Blog 348 – 07.20.2016
(Excerpt from the book, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along)
Episode 20
When Emily was little I worked all the hours I could get to support my family. That meant I seldom got off work before seven In the evening and I worked most Saturday’s so Sunday was the day I got to have breakfast with Emily and the boys and then Ben, Emily, and I  watched Sesame Street together before church. Emily loved Sesame Street, me too. Bert and Ernie and all the gang were like family visiting every Sunday morning. When I was a boy it was Captain Kangaroo and the gang at the treasure house but for Em’s generation 123 Sesame Street was the place to be.

One of my most favorite skits on the show was about rain. I have heard people complain about the weather especially rain all my life. But, I love rain, in fact the only weather I love better than rain is snow. After sixty four years snow flakes still thrill my heart like they did when I was a boy in Tennessee when snow meant a Snow Day off from school, sledding, making snow men (I prefer making snow ladies now – much shapelier) and eating snow. Warning: Please Don’t Eat Yellow Snow. The little boy in me loves that joke.

It snows far less than it rains so I get to enjoy the rain more often. The Sesame Street piece about rain started with a black man in a suit behind a desk saying, “Folks, I’ve been hearing a lot of bad talk about rain. Listen folks, we’ve got to get behind rain.” It was in the format of a political commercial and the speaker got more heated as he continued. He named all the benefits of rain: water to drink, bathe, and swim in, water to grow crops and all the green stuff that gives us air to breathe. He went on and on like a politician trying to convince you to vote for rain. He made a good case. He got my vote and I think Emily’s and Ben’s too.

We laughed and laughed and it still gives me an inward chuckle every time I hear someone complaining about the rain as I remember the words: “I’ve been hearing a lot of bad talk about rain. Listen folks, we’ve got to get behind rain.”

I love sunshine as much as the next guy but there is nothing quite so refreshing as Neil Sedaka sang, “Oh, how I love the rainy days and the happy ways I feel inside.” And in closing I repeat: “Listen, folks I have been hearing a lot of bad talk about rain. We’ve got to get behind rain.”

A song they used to sing a lot in a Nazarene church I once attended many years ago had these words:

Showers of blessings,
Showers of blessings we need.
Mercy drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.

Your friend and fellow traveler. Emily’s Dad, and lover of rain,
David White