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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
It sure is one dreary and rainy morning as I write this. But I refuse to complain because the high temperatures are supposed to be near 80 degrees by the time this newspaper hits the stands around mid-week. What a welcome weather surprise for a February!
I’ll be watching closely what happens in my yard with those temperatures. Like a lot of people, I’m eagerly waiting to see what the yard plants are going to do after their nights out during the three-degree arctic blast. My gardenias look like they’ve been hit by the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. My formerly big and beautiful rosemary garden is now a grey and brittle grave of spindly plant skeletons that I’m afraid would burst into flames if I looked at them too long. I’ve made a personal yard decision not to touch a single plant until it shows some sign of actually being alive – what amounts to a yard-wide show-of-hands as to who’s up to participate in life this year.
Besides the prospect of this upcoming warmer weather, another February highlight was the school Valentine’s Dance! While the cold, miserable, torrential pouring rain that night could not have been worse for a dress-up situation, the kids didn’t let it get them down. They looked terrific. Love conquered all weather.
And, if you think about it, maybe absolutely horrendous weather is exactly what a Valentine’s Dance needs! Consider the climactic love scene from the movie, “The Notebook.” It’s raining so hard that the rain essentially becomes a whole other character unto itself and the love interests are effectively drowning while standing on dry land.
Or think about in “Dirty Dancing” when Johnny kicks the wooden parking post from the ground so he can bust out his own car window to retrieve his keys so that he can drive Baby to the lake so they can practice The Lift – the single dance move that changes literally everyone’s lives – both on and off the screen. Who shows up during the kicking of the wooden parking post? Rain. Rain is a harbinger of love.
I hope the success of this school dance will lead to more school dances – kudos to the WVHS Student Council, The Main Street Association, the parents and the rain for pulling it all together. I look forward to when we eventually have a fall dance like homecoming dance or an informal Sadie Hawkins type deal.
In Water Valley High School Blue Devil Baseball news, the fellas have games Saturday, Feb. 25, at noon and 2 p.m. in Calhoun City and then Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 4 and 6 p.m. in Grenada. Those places are both close enough for anyone who may want to get out of town for a couple of hours and support our team.
The rain showed up the last home game. It rained for the entirety of the WVHS Baseball Jamboree and yet the parents and fans sat in those bleachers, got rained on and watched those kids play baseball for hours. That’s love.
