GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE FOR SEPTEMBER 27, 2025

Hats off to Saturday, last night "brunged" us some rain, as it had become so very dry, it was welcomed by the crops in our area. It was so dry my Bahia grass was getting extra-crunchy. Yesterday was a better day for me than a good many of late, and I am grateful, thankful, and blessed. "Moron on that," later...huhuhuh. That is one of my favorite phrases. Rain brought many rain memories, of all sorts. Let me share a few with you. At a very early age, I loved thunderstorms, I would go out to the porches to watch them, thunder and lightning thrilled me.

Daddy ran two businesses, as he was an independent lightwood stump contractor/producer/buyer and shipper for Hercules Powder Company, later Hercules Incorporated, and owned a dirt moving and construction business building ponds, clearing land, and doing site work for construction projects. When his crew finished building a pond, he would have workers cleanup the area, finish everything off to look its best, even have dams cleaned of roots, and everything raked nicely, and always leave it lookin nice, as few others in the business cared about.

New ponds often take a good while to fill up, according to the amount of watershed draining into them. It can take weeks or months in some cases. I recall once as a boy, Daddy's men were almost done building a pond covering a few acres, when it came a mighty deluge, and they had to move the equipment from the pond, lest it be lost underwater, as the pipe and gate valve were installed and closed. Daddy and two of our uncles who worked for him, sat in their vehicles on the high ground above the pond and watched as it filled up completely in that one afternoon of pouring rain.

They were unable to "dress it off," as they wanted, because it was a done deal. I looked up the heaviest rainfall ever in the contiguous forty-eight states, and I was sure I recalled that a place in Texas once received several feet of rain from a storm, sure enough, in August of 2017, Cedar Bayou, TX got 51.88 inches (about 4 & 1/3rd feet) of rain from a single storm when inundated by Hurricane Harvey. Alvin, TX got 42 inches (3 & 1/2 feet) of rain in a 24 hour period, from a tropical storm on July 25-26, 1979.

I recall a time in the early to middle 1960s, in the fall of the year, that it rained almost continually, not a heavy rain, but a steady rain, for almost two weeks. I remember sitting on the front porch with Daddy, and watching it rain as it had for days already, and Daddy's men not being able to work, for most of that period of time. I asked him if he had ever seen such a rainfall for that long, and he had not. It was a strange time even for us kids, as we were getting stir crazy from being inside for so long, so were Daddy and Mama.

He had never been home so much ever before. Everyone one was grumpy. All seven of us kids played marathon card games, Go Fish, Old Maid, and Rummy, games of checkers and Chinese checkers as well. We colored and recolored coloring books, ate snacks from sheer boredom, and they let us, so we would stop whining about the rain for a little while. Churches were praying for sunshine. It was a blessing when it finally came to stay for a while. I remember once, not too much after that long reign of rain was a distant memory, a heavy rain came up one afternoon, and it was pouring rain in the front yard but not raining at all in the back yard.

Us boys kept running back and forth through the house front to back porches giving Mama and our older sisters, a running commentary as we passed through, "it's still raining out front, but not in the back," continuously. The rain finally creeped across the entire house and rained front and back, and back and front. When we finally had that news to report, Mama who was sewing and had never even looked up as we shifted to and fro through the house informing her of the continuing saga of the rain event, she mumbled, "thank you Jesus." Mamas were odd folks back then.

Another time a few years later when I was spending my summers in Ocala, Marion County, Florida with family there, me and a couple of cousins were helping Uncle Freeman Godwin fix fences around his cow pasture near his sawmill, formerly our great-grandpa's mill. A heavy rain began off to our east, and we could see it, a heavy gray curtain of rain, creeping slowly, ever closer to us. Uncle Freeman picked up the pace, as did we when he said in his always almost whisper quiet, and kind voice, "let's pick it up, boys," meaning pick up the pace.

We did, and we outpaced it as it followed at about our speed in fixing the bad spots, and we never got wet. As we finished and stepped under the lean-to shelter at the barn where the fence ended, the rain begin falling on the full length of the fence, and the barn. I suppose that right here is a good jumping off spot. So, farewell for now, I will be here again soon, on Georgia Folk and Farm, our website, and Georgia Folk and Farm Life, our beloved Facebook group. Look for my "Morning Glory" post over on the web page. God bless and we thank you.

NUMBERS 6: 24-26 KJV

..... we boys three, babee conway, lil merle, & me