Rain, rain go away, come again another day or another week or another month. It started raining over the weekend and continues today. The weather report predicts rain every day until Monday. My neighbor is building an ark in her backyard. I can hear the hammering. I haven’t yet found the invitation for me and the beasties so I’ll just put on my boots, slog through the water and hope for the best. The dogs are sleeping on the couch. They have generously given me some of the middle cushion.

When I was growing up, my hometown was small. I swear my father knew everyone. Saturdays were his chore days, but first he always went uptown to do his errands. He wore white shirts to work every day. The collars were stiff with starch. My mother washed, ironed and put away his laundry but not his shirts. Those went to the Chinese laundry. I’d sometimes go with him. The laundry building was small. It was always thick with humidity from the giant iron at the front of the building. I could see the steam. Most of the clean laundry was folded and wrapped in brown paper. Next, my father stopped for a trim at the barber shop. Hanging outside the store was a small striped barber pole. I sat by the front window reading magazines. There were only two chairs in the small barber shop. Piles of hair were in the corners waiting to be swept. My father’s last stop was to his friend’s drug store. Uptown had many drug stores. His friend’s store was small. It had three stools at a tiny fountain. In the back was the pharmacy. Mr. Pullo was the owner and pharmacist. He always wore a white jacket like Ben Casey wore. I’d sit at the fountain and drink a vanilla Coke while my father visited his friend. When my father was finished visiting, we headed home.

When I was in Ghana, one of my friends was leaving to go home early, before the end of our second year. His school was on strike. Friends and I were in Accra, the capital, as it was a school holiday week. We decided to go out for drinks with him to say goodbye. Back then, expensive hotels were along the airport road. We chose to go to one of the older hotels. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of hotels in old movies in places like Hong Kong. We sat in what was a sunroom. It had wallpaper with green ferns and potted tropical plants placed about the room. The furniture was white wicker. Each piece of furniture had comfy cushions covered in the same fabric. We chuckled a bit as were definitely out of element. The waiter carried a silver tray. He was dressed in black pants and a white shirt with a bow tie. He was from an old movie. We stayed for a few drinks. That was one of the strangest experiences I had in Ghana. It was a step back in time to when Ghana was still a British Crown colony, and the British were given preferential treatment. If it had been a time travel movie, maybe even a Twilight Zone episode, I’d walk out the door and find myself forward in time to my Ghana.

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