By By Tim Cottrell
Rain, rain, go away. Afternoon thundershowers are a fairly common occurrence during the summer, but come on, this is getting ridiculous.
During the course of the day, the temperature is usually hovering around 1,000 degrees, give or take a couple. Once you've finally managed to drink enough water to rehydrate yourself after sweating like crazy just standing around outside, the clouds come rolling in.
After you stare at them for a few minutes, and realize that you haven't gotten any pictures of football practice yet and it's about to start raining, panic sets in.
This was especially true yesterday, when only a mile away from Northview's practice the first big lighting bolt hit.
In the time it took to reach the school, the players had all quickly retreated for cover.
Assuming maybe it was far enough away from Canoe to catch EA's practice was a mistake; as they too had run inside.
After finally arriving back in Atmore to an absolute deluge, it was fairly pointless to even attempt a run to Escambia County High School.
Rain - good for crops, bad for photography.
It really doesn't even stop there. When you work almost all day every day, coming home and catching a nice rented movie or maybe David Letterman is one of the few things to look forward to.
On two separate occasions last week, heavy rain washed out those hopes. Tuesday night saw the power knocked out, leaving few ways to watch TV. The next night, with hopes of catching a classic movie, more rain came; this time leaking through the ceiling and shorting out the TV.
How's a guy supposed to manage in this?
With football season just a few days away, we can only hope the rain subsides enough to allow our boys to not have to play in muck every Friday night.
The rain is also not fun to drive in, especially when it's a 30-mile drive every night. After nearly floating away on Hwy. 41 in Brewton last week was when I realized this has to stop. Folks here in Atmore are familiar with those conditions as well, as several of the roads tend to become ponds after a heavy rain.
But with any luck, the monotony of heat/rain, heat/rain, will end soon. September and the Autumnal Equinox are just around the corner, so cooler weather is bound to not be too far away.
Fall is always one of the best times of the year, and this fall should be a very exciting time in the Atmore area. Change is everywhere, with new principals, new football coaches, and a lot of buildings going through their second hurricane renovation. The town is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, and this reporter is quite eager to see how things turn out.
Hopefully the rain won't wash all this change away.
Tim Cottrell is sports editor of the Atmore Advance. His column appears weekly.