Maybe Adele did set fire to the rain

Some of you younger readers may not know about a certain weather phenomenon, so I hope you old folks reading this will bear with me as I explain it.

There was once a time when a liquid — we’ll call it “water” — would fall from the sky. I know it’s hard to believe, but you’d just be standing there outside, and all of the sudden you’d be getting wet. You’d look around for sprinklers, water guns or, your worst fear, a clown with a squirting flower. But, no, this liquid would just be falling right out of the sky for no good reason. It’d be clear, so you wouldn’t have to worry that Hillary Clinton’s airplane was flying overhead.

See, kids, there was a time when Georgia’s tree, corn stalks and leprechauns were green, not brown. It was because water would “rain” from the sky, which was not appreciated by 12-year-olds forced to mow the grass or by seventh-grade teachers who couldn’t send their 12-year-old boys outside for recess and get a few minutes of peace and quite. But, apparently, farmers especially liked the stuff. The exact reason why is still mystery.

What’s not a mystery is how that rain left the earth, rose into the sky and fell again. There’s a scientific explanation for this process: When farmers got tired of waiting for rain to fall, they asked then Gov. Sonny Perdue to assemble folks on the steps of the state capitol, where he’d ask everyone to join him in praying for rain and great deals on tracts of land near Disney World. It worked, and the state was saved.

But then Nathan Deal became governor of Georgia, and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t rained since.

As one of the old people in this state who remembers rain, I kind of miss it. There was a time that rain seemed to interfere anytime I wanted to do something outside like tennis, golf or squirrel wrestling. But, now, I kind of miss the wet stuff.

At least there are a lot of songs about it in case I want to reminisce about it. Neil Sedeka heard laughter in the rain, Eddie Rabbitt loved a rainy night, Adele set fire to it, raindrops kept falling on B.J. Thomas’ head, CCR was a little conflicted as they wondered if you’d ever seen the rain and then who would stop the rain, and Prince wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain — and if you know what he was singing about, c’mon raise your hand because I have no idea.

But no one ever sings about drought. Sure, John Denver sang that sunshine on his shoulders made him sunburned, but that’s about it. No one sings about dryness or the brown, brown grass of home.

Who knows what happened to the rain? I’ve had one-one-hundredths of an inch at my house in the month of October. I’ve seen more clowns in the woods this month than drops of water falling from the sky. I had to ask a couple of them to walk around my new grass and spray it with their squirting flowers.

If it doesn’t hurry up and rain again soon, we may have to find ol’ Sonny Perdue and do some praying on the capitol steps once again. If a guy named Sonny can pray for rain, anybody can. Heck, I might even assemble some folks at the capitol and pray for rain myself.

All I know is somebody’d better do something soon or we’ll have to change Georgia’s state song to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 9:19 PM with the headline "Maybe Adele did set fire to the rain."