First day in August
Last rain was in May
When the rainmaker came to Kansas
In the middle of a dusty day...
It is a mystery how memory works (and my computer: cannot change the font!)
Of course the outer givens are clear:
- today is the first day in August - but there have been many since 1969, when Harry Nilsson published this song - and only 3 less when I got the record around 1972 (as a present, and not my favourite music).
- and it rains after a long spell of hot days in Bavaria, so the rainmaker must have been here.
But I haven't thought of that song for years. I see it as a symbol for ingratitude - the people of Kansas were stingy and didn't throw any money into the rainmaker's hat when he had conjured the rain.
"And the rainmaker's eyes and the Kansas skies /Well, they both became a darker gray".
Then the people of the town
heard the sound of his laughter
And they knew the rain had
come to stay.
I do hope that it will not stay here for the whole of August :
IF it does, I might re-read a novel by Edna O'Brien: "August is a Wicked Month" , published in 1965. (Must have been Tom's post about boring Herman's Hermits, which beamed me back into the Sixties...)
Yours Truly will drink her first cup of coffee - and: coming from Bremen (same weather as in Hamburg or the UK) I actually love rain. For a while... Toodle-pip!
PS: First sunray of the day: a new follower - welcome Mark Charlton!

