Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: April 1988 Volume 26 Number 2, Page 79


April Showers

Bob Goshorn

Page 79

It never rained on my grandmother, my father's mother. She would get wet when there was a precipitation -- but it never was anything so unprepossing or prosaic as simply rain.

The lightest of rains, for example, was a "pitter-patter". On a hot summer day it would scarcely dampen the earth or the sidewalk on which it fell, as it dried out practically as soon as it hit the ground.

Next was a "sprinkle". It was slightly harder than a pitter-patter, but still quite gentle.

Then there was the "sizzle-sozzle". This, I think, is an old midwestern description. (If I remember correctly, Abraham Lincoln is reported, in Carl Sandburg's monumental biography of him, to have used it to describe a soft rain fall.) It, too, was a light shower, perhaps an hour or two in duration.

The ideal rain was a "soaker". It was an all-day or all-night steady rain, not too hard. It provided moisture for the soil and revived parched crops and pastures. A most welcome sight it was to farmers in the late summer -- unless it came at haying time.

Next in intensity, I believe, was a "gully washer". In its wake were cut small channels in the sun-baked earth, through which the overflow from the downpour would form rivulets and run off.

Even harder was the "sod-buster". As its name suggests, it beat down quite heavily and with considerable force. Rather than nourishing crops, it was more likely to destroy them.

And, finally, there was the "stump-floater". It was the type of storm that was remembered for years, and descriptions of it and the havoc it wrought were even sometimes handed down from one generation to the next.

But it never just "rained"!

 
 

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