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Anybody fancy a rain dance?
By dwray in The nature of things
April 27, 2011

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Charles Dickens wrote "There is something good in all weathers." But sliding through the steamy heat on Tuesday night, it was pretty hard to believe it. It feels like years since we had the relief of rain. After all, Texas is in a drought. Across the state, grass has turned to kindling and fires have burned more than a million acres of land.

It's only April, but it seems like it won't ever rain. When I was a kid I did a rain dance. Granted, I stacked the deck that afternoon, dancing around on the lawn under ominous looking thunderheads. Eventually, after a lot of prancing around on my part, complete with war-whoops, it rained big fat drops of water from the sky.

There's this great movie, The Rainmaker. A man comes to a town blighted by drought, promising that, for $100, he can make it rain. He may be a con-artist and a liar, but in the end, the rain comes down. Maybe he's a faker or maybe he holds the key to pulling water from the sky - in the end, it's raining, and it doesn't matter. (Also, he's played by Burt Lancaster. There's also that.)

Of course, I wasn't thinking about any of this as I slid out of my car, already sweating like a pig.

"It's hotter than hell on a Tuesday," I said, listening to my voice reverberate in the street.

Lately, it's been hotter than hell on a Tuesday, a lot. Now, I'm not saying that hell is any warmer on Tuesdays, in particular - it's just been real hot around here, is all. When the weather gets like this - muggy, hot as an oven but worse since it's not like the world is going to present you with a fresh-baked loaf of bread - it seems impossible that it'll ever change.

Last weekend, the wind was blowing steadily and it seemed likely as not that a single spark would see the whole place burning in no time.

There have been 21 house fires in Victoria since January, but we've been relatively lucky in these parts. Only a few grass fires, and nothing like the stuff CNN has been flashing on TV.

On Easter weekend, everyone was supposed to pray for rain. That's a nice idea, but with all of these bright and cloudless skies, maybe we should cover our bases and try a rain dance. Not that I know the first thing about it (those these guys seem to) but maybe, just when you're feeling like the rain won't ever come, it'll roll on in.