Ramona's weather station
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
When I was a child, I teethed on Bible stories. I knew them all from Adam and Eve in Genesis to the beasts of Revelation. In fact, I am so well-versed in scriptural stories that it always comes as a jolt when someone doesn't know about Noah's Ark or Joseph's dreams or Jess's favorite the story of Jael who helped win a war by nailing one of the enemy generals to the ground quite literally with a stake through his head.
One of my favorites was the story of Gideon's fleece. As you probably know, the Lord asked Gideon to do something and Gideon wasn't quite sure he'd heard right. I know that feeling! I always envied people in the Bible who actually heard God's voice. I've never heard it, out loud, booming from clouds. My prompting was more like an impression.
And so, as the story goes, Gideon asked for a sign. He was going to put out a fleece on the doorstep and if this was really God's voice, he wanted that fleece to be wet even though everything else was dry as a bone. Sure enough. The next morning the fleece was wet. And then Gideon's skeptical side took over. "What about dew," he wondered. So he flipped the sign around and asked next day that the fleece be dry when everything else was wet. The fleece-test worked, and Gideon went on his mission.
I haven't seen any fleeces on doorsteps in Ramona, but Colin has put up a slab on the corner of 4th and D Streets. I don't believe it is meant to test the voice of God, unless you consider weather to be God speaking. And I don't believe that Colin is considering whether or not he is to go on a mission. There's just a slab leaning up against a tree.
"It's a weather station," says Colin in his droll fashion and then he laughs, "Heh, heh, heh." Heck, we don't need Channel 10 and Storm Watch when we've got Colin.
This weather station, beside the road, comes complete with instructions. The sign reads:
"If the slab is wet, it means RAIN. If it's white — SNOW. If it's hot, it's HOT. If it's cold, COLD. If it's dry, DRY!" What more could we want?
The sign goes on, "If this slab is on the ground, it's windy and if it's gone — TORNADO!"
We're watching Ramona's weather station carefully and so far the weather predictions have been quite accurate.
A little berg like Ramona is just chock-full of interesting people and unusual sights. It takes all kinds to make up a little community. Jess and I are probably on that list of eccentric, creative people, in town, although we haven't pulled off anything quite so unusual as Colin's weather station or Tony's belly button measuring device (which is another story).
We came to Ramona, following this heart tug that could very well have been explained as the voice of God. And we came for the sole purpose of just spending another day in the country.
