It rained yesterday in Edmond, a late winter storm resonating with the sights and sounds of booming thunder and flashing lightning.  It reminded me of a damp trip my then wife Gail and I took to New Orleans, via Vidalia, Louisiana.

Like today, it was late winter.  Gail and I had finished work at our jobs and decided on a whim to visit her parents in Vidalia before continuing on to Chalmette.  Gail's father, Harvey was the foreman of a large cattle ranch just outside of the far eastern Louisiana town just across the mighty Mississippi River from Natchez.  We planned to spend the night there and then head south for a little respite from our college drudgery.

Darkness had already fallen before we pulled out of our Fayetteville, Arkansas driveway, drops of rain beginning to dampen the windshield.  Somewhere in central Arkansas, the light rain turned into a serious storm, the wipers on our old 62' Ford truck barely keeping up with the tempo of the downpour.  As we neared the rice fields of southeast Arkansas, the wipers halted altogether.

The downpour and our lack of wipers rendered us suddenly sightless and I cautiously pulled the truck to the side of the road until we could assess the mechanical failure.  After groping around under the dash, I soon learned that the cause of the malfunction was a missing "C" clamp.  We searched on the floor of the truck with the dim illumination of a flashlight with nearly spent batteries but it was to no avail.

The rain continued and we realized that we were either stuck on the side of the, or we would have to improvise and carry on.  Experimenting, I learned that I could manually manipulate the wipers by driving with one hand while using the other to work the mechanism.

The storm did anything but abate.  Southeastern Arkansas is flat.  Very flat!  Water was pouring across the highway in waves and I quickly learned the old saying "raining cats and dogs" was rooted in reality.  Fish from the rice fields and drainage ditches flowed across the road in our path.  It was quite an experience, steering with one hand while working the wipers with the other, all the while trying to avoid wildlife pouring across the road in front of us.

We finally made it to Vidalia, mostly unscathed.  The deluge continued as we said a late goodnight to Gail's parents and claimed a deserved rest in an empty room in the ranch's rustic bunkhouse.

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