Published January 26, 2019
It was early on Oct. 22, 1994*, and I was driving after midnight from somewhere in Southwest Louisiana to Huntsville, Texas. After covering a Friday night high school football game for my hometown newspaper, I was headed to a Saturday afternoon college football game between McNeese State University and Sam Houston State University. (*Being able to look up the date, or at least the month, of a work assignment is a big help in precisely placing memories on my life’s timeline.)
It was raining.
At least one other person who was still awake noticed: the DJ at the radio station I’d picked up at some point after crossing into Texas.
Playing a song about rain while it was raining wasn’t exactly an unprecedented act. I’ve sat through hourslong rain delays at baseball stadiums and heard nothing but rain songs throughout, and I’d guess that as long as there have been DJs, there have been songs played to match the weather. A rainy Monday? Oh, you knew you’d be hearing the Carpenters. But on this after-midnight drive on this particular night, “Rainy Night in Georgia” was especially perfect.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t care whether or not the occasional flash of lightning reflecting off Lake Livingston was real or something I now imagine. Pushing onward after a long workday and night, knowing I’d get only a few hours of sleep before another one, was a test of stamina and focus. Driving along U.S. Highway 190, one would occasionally come across a small town with enough lighting to change the dynamic of the two-hours-plus drive, but much of it was on dimly lit highway with only the occasional set of headlights moving west to east. On some stretches, the tree canopy was sufficient to heighten the sleepy-time vibe of the trip.
I think it had been years since I’d heard Brook Benton’s 1970 version of “Rainy Night in Georgia,” and I was delighted. If memory serves, a Southern theme of sorts revealed itself on my drive, with “Polk Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White perking me up further. (Readers of a certain age may well recall that Tony Joe White also wrote “Rainy Night in Georgia.” That he was, like me, a Louisiana native rounded out the special dynamic of the DJ’s gifts to tired me.
(The only other song I distinctly recall hearing on that work trip was, on the ride home, “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow, a song that had been released six months earlier and was still at its peak at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Unlike the two Tony Joe White compositions, it had probably played within earshot of me a dozen times in the previous week or two.)
A friend of mine in the Atlanta area posted a radar image of a storm coming through Wednesday, and her accompanying text was, simply: “Rainy night in Georgia.” When I saw that a few hours ago, I had to listen to the song again. And then I had to write this piece. It was only while I wrote the first paragraph that I remembered her recent professional connection to Sam Houston State University, my destination on that weekend work trip.
This feels like the kind of thing I’ll turn into an occasional feature on this site. Memories are flooding back to me at this stage in my life. As boring as they might be for readers, they feel important for me to express in words and then set them free out into the universe.
For the record, here in the famously rainy Pacific Northwest, it’s been mostly cloudy with no precipitation as I listened to the song and wrote the post that it inspired. It’s just as well. In 1994, Texas was a good two-syllable stand-in for Georgia as this song accompanied me on my overnight drive. Washington has one syllable too many. But you can bet it will at some point cross my mind on the other side of the Columbia River to sing “a rainy night in Portland,” trying to sound as soulful-Southern as I can.
Photo by TRR/via Shutterstock