pretty easy to see where rain had fallen. And had not fallen. Part of the highway between Anna and Cobden was, well, just plain old dry.

As I got closer to Anna, it was pretty obvious that Mother Nature once again was going to let loose with a deluge. 

She was kind enough to wait until the moment I had arrived at The Paragraph Factory and was trying to get from my car into said factory to let the sky open up once again. Big Time.

I sat in the car for a couple of minutes. The rain kept falling. And falling. And falling. 

For a brief moment, the downpour seemed to let up, so I got out of the car. At that very moment, the downpour resumed in full force. So, I scampered under one of the eaves at The Paragraph Factory.

At the time, the spot under the eave was pretty much the best place to be. For a short time, anyway.

You see, I could not walk behind my car, because part of Lafayette Street had turned into a tributary of the Mississippi River. At one point, a tow boat and a line of barges went by.

Off to my left, water was pouring in sheets off the roof at the factory. Same thing to my right. The situation reminded me of a scene in the movie "The Last of the Mohicans." In the scene, the "heroes" in the movie are walking behind a waterfall to escape pursuers who have bad intentions in mind.

(And, in the for whatever it might be worth category, we've been to the place in North Carolina where the aforementioned scene in "The Last of the Mohicans" was filmed. We did not get wet.)

Meanwhile, back under the eave, yours truly kept watching, and the rain kept falling. I looked down, and the water next to the building was gushing into my shoes.

When it became obvious that the rain was not going to stop any time soon, I decided to make a break for the back door at The Paragraph Factory. Bad move. I got soaked. As in absolutely soaked. Shoes. Jeans. Shirt. Hair. Dripping wet.

I walked into the building, water dripping off my person, shoes squishing below.

"You look like a drowned rat," a coworker was kind enough to observe. I thanked her for the kind observation, and also wondered if that just might be a politically incorrect observation about all wet rodents. 

I had no choice but to motor back home to get my clothes dried. By the time I got home, the sun was shining. For a while, anyway. The Other Half was kind enough to empty the drier. Good thing she has my best interests in mind. Most of the time. 

Then, it was back to The Paragraph Factory. Best of all, by the time I got back to Anna...it was starting to rain again.

The Gazette-Democrat

112 Lafayette St.
Anna, Illinois 62906
Office Number: (618) 833-2158
Email: news@annanews.com

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