THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407120294
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Life around here this summer seems to be just one thunderstorm after another. The past week or so we have had four deluges, maybe more.
At least Noah had to deal with but one big one.
First, the oppressive heat clamps down, like a lid tightly fastened on a steaming mason jar in a mottled blue and white vat of boiling water.
Then on the horizon is a sullen cloud that you figure will never get here. And suddenly it strikes. WHAM! BLAMMEDY BLAM!
As if a timpanist has launched into a symphony on drums, cymbals, temple gongs and galvanized washtubs, banging away loud and fast as he can.
In our neighborhood Sunday, the lightning bolts were so frequent that the thunder built into a crescendo of a ceaseless roar, punctuated by crashing tree branches, and the rain intensified as if Niagara had opened over our heads.
At the height of the din, television sets blanched and blinked out, affrighted, and a burglar alarm in a house two doors down set up a banshee's wailing. The storm turned off the TV and turned on the alarm!
It went on and on, and my hope was that others than ourselves, especially farmers and reservoirs of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, were on the route of one of those life-giving nomads wandering around delivering relief.
Then the storm grumbled away, and, venturing out of doors, we found the dripping landscape, revived, all green and sparkling, like a just-done, not quite dry watercolor from the hand and eye of an impressionist.
I was out walking, early, in the first of those storms. The sky was a peculiar yellow in the east. And there came a drop or, as if someone at an ironing board, were sprinkling dry wash before applying the steam iron.
So what? What mattered a drop every now and then? The drops multiplied into a spring-type sprinkle even as the sun was shining, so that, we used to say, the devil was beating his wife, though that metaphor has always confounded me.
How do you explain the lovely radiance of sun through rain in terms of spousal abuse? The wife weeping, perhaps.
The shower built into a wall of water, and the dog and I were legging it homeward, soaked by that time but wary of the approaching thunder and lightning.
Describing the onset of the storm, I depicted the conductor performing as loud as ``he can.'' That overlooks JoAnn Falletta, director of the Virginia Symphony, a sprite one might think fit for only such finery as o'er the flow'ry bespangled grass trips the lovely amaryllis.
But when she begins weaving, swaying, waving her arms to summon the energies of the instrumentalists, you understand why hurricanes bore feminine names.
The symphony is campaigning to sell season tickets. So help me, it is every bit as moving as watching the Tides pull off a double play. She can play up a storm. by CNB