The day after the rains

It must be an old man thing, where certain things trigger a mind- wandering experience of yesteryear, or as I like to call it" simpler times." This morning, the calming affect of the rain stopping, took me back to the mid 1950s through the very early 1960s.

We didn't have the electronic marvels of today, so we had to create our own amusement. Right now, I can just picture my children rolling their eyes in unison, saying," Back in my day."

I remember always getting excited about seeing a rainbow after the rain stopped; why, I'll never know. Everything centered around baseball in the neighborhood I grew up in, so we didn't let the wet fields deter us. If it was too muddy outside, we would gather at someone's house or garage and play a baseball card game, we made up. All we needed to play our outside game of stick-ball was the 4 feet of carpet grass that extended on both sides of the driveway to the paved street. A broomstick handle (broom part sawed off) and a tennis ball. It was a three-person game but two could play the game, if the  pitcher didn't mind retrieving the hit ball. I still swear to this day, that it helped us with our hand to eye coordination because a pitcher would throw the ball as hard as he could, from 30 feet away, and we would have to hit that wet tennis ball with the  broom handle. We tried the game with a normal wooden bat but we couldn’t generate enough bat speed with our small wrists and body frame. It would have been nice if we had a nice thick industrial broom handle but our moms bought the cheapies from a, Five-and-dime store or Dick’s.

Some days it was just fun to get on our bicycles and ride through every mud puddle we could find along the way. If we were lucky, some girls were playing hopscotch, jacks, or just walking down the sidewalk, near a puddle of water. You guessed it;It was a race to the puddle to watch the girls scatter or get wet. I can still remember those old black ankle- high tennis shoes drying out on the front porch after a day of restless roving. Mom didn't want mud being tracked through the house ,so sometimes we had to dry them out in the old gas oven and put up with the complaints about them stinking up the house.

I can remember it being pretty quiet(except for us) the day after a rain because no one was no one was mowing their lawn, and if we saw any cars, they were going slow to avoid getting their breaks wet. The adults would be setting on their front porch, drinking a cold brew of their choice, watching the city kids play their silly games.

I think rain effects peoples moods or else there wouldn't be so many songs with the word rain in them.
Here are few:

1.     Singing in the Rain

2.     Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

3.     Acid Rain

4.     Come Rain or Come Shine

5.     Baby Can You Stop the Rain

6.     After the Rain Has Fallen

7.     Somewhere Over the Rainbow

8.     Rainy Day

9.     Under the Rainbow

10.  Summer Rain

11.  Rain When I Die

12.  Purple Rain

13.  Naked in the Rain

14.  November Rain

15.  Looks Like Rain

      I bet you can add several songs with the word "rain" in it.

Do you have any memories from the day after the rains?
It's another open thread Friday 13th.