Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head: Reflections on a Rainy Day

Outside, the streets are flooding and rivers are overflowing. Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, has recommended that we all stay indoors and avoid driving during this “historic” rainfall.

Sounds good to me. I’m happy to stay inside on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I’m safe and dry and lying in bed with the fireplace flame dancing.

Looking out my window at the continuing storm, I’m thinking about the song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.”  Lately, if a song from when I was younger comes to mind, I challenge myself to remember the lyrics. Earlier today, I was thinking about a song that was popular when I was in third grade. I didn’t understand the lyrics at that time (and I still don’t).  “I love you, a bushel and a peck.”  I never knew what the “peck” was but assumed it was a kiss on the cheek. Nowadays, we can look up anything we don’t understand on the internet. A peck, it turns out, is a unit of measurement, roughly two gallons, and “a bushel and a peck” was an expression used back in the day to mean a large quantity.

But since I’m walking down memory lane, and it’s raining, I recall how much I used to love to play in the rain when I was a kid. My mother made sure I always wore a raincoat and galoshes. (Thanks Mom.)

There was a time when I was in my late twenties and thirties when I did not enjoy the rain. I’d invested in apartment buildings, and every single one of them had a roof that might leak. Once, when I was tight on cash I replaced a roof as cost efficiently as possible only to have it fall in during the next rain. I had to replace that roof along with all the ceilings and carpeting. And the new roof still leaked. I think it was the actor Anthony Quinn, who spoke about life as, “The whole catastrophe.”  After that I always used a licensed roofer.

But today I own no apartment buildings anywhere, so I don’t have to gaze out at the growing puddles and complain to Daveen that the rain is going to cost me a hundred thousand dollars.

And though my mother is no longer here to make me wear a raincoat or galoshes, I think I’ll sit this rainstorm out. I’ll stay inside writing and keep warm and cozy by the fire.

But back to song lyrics. Contrary to a popular song from 1972, it does rain in Southern California. In fact, it pours, man, it pours.

Alan