RAIN ON THE ROOF

I was going to write a followup to my post about the Terry Thornton situation, but Mother Nature intervened. A thunderstorm rolled in, and I shut down the computer and turned off
the powerstrip while I waited out the lightning.

As I sat here listening to the rain, I thought about what I would write, and the more I thought about it I realized I didn't really need to write anything more on the subject. Paul Allen apologized to Terry, Terry accepted. Other bloggers had already commented far more eloquently than I ever could on the developments. "Move along folks, nothing more to see
here."

So I listened some more to the rainfall. It was a good heavy rain, not like that long stretch
in June where New England got day after day of dank, cool drizzly rain. This was a loud
rain. I never realized how loud rain could get until my first summer as a camp counselor at
Camp Mitton down in Brewster on Cape Cod. The rain roared as it hit off leaves and
branches. There was no hard pavement to bounce off, just sandy dirty roads that formed puddles and then little streams that ran down to the center of the camp and into the pond.

There were no glass windows, just long screens covered by overhanging roofs off which the
water poured. In the morning, there'd be green moss visible on the tree trunks outside, and
the kids would track sand into the cabins on their sneakers. When it dried brooms were
handed out and the sand was swept out the cabin door.

One storm in particular stands out in my memory. I'd taken my kids out for an overnight on
the other side of Walker's Pond where'd we'd sleep out in pup tents. in the middle of the
night a hellacious thunderstorm broke out and woke us all up. Some of the kids were
frightened and I spent a good half hour yelling at them all to stay in their tents and flat on
the ground while I worried about what the heck we were supposed to be doing that we
weren't. Eventually the storm passed, and while we were all soaked, none of us were hurt.

The next morning, when we hiked back into Camp, the kids from my cabin were instant
celebrities with the other campers for having been out in that storm!

Then tonight's thunderstorm in the here and now passed and I decided to write all this
down while the thoughts were still fresh in my mind.

Ah, and the title? Well, I used "Summer in the City" for the title of a post about well,
summer in the city! It just seemed natural to use the name of another Lovin' Spoonful song
as the title for this one, because it's still raining out, and I hear rain on the roof.