RAIN
For many reasons I have been out in the rain a lot in my life. Is that like saying it has been my lot in life to have experienced rain a bunch? Whatever, I have been there and done a lot of rain. I had a paper route the year I turned 14 and for a year I had to go out twice a day and it did not matter if it was raining or not. I am not sure how much it rained that year but it seemed like it was pretty wet. Just for the record, it was the Centennial year (1961) for Kansas and we are approaching our sesquicentennial (150th year). Memories fade as the years pass so it might have been the driest year on record but I am too lazy to look it up.
By far, My wettest year, 1968, was spent in Vietnam and I experienced a Monsoon season first hand. One day it was hot and dry and we were driving down a dusty road. It started to rain and by the time we got to our destination, we were covered with mud. It rained just hard enough to enrobe (That a term I heard that companies use when they coat things in chocolate) us like a candy bar. It didn't rain hard enough to wash away the mud it just kept adding layers of new dust and turning it to a coating. Thank god I was at that time near our base camp and could change before it hardened. I didn't think it could get worse, but like many other times, I was wrong.
For the next few months, it rained almost all the time. You could wear a poncho if you wanted but you would get so sweaty that it didn't seem to matter. For those weeks, nothing dried out. It was a warm wet place and the national product was mildew. If you were fortunate enough to be near a village where there was a laundry could wash your uniform, it came back cleaner but it was still that smelly damp uniform you had been wearing. I am pretty sure that many of us started to smoke during that time if nothing else but to hide the smell of dampness that exuded from our clothes. A lot of that time I was out in the field and there was no place to bathe so there was that layer of stink to contend with also. When I first got to Vietnam, I thought that nothing could make it worse because of all the smells in the dry season, but again I was wrong.
I won't try to explain all the ways it rained, watch the movie "Forrest Gump" because it does a fine job of talking about the rain. For what seemed like months, it rained. The other day I found a bunch of letters I wrote to Barb from Vietnam and it was clear from the smell and the smudges which one's came from the Monsoon season.
In 1974, I spent my wettest month out in the field at Fort Riley. In 13 days it rained 16 inches and everything was one soggy, wet and muddy place. When we were foolish enough to try to get off the road very far to fire our Howitzers, we would spend the next 12 hours dragging them back near the road. They wouldn't let us fire them from the roads but they didn't look hard at just how near the surveyed firing points we were. I'm sure that we were at least 100 yards off the road but not any further.
I have memories of during that Summer Camp, of standing in water almost to the top of my boots and watching a movie inside a tent. Many of us were worried about the cord getting in the water and electrocuting us but not enough to quit watching. Inside our sleeping tent (pitched on the highest slope I could find) we actually dug little trenches to divert water around our bunks. One of the guys got carried away and dug his version of the Panama Canal. He couldn't figure out why those little gnats hovered around his bunk until he caught one of us just peeing in his trench rather than go outside in the rain. After a week of being wet all the time no one really cared but he did fill in the trenches with mud until it didn't hold as much water. Those little gnats were what we called "Dog Pecker gnats". the kind that bother the peckers of old dogs in Kansas from May through September.
The reason the rain is so near and dear right now as a subject, is that it seems like every day except one this week, it has rained. No one has tried to tie it to the Volcano erupting in Iceland and putting that dust up in the atmosphere (yet). It will have to continue a little bit longer but it sure shot the global warming figures in the ass because of all the clouds holding the temperatures down in the 60's.
Oh well, we'll all dry out someday and by August will be wishing we had some to that rain to help heal the inch wide cracks in the ground here in Kansas. Get dry and stay that way.
MUD
For many reasons I have been out in the rain a lot in my life. Is that like saying it has been my lot in life to have experienced rain a bunch? Whatever, I have been there and done a lot of rain. I had a paper route the year I turned 14 and for a year I had to go out twice a day and it did not matter if it was raining or not. I am not sure how much it rained that year but it seemed like it was pretty wet. Just for the record, it was the Centennial year (1961) for Kansas and we are approaching our sesquicentennial (150th year). Memories fade as the years pass so it might have been the driest year on record but I am too lazy to look it up.
By far, My wettest year, 1968, was spent in Vietnam and I experienced a Monsoon season first hand. One day it was hot and dry and we were driving down a dusty road. It started to rain and by the time we got to our destination, we were covered with mud. It rained just hard enough to enrobe (That a term I heard that companies use when they coat things in chocolate) us like a candy bar. It didn't rain hard enough to wash away the mud it just kept adding layers of new dust and turning it to a coating. Thank god I was at that time near our base camp and could change before it hardened. I didn't think it could get worse, but like many other times, I was wrong.
For the next few months, it rained almost all the time. You could wear a poncho if you wanted but you would get so sweaty that it didn't seem to matter. For those weeks, nothing dried out. It was a warm wet place and the national product was mildew. If you were fortunate enough to be near a village where there was a laundry could wash your uniform, it came back cleaner but it was still that smelly damp uniform you had been wearing. I am pretty sure that many of us started to smoke during that time if nothing else but to hide the smell of dampness that exuded from our clothes. A lot of that time I was out in the field and there was no place to bathe so there was that layer of stink to contend with also. When I first got to Vietnam, I thought that nothing could make it worse because of all the smells in the dry season, but again I was wrong.
I won't try to explain all the ways it rained, watch the movie "Forrest Gump" because it does a fine job of talking about the rain. For what seemed like months, it rained. The other day I found a bunch of letters I wrote to Barb from Vietnam and it was clear from the smell and the smudges which one's came from the Monsoon season.
In 1974, I spent my wettest month out in the field at Fort Riley. In 13 days it rained 16 inches and everything was one soggy, wet and muddy place. When we were foolish enough to try to get off the road very far to fire our Howitzers, we would spend the next 12 hours dragging them back near the road. They wouldn't let us fire them from the roads but they didn't look hard at just how near the surveyed firing points we were. I'm sure that we were at least 100 yards off the road but not any further.
I have memories of during that Summer Camp, of standing in water almost to the top of my boots and watching a movie inside a tent. Many of us were worried about the cord getting in the water and electrocuting us but not enough to quit watching. Inside our sleeping tent (pitched on the highest slope I could find) we actually dug little trenches to divert water around our bunks. One of the guys got carried away and dug his version of the Panama Canal. He couldn't figure out why those little gnats hovered around his bunk until he caught one of us just peeing in his trench rather than go outside in the rain. After a week of being wet all the time no one really cared but he did fill in the trenches with mud until it didn't hold as much water. Those little gnats were what we called "Dog Pecker gnats". the kind that bother the peckers of old dogs in Kansas from May through September.
The reason the rain is so near and dear right now as a subject, is that it seems like every day except one this week, it has rained. No one has tried to tie it to the Volcano erupting in Iceland and putting that dust up in the atmosphere (yet). It will have to continue a little bit longer but it sure shot the global warming figures in the ass because of all the clouds holding the temperatures down in the 60's.
Oh well, we'll all dry out someday and by August will be wishing we had some to that rain to help heal the inch wide cracks in the ground here in Kansas. Get dry and stay that way.
MUD
Good memories, MUD! Oh, I don't mean that the memories were necessarily "good" for you.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should say, thanks for the story. I've heard a bunch of guys talk about the rain in Vietnam...sheesh. Have a great Sunday, man! Hopefully it'll clear off for y'all. It's hot and dry down here...gonna be 94 again today...maybe a record.
As of today my backyard is still squishy, I am soo done with the rain, but I guess no rain would be worse.
ReplyDelete