After the rain comes

My daughter and I shared a memory that had us both laughing. She lived in a rural area when her children were small. Rain water ran through an open gully down a steep hill behind her home and into the cul de sac past three other houses.

One spring day after a thunderstorm, her neighbor, a man in his forties, who enjoyed his brewsky was outside persuing the grounds with a can of beer in hand. She watched as he hot-footed three feet into the air dousing himself with beer. He peered down into the gully and ran to the side of his house for a rake. He proceeded to clobber the rain water.

Had he lost/found someting? Was he trying to retrieve it? Kill a snake? Rescue a drowning animal?

My daughter walked down to the end of the road to meet her son at the school bus,and the guy let her have it.

"Keep your kids' stuff in your own back yard. I nearly had a heart attack when that three foot rubber alligator came floating past my house. For a minute there I thought I'd drank a few too many."

When Ashley was seven we took her to Florida, and the only thing she wanted with her spending money was this very realistic looking rubber alligator. I'd say we got our money's worth, wouldn't you?