The Rain and Hemingway
As I drove across town this morning with the rain pelting the Birmingham area, I thought about what Hemingway said about the rain in Paris in the 20's.
"Then there was the bad weather. It would come one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside."
Perhaps the rain is not as bad in Jefferson/Shelby County, Alabama, but it does seem that sodden leaves are everywhere and the puddling rain on the highways makes driving treacherous and everyone, thank goodness, seems to be slowing down. Surely the water table is up, and we are out of any drought situation.
One day the rain will end, and the winter sun will return, and these early days of January will be a memory not much remembered. By the end of 2009, not much of anything else from January will be remembered most likely.
"Then there was the bad weather. It would come one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside."
Perhaps the rain is not as bad in Jefferson/Shelby County, Alabama, but it does seem that sodden leaves are everywhere and the puddling rain on the highways makes driving treacherous and everyone, thank goodness, seems to be slowing down. Surely the water table is up, and we are out of any drought situation.
One day the rain will end, and the winter sun will return, and these early days of January will be a memory not much remembered. By the end of 2009, not much of anything else from January will be remembered most likely.
posted by Fred Hudson at 1:29 PM
4 Comments:
Remarkable that a place like central Alabama can remind of Hemingway's Paris.
Amazing, isn't it!
I see Jake Barnes right now: sitting at a table by the window in Shipley, sipping a hot caramel cappuccino and eating a raspberry donut.
Poor hapless Jake would deserve such a respite.
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