Clint Black and thunderstorm nostalgia

I shouldn't have been surprised at the thunder. The pavement tried to warn me with its fuming scent and the air was uncommonly dense. Selective raindrops fell from the sky at a storm's early onset, though I didn't feel a single one touch me.

The C.D. in my disc changer cycled over on the drive home and I hit the FM button, half-expecting it to land me something good. 
Then as if on a cosmic cue or by silly coincidence, Clint Black started singing to me:

All the heaven's rivers come to life, I see it all unwind
I hear it talking through the trees and on the window pane
When I hear it I just can't believe
I never liked the rain

I'm not easily won by a country song. It's usually a problem with the lyrics or maybe that honky-tonk synthesizer with its twangy drone that makes my ears tickle. It is a musical genre that is reserved for two occasions in my life: karaoke and rodeos. Outside of those annual events, I wear denim jeans as unassumingly as the average citizen and strongly discourage others from allowing it to inspire their wardrobe.

In any case, I am white and hereby compelled to pay homage to country music because of my prarie-bonneted, trail blazing, ancestor settlers and the sad songs their lungs must have harbored over the Oregon Trail. How anthems of hardship on the plains has its modern translation in sequined chaps and belt buckles the size of Montana, I will never know.

Respect for my ancestors and skin color aside, there are a few songs I just like and they are counted among the albums of Clint Black. He was one of the first male voices I ever fell in love with on the radio, and a girl can't just forsake her first love on the account of a few bad lyricists.

Live at a summer concert a few years ago, he single-handedly redeemed all things good about country music with a few notes from beneath his black Stetson. I enamored still.

My relationship to country music about as fickle as this pre-summer weather: tiresome and generally untrustworthy. I am hard pressed to find relevance in music waxing nostalgic about catfish on a trot line and endless summer romance. I am about as urban a former country girl as could be found in all this rainy metropolis and yet its funny how a few raindrops and the right song can bring a past time crashing into the present.


A sky cracked with electricity is so great a wonder that I delayed sliding the glass door closed. With full sensory of the storm for a few minutes, the intermittent light show and my billowing curtains made me glad for that country song.

On nights like this I am reminded of the beauty of a place like Portland, despite the thriving city of "elsewhere" I long to be most of the time. In the storm and the rain come memories of what it was like to walk through the rain in seasons of youthful expectation for classes and the excitement of a crush in each one. Other places, I have certainly been, but in the returning, I haven't minded the rain as much.

It was good of Clint Black to remind me. He might even see me at the end of July, hunting for a good spot in the fairground crowd to hear that song he sings about rain..