The truck had been abandoned in the field. You could see the tires were worn and peeling from too many years in the hot sun. The nearby shack was in a state of "arrested decay," whatever that meant.
The rain clouds were piling up against the nearby mountains. It was going to rain, and probably rain hard, with possibly some hail thrown into the mix for good measure. The animals knew. They were already out of sight, hunkering down for the long storm that had been building all afternoon in the summertime heat.
The only thing that was moving was an older man, with a limping gait staggering along as best he could. He was going to get wet. The truck was totaled and he had nowhere to go. The shack was empty, but it was going to give little protection against the clouds that were within minutes of dropping their moisture upon him.
He thought to himself, "How had it gotten this bleak this quickly?" The answer was quite simple. Too much booze and not enough bongos.
For other stories about booze and bongos, please click here.
The prompt for the 20 days of Chill for today is summer rain. I had to laugh at that since I live in Southern California and we don't get summer rains. P.J. noted that summer rain is a bummer because it wipes out baseball games. I think the local teams, the Angels and the Dodgers have been rained out less times in the last fifty years than I have fingers on my hands, combined.
So what to write about today? Well, how about summer rain? I've been camping enough times that I've been able to experience summer rains. My youngest son and I went to the Grand Canyon and had thunderstorms every single day that we were there. It was quite an experience.
Although it's not rain, when my wife and I honeymooned in the middle of July in Oregon, Crater Lake received a foot of snow on the day before we got there. It made for some really nice shots, which I have on slide film and need to scan and digitize one of these days.
I even got sprinkled on when I took this shot in Bodie, California at the state historic park that surrounds this old ghost town. Even though I don't usually see summer rains very often where I live, I have experienced them enough elsewhere, that I can honestly say I like them. It makes for some really striking photos in my opinion.
