It's Raining on Our Parade!

As you know, Olga joined the girls for lunch at Wintzell’s earlier this week. It was a positively, beautiful day. Baby blue skies, light breeze, 74 degrees…and it’s February! You gotta love Mobile! It was the kind of day you wish you could wrap up and store away for when you really needed it. Like a girl’s wedding day, or a family reunion, or a child’s birthday party. Or like today, when you have plans to take a particular Traveling Bra to her first Mardi Gras parade!

I woke up this morning and it was pouring. Not a problem I thought, we get heavy downpours like this all the time here. It could very well stop in the next five minutes. So I pulled up the local radar and to my dismay, it looked like a Christmas tree – green and yellow and orange signifying heavy rain and lots of it. AE and I debated the type of rain we were dealing with.

“It’s not just the regular line of storms that moves from west to east and then passes within a few hours.”
“You mean, it’s Train Rain?” AE asked.
Not knowing what the heck she was talking about, I asked, “What’s Train Rain?”
“That’s what the weatherman from the Coast* Mike Reider referred to as the type of rain that just keeps coming, and coming.
“I guess that applies here. All I know is that this rain is coming out of the Gulf and we all know that’s different than the rain that moves from west to east.”

I’ll stop so as not to portray myself as a bigger geek than I already am. When you live in the second rainiest city in the country, you kinda know the different types of rain. Little bitty stingin' rain, Big 'Ol Fat Rain, rain that comes in sideways....(Forrest Gump, get it?)

So, AE and I did what anyone does when they aren’t getting what they want. We threw a temper tantrum. We stomped and groveled, begged and pleaded: “Please, please, please let the rain stop. Don’t let it rain on our parades!”


When AE referred to The Coast, she was referring to the Mississippi Gulf Coast where she grew up. I thought it humorous when I was in college that people from north Mississippi, or rather, The Delta, would refer to people from South Mississippi, The Coast, as ‘Coast Trash’. Not very nice, I know, but I do love to hear people from The Delta talk…so melodic and sweet it’ll make your teeth hurt.