Rain, rain, stay right here
As their editorial odes to sunshine show, Times board members past fancied themselves poets. And much as they liked clear skies, rain proved just as inspiring a muse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most editorials were straight-talking reports on farm conditions and strong storms, but some went beyond the prosaic.
In the 1880s, The Times’ board was in the habit of printing editorials that were only one or two lines long. With rain on their minds during last two months of 1889, editorial writers, sounding like the taciturn next-door neighbor who only says a few words about weather, they came up with these:
Oct. 23, 1889:The rain approaches the phenomenal.Nov. 18, 1889:There is rain in the air.Nov. 24, 1889:The fog may turn to rain.Nov. 30, 1889:It is time for a good rain.Dec. 1, 1889:The rain could not have been better timed. The rain is worth $50 to every man, woman, and child in Pasadena.Dec. 21, 1889:Jupiter Pluvius!This storm is to be a short one; the rain reserve is giving out.Dec. 26, 1889:There is an end to all things, but rain does not appear to come under that head.
By the turn of the century, they got a little wordier. On May 6, 1900, the editorial board took the rain as a good-luck sign:
A prodigy has come to pass. It is a genuine and almost unheard-of portent an omen of prosperity, comfort, joy and all sorts of nice things. Southern California has had two inches of rain in one fall .They were showers of blessing . The fault-finder we always have with us; in Paradise his crown is a trifle too tight and his wings don’t fit; but his chirp is very feeble on this occasion. Some harm was done to hay, a few orchards near the mountains suffered, a barn or two may have been undermined by the wash, but the estimate of injury, all told, is trifling.
On Feb. 5, 1905, the board brought all its descriptive skills to bear on the beauty of the city after a rainfall clears the sky:
A loving sun and the vivid green of the happy hills: the emerald stretches of the shimmering plains; the twilight valleys in the purpled dusk or glorified in the first great splendor of the dawn; the mountain peaks in their new white cowls of snow; the fresh sweet lanes of the country, the flash of the leaping waters in the long-silent arroyos brother, have you seen these things now since God has laid them laughing from the magic of the rain? It seems impossible that there should breathe within the gates of this young busy city of ours one living human being who has not yet gone out into the country haunts, so near and all about us, to see nature bright-robed with glory in the miracle of a Southern California springtime. And yet, we are told that such is the case that there are hundreds of people who cling so tenaciously day after day to the grim-walled streets of the town that they may catch no glimpse of these wonders of hill and valley and revivified desert, until the loveliness shall fade again and the green mantle of these days of gladness shall be changed once more for the parched summer’s cloak of brown. Pity the man, the woman or the child who fails to take the full advantage of this divine season. Go out into the country go today. Drink in its glory and let the happiness of it sink into your soul and play upon your heart-strings. Go today and yet many another day while still the golden chance is waiting. Love if you will a dollar, let slip the beckoning hour in the mart: fail as you may, to grasp some sordid dream of gain; but, o man and brother! Go out into the fields and the winding trails of the open and fill your being full with the joy and the glory and the peace of God!
More of that came on Nov. 29, 1906, along with a contradictory tie-in to the glories of industrialization, which is what required the sky to need cleansing in the first place:
This morning the skies that bend over all the Great Southwest are radiant with brilliant sunshine. The first great rain of the season has fallen, washing the atmosphere clear of every impurity, and every breath we take today is like quaffing the wine of life. It sets coursing through our veins vitalized blood that carries good health to every fiber of our being .The radiant skies of Southern California are typical of the conditions that prevail among all our people in their business and in their home life. Never before in any epoch of the world’s history under any form of government on any spot upon the earth’s surface have the mass of the people with so few exceptions enjoyed so much prosperity as has blessed us during all these past years. With the dawn of a new year the great army of clerks employed by the immense corporations of our modern times will enjoy the benefit of a 10 percent increase in wages granted voluntarily by the managers of these great industrial corporations . These men have been faithful, loyal, never tiring in the performance of their duties. They never strike, their hours of toil are never done while there is another stroke of work necessary to be performed, and they work overtime when necessary and often all day Sundays .
On March 26, 1906, The Times spoke directly to visitors disappointed by a rainy L.A., including an actual poem:
Dear Tourist and especially you, dear heart, with the blue eyes of glory let us tell you that if it weren’t for a spatter of rain now and then, we’d be powerful lonely here in California. The mocking bird would desert us and go away to some other clime. The linnet and the thrush and the red-winged black bird would build their nests and rear their young somewhere else than south of the Tehachapi. You might come to visit us then, as now, but you wouldn’t find the yellow mustard here, or the acacia tree with its golden blossoms, or the blue violent peeping under the gray tails of waterfalls, or the flame-swept hedges of color stretching down from the purpled hills to the seas of sunset as you see them now in the dream-kissed springtime. Think of these things, dearly beloved, and place yourself in a more religious state of mind while we repeat to you in full the words of the ancient poet .”When it rains in Californy,It make the tourist mad,But folks that has the crops to raiseIs feelin’ mighty glad. I stand out in the showers,Wet as a drown-ded rat,And watch the grain a-growin’,And the cattle getting’ fat. “Sorry for them Easterners,Growlin’ like Sam Hill,But the sun-kissed land is thirstyAnd it wants to drink its fill.Oh, see the poppies blowin’,And hear the mockers sing,When it rains in CalifornyThrough the glory of the spring.”
The Times reminded readers to use rain as an excuse to relax on Jan. 6, 1916:
A rainy day is a luxury in Southern California. The relaxation in the atmosphere, the restfulness and the unhurry of a gently falling rain ease our tense nerves and still our unrest. The prospect of a long, quiet uninterrupted day of steady rain is a joy. It means that we can sit down to some special task that has long awaited its time, with no haunting visions of forty other things that “must” or “ought” to be done today . A rainy day is especially a day for friends, not acquaintances. Over the teacups or the luncheon table there may be the lingering gossip that ordinarily is crowded out; just two alone, in a cosy corner, on a rainy day that is living. The calls and the hustle and the engagements of ordinary days are forgotten; the leaden skies, wet streets and falling drops shut us in. for the day we live in peace and we find ourselves regretting that rainy days do not come oftener and last longer in “the land of the sun.”
And it grew a bit somber, and hit its most poetic note, in a war-time piece on March 21, 1918:
What is it about the rain-washed flowers that so stirs the sentiments of the human heart? Is it that their perfume is richer and their colors are more radiant as the new-born sun smiles upon them? Is it because one hasn’t had time to notice them while it rained and that, looking upon them again after their baptism, old memories are awakened and new hopes inspired? Or is it because, with all their brightness and sweetness, we still must recognize that the tears of heaven have robbed them of many of their precious petals which lie wrinkled and curled and dead on the grass? And do we feel that thus the sorrows of life must take from us many of the friends and thoughts and ideals which we hold closest to our hearts?