Rain, Hot Rods, and Memories....

YAAAAY! It's been raining most of the day, and do we ever need it! According to my rain gauge we've received .36" as of 6:30 tonight, for a total of 3.98" for the California rain season, which starts July 1st. We're still around 3" under "normal", so hopefully we can pick up another couple of inches before February and March pass by.
It's supposed to rain some more tonight, and most of the weekend, clearing Sunday, and then another front passes through Monday night.
When I lived back in Northern Illinois and was going through my Hot Rod phase, it *always* seemed to start raining on Friday night, and clear by Sunday, ruining the Weekend Cruise Nights. We'd still hang out at our haunt, but it was a "Beater Night", and we all drove our grocery-getters or parts-chasing vehicles. Even though I don't care for Springsteen's politics, every time I hear the line in "Jungleland" about the "Barefoot girl sittin' on the hood of a Dodge, drinkin beer in the warm summer rain", the memories come flooding back. The closest I ever came to that was seeing a barefoot girl sittin on the hood of a buddies Chevelle drinkin beer under the warm summer skies (no rain that weekend!), and then everybody realizing she had on STUDDED jeans.....ARRRRGH!
When she did her coy little slide off the hood, she took about $500 worth of paint with her, and was never welcome back to the group I hung with. I seem to remember her going over to the 4-wheeler guys, most of who had trucks too tall for her to climb up onto the hood.
Mostly we listened to Arrowsmith, Foghat, Thin Lizzie, Sammy Hagar, and others groups like that. I was the older one, so I introduced the younger guys to Pink Floyd (You mean they had albums BEFORE "Dark Side of the Moon"??), and the girls to Steely Dan. "Hey 19" was popular, but the first time some little sweetie asked me "What's Cuervo Gold?" I felt old. Still it always impressed them that I knew all the words to "Your Gold Teeth" (1 AND 2!), and "Bodishatva".
Plus, I had the fastest street-legal Trans Am in the territory......