Liquid fell from the sky — I swear

We were in Burbank last week and I came across something I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. I went for a run one morning and noticed the sky was overcast and the hills near the city were topped with gray clouds. Smoke.

I’d gone a few blocks when suddenly I felt moisture on my face. It was barely noticeable but I could tell it was definitely some sort of liquid. I hadn’t gone far enough to have generated any sweat so I figured I was having an allergic reaction to the Dodger Dog I had the night before during the Dodgers 3-2 win over the Mets.

The moisture continued to hover around me as I waddled down the road. Confused and concerned, I eventually screeched to a halt near the front door to the 67th annual Train Collectors Association convention.

I checked my glasses and saw little droplets on the lenses. I looked to the heavens for an answer and it literally hit me in the face — rain. It was rain. You remember rain, right? It’s made up of those drops of water that come out of the dark clouds overhead. I kind of recall it raining in Lodi once upon a time. The “smoke” above Burbank was actually rain clouds and I took pictures of them to show my grandkids someday.

We can have the climate change discussion some other time. I’m just telling you it used to rain here. Nowadays we’re locked in a Groundhog Day/ Davy Jones’ Locker purgatory of heat, smoke, masks, and people with no sense of humor. It feels like we’re doin’ time in the nether regions minus the pitchforks. When did we move to Dubai?

It used to rain so much around here you felt as if you were living in Cambodia running covert ops for the CIA.

Once or twice a year we’d get a deluge so intense the storm drains couldn’t handle it and a neighbor’s

“Bless This

Mess” welcome mat would come to rest on our front lawn like the Ark on top of Mount Ararat.

Remember back in 1997 when the floods closed Highway 99 at Dillard Road? We lived a few miles away and I recall sweating in the dark, mid-storm, clad in shorts and a T-shirt pushing the water away from our back door like a guy in the boiler room of the Titanic right before Leonardo DiCaprio took one for the team.

I realize I’m starting to sound like an old man fiddling with $3.76 worth of change in his front pocket as he lectures the kid in his yard who was sent to retrieve a wiffle ball after his older brother jacked it over the driveway yelling, “Posey got all of that one!”

Remember fog? That thick gray stuff that settled on our area for a month at a time? It was quite peaceful on a foggy night but the lack of sun kept everyone damp and cold for weeks. When the sun finally broke through in April, you could actually hear the angels singing.

So what’s causing all of this? Did God turn the thermostat up to “Hot and Dry” then head to Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte only to be cornered by a guy He hadn’t seen since high school who wanted to rehash the big game against the Pharaoh in 1400 BCE?

Are we doing meteorological penance due to cars, cows, and carnivals? Yes, carnivals. It’s a little known fact that the generators carnies use to power those rides they lash to a flatbed at the end of the Kazoo and Kabob Festival pass as much gas into the atmosphere as the Chinese.

Perhaps there is something to all this talk about aliens. They’re just sitting up there in their saucers, spinning the dial, laughing, moving us around on their game board we call Earth like we’re driving the blue car in the Game of Life.

Or maybe we’ve just reached the point that all the hot air generated by politicians in Sacramento has created a high pressure system over our state so strong only two ultra-powerful beings, the Almighty or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, can save us.