The Epic Rainstorm of October 29, 1973 - Part 2

Stories and fantasies about rainwear.
Post Reply
joe
Posts: 73
Joined: January 18th, 2010, 3:36 am
Location: Maine, USA

The Epic Rainstorm of October 29, 1973 - Part 2

Post by joe »

Still anxious, jumpy, and nervous, I came downstairs dressed in my favorite warm mock turtleneck jersey to wear under my raincoat. Not seeing my raincoat on the kitchen chair from the night before, I spoke up and said to my mom: “I really want to wear my raincoat.” “Don’t worry” she said. “I’m warming it up for you in the furnace closet. You are going to be wearing your boots, your raincoat – everything!” Now getting excited, my stomach churned as I ate my oatmeal and I had to make an urgent trip to the bathroom. Whenever there was heavy rain forecast, my oldest sister Amy and I would spend the night before the storm and the early morning blowing up the toilet. Both of us got excited over a day of heavy rain. She would be as anxious and nervous as I with the effects of our inner turmoil manifesting itself in the pooping of our brains out in the bathroom. Amy and I were never calm and truly relieved until we were in our raincoats.

On the way to the bathroom, I noticed that my older brother Bob’s black Aqua Haven Balmacaan raincoat from the Robert Hall store was gone from the closet. Bob was now in his senior year and he had left earlier for high school. He was going to get totally drenched in his raincoat. I loved the way his black raincoat looked when it was soaked. It was as shiny as any slicker. The Robert Hall clothing stores were an institution in the New York Metropolitan Area throughout the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. They sold dress school clothing for boys and young men. The founder of these stores made his mark designing and manufacturing Aqua Haven zip-lined raincoats These became part of the dress school clothing for both boys and girls in public schools and in private and Catholic schools which were numerous throughout the region. Since the yellow rubber slickers were frequently outgrown for many students, a balmacaan raincoat from Robert Hall became the everyday outerwear for both boys and girls from age 12 through high school and college.

My two sisters had also left earlier. My oldest sister Amy was now in high school with my brother. Of all my siblings I felt closest to her. She was smart, sarcastic, and funny. Amy was a sophomore. In our family, she and I loved wearing raincoats the most. My aunt gave Amy a beautiful London Fog balmacaan raincoat midway through eighth grade. It was the same Christmas that my aunt gave me the tan Briarcliff balmacaan raincoat. As Amy had already reached the height of 5’9”, the raincoat fit her well. Consequently, we had matching tan raincoats and Amy wore hers to school with a blouse and a skirt over tights with a flair. Mom guided her carefully. Along with my Mom and I, she had the tendency to overheat easily. Amy and I would go through Ban roll-on and spray deodorants like crazy, making sure to coat both our armpits and underneath our breasts – a trick that both Mom and Amy taught me. (Sorry ladies. Boob sweat is an equal opportunity malady!) We truly sympathized with each other over our various private and unpleasant bodily idiosyncrasies. One of us seemed always to be waiting on the other to get out of the bathroom as we both suffered from cramping and intestinal discomfort, especially on rainy days. Amy helped me to be more comfortable talking about almost anything including my love for wearing raincoats. We would tease each other, and she would encourage my beginning efforts at witty banter. She was almost six years older than I and in some ways was a surrogate mom to me. Now that she had her own London Fog Balmacaan, she was glad to be free of her long yellow Lacrosse crossing guard rubber slicker that she literally steamed up a sweat in. But her exchange with our Mom just before seven o’clock this morning was priceless and surprising. While my Mom approved of any raincoat that Amy wore, she fully expected Amy to put on her London Fog that she always wore. Now, at the moment of decision, Amy had already pulled out her London Fog raincoat with its thick zip-in pile liner. But then she looked out at the pouring rain and said to Mom: “With my luck, this rain is going to pour through my raincoat in buckets. Right through to my bra! I need to just get myself in the damn slicker. It’s a day for total rubber in this driving downpour.”Amy put her London Fog raincoat away in the closet and took out her long yellow slicker, shaking the heavy rubber coat off its hanger and settled into her voluminous caped-back slicker. “I’m going to be dressed for this damn rain if it kills me! Errrg! It’s going to damn pour on my raincoat! I’m going to soak this damn slicker! Just drench me. Let it rain ! Let it pour!”

As I was only in fifth grade, I hadn’t caught on that both my mom and Amy got a sexual charge out of wearing raincoats. I was just starting to recognize how intense this feeling was in myself. My mom, of course, recognized the love for wearing raincoats that Amy and I shared with her; she had a daughter and son after her own heart and the desire that we had could only be relieved by wearing a raincoat. Mom called that wearing of a raincoat – raincoat relief! You could see her satisfaction when she bestowed that relief on herself when putting on her raincoat. And she knew instinctively how important that “raincoat relief” was for Amy and me. It could be 105° and gazillion percent humidity in New Jersey, but Mom understood that when you needed to wear your raincoat, you needed to wear your raincoat. With Amy, Mom allowed her upon reaching ninth grade to curse about the rain and about wearing raincoats. Mom had long indulged in this habit herself and she would extend the privilege to me when I reached ninth grade. Then, I could bitch with them about the rain or about our raincoats – not in denigration but to express my attraction and to help release tension to better manage it and keep me sane – especially on a downpour day. I must say Amy and I felt right at home in the world of Mom’s raincoat relief.

Mom hugged Amy in her heavy rubber raincoat and knowing how glad they both were to be finally in their raincoats, she whispered to Amy: “Go soak that slicker” and sent her off to high school. The rain at 7:00 was still alternating between moderate and heavy showers but would get steadier and heavier by the time Amy reached school, swamping her raincoat and those of her classmates. Inside, they shook off their slickers and soaked raincoats and trenchcoats in defiance of the miserably wet weather. The day was going to be long. It wasn’t going to end for Amy until after an afternoon basketball practice that lasted until 6:00PM, and dinner on the run before an evening study session at the library. Amy knew it was going to rain hard all day and probably all night, but she avoided the helmet hood of geekdom by wearing a yellow sou’wester hat with a wide brim that went with the yellow slicker. She also had a beige rain hat with a wide brim that matched her London Fog raincoat.

My other sister Hilary was only three years older than I. Her horn-rimmed round glasses marked her as a brainiac and a geek. Delightfully a geek. She was in eighth grade and late in the summer my mom bought her a navy zip-lined balmacaan raincoat at Robert Hall. Hilary looked forward to wearing it in the rain, but she quickly recognized that this was not the day to expose it to the weather. Today would be a total raincoat soaker. Not only was she a geek, but she was a weather geek. Adolescent girls could pursue two distinct clothing styles to dress for heavy rain. They could wear a skirt and put on quick drying pantyhose with their rain boots or they could dress down and wear jeans tucked into their boots. Both styles were then fully covered by a raincoat. Having the longest walk of all of us to her junior high school in drenching rain, my sister thought practically. She put a flannel shirt and then a sweatshirt on over her jeans which she then tucked into her boots. Finally, embracing both her inner and outer geek, she pulled on her own long Lacrosse yellow rubber slicker with metal snaps and a helmet hood. Without comment or drama and rubbered up like a lady crossing guard she left the house 10 minutes after the high schoolers for an hour and 10-minute walk to the junior high school downtown. There she would have to stand for about 10 minutes outside the entrance with her classmates. The steady rain increased in intensity throughout her walk and became utterly wretched about halfway to school. From there on in and for the next 40 minutes the heavens opened up on her, buffeting her raincoat and beating down a mild headache on her helmet hood. Walking onward she would periodically stop at each street corner before crossing. The rain poured and she stood like a statue in the yellow raincoat out in the driving downpour taking everything the drilling deluge could incorrigibly pound down on her long slicker. The desire for wearing raincoats was just a strong in Hillary as it was in my Mom, Amy, and I but it burned more quietly. Hilary’s was a steady flame that fueled her cool rationality. Unlike her mother and two of her siblings who expressed themselves so passionately about the weather, Hillary was not one to either exalt or curse the weather, but to accept it and be dressed for it. She was an aspiring meteorologist and the day of a five-inch rainstorm was certainly a day for full length rubber slickers. She would not have dressed any other way. Her arrival at the junior high school would support her choice for wearing the long rubber raincoat all the more.

Hilary arrived at the junior high and joined a few hundred students – an entire sea of heavy full length yellow rubber raincoats and several seventh and eighth grade boys in the new Sears NFL vinyl ponchos waiting outside for the doors to open. There were a few students wearing balmacaan raincoats and plastic travel raincoats. The rain pounded down on the students as they waited dutifully in their ponchos and slickers. Knowing that the students were covered in their raincoats, the teachers sadistically watched the rain pour down relentlessly on the students and their raincoats as it beat their pre-teen hormones into submission before starting the school day. Some of these students were driven to school and as they were wearing their raincoats, they stayed dry until they joined their classmates outside to wait under the downpour. The teachers looked out on all the assembled students in their long flowing rubber raincoats getting glistening wet. They made sure every student got wet down. Every inch of those slickers, ponchos, and raincoats would get completely drenched and streaming wet before the school doors would finally be opened. Hilary stood out there in the parking lot and waited, covered head-to-toe in heavy rubber for the wicked downpour and let the rain come down in cascades on her slicker. So did her classmates who without complaint stood out there in their full-length rubber slickers, thoroughly soaking those raincoats until they glistened and shone in the heavy rain. On any morning filled with drenching sheets of heavy rain, junior high students were desperate to get into their raincoats and slickers and covering up under their ponchos for a long walk. And then huddling under the protection of all that rainwear for those ten to fifteen minutes before school and out in the driving rain. They had to be wearing their raincoats. They had to be ready for the wet down!

My younger brother Paul was already putting on an olive green canvas benchwarmer raincoat, rubber wellies and a knit ski hat underneath the hood of his raincoat. My mom was very good at strategizing rainwear on a day of heavy rain and it was evident that she put a lot of thought into this following the previous evening’s forecast. With whatever rainwear we had we were going to be rain-coated to the hilt.

Now it was time to put my raincoat on and leave for school. I looked out the window at the red maple tree on our front lawn to watch the rain falling against it. The rain was falling in thick soaking sheets and already I spotted kids on the street bracing against the rain in their slickers. I growled like a cougar in satisfaction at the sight of the heavy rain and I knew I was going to have fun getting my raincoat very wet and seeing all the wet raincoats on my classmates at school. My mom pulled my warm raincoat out of the furnace closet and she smiled when she heard me growl just like her as I put it on. Then she gave me my black Naugahyde winter bomber hat to wear over my raincoat. She had really thought this through. The bomber hat was both warm and waterproof. She turned the collar of my raincoat up against my bomber hat and then helped me step into my black pile-lined waterproof winter boots. Absent my New York Jets vinyl rain poncho which was up in Maine and the yellow slicker which I had long outgrown, she had me as waterproof as she could dress me. She saw how comfortable and relieved I was to be in my raincoat and how much I loved wearing it. She pulled out her own London Fog navy Balmacaan which had also been drying out in the furnace closet next to my raincoat. Her raincoat had already gotten quite wet from taking my father to the bus for his commute into New York. He was going to get utterly wet in his raincoat with the long walk across Manhattan from the bus terminal to the place where he worked.

My mom opened her navy Balmacaan raincoat and spun it around her saying: “O God, do we ever need our raincoats on today. Errr, she growled again, revealing just how excited a day of heavy rain made her. “Oh, oh, oh, we’re going to get wet! Look at all this rain coming down! The rain! The rain!” It was as if she was imploring the rain to pour down harder as with great relish she unfurled her long raincoat and put it on with a flourish. Then she turned to me decked out in my raincoat and said: “You can keep the collar on your raincoat up like this. I know how much you love wearing your raincoat, but this rain is pouring hard with no let up and you are going to get very wet no matter what. Just burrow into your raincoat and try to keep as dry as you can. Let’s go out in the downpour. We’re going to get drenched. We’re going to soak our raincoats.”

We got ourselves and our already wet raincoats into the car. Mom would typically drive us to school in the morning and after lunch. We would have to walk home at 11:45 for lunch and then at the end of the school day at 2:45. The walk home at lunch was quick - about 20 minutes and at the end of the school day, usually walking home with classmates and friends - the walk took significantly longer. We also had to wait at guarded crossings to cross some busy streets. Even with being driven to school my brother and I were still going to get very wet going up the long sidewalk to the school entrance. My younger brother had an even longer walk to his first-grade class. The fifth-grade classroom was somewhat closer.

We arrived at school and Paul and I got out but not before mom reminded me to rely on my raincoat. “You’re going to get very wet but that’s OK. Just burrow down into your raincoat and don’t worry if you get soaked. The rain will not come through the winter liner And we can always get the raincoat dry again at lunchtime in the furnace closet. Look at this rain pouring down. It’s like a nor’easter in Maine. OK guys, good luck and make a run for it.”

Mom seemed somewhat distracted. She certainly enjoyed dressing me in my raincoat this morning. I noticed how with as much equal relish as I, she burrowed into her raincoat. All the while she spoke to me about soaking my raincoat, I knew that she was going to go out on several errands and soak her raincoat as well. You didn’t notice it as much in a normal rain, but when it was a downpour like this you saw how much she loved heavy rain. If there were a contest to see who had the most soaked raincoat, she could compete with anyone. I was lucky to have her for a mom.

I wasn’t going to run to class and risk falling in the heavy rain but I hunkered down into my raincoat appreciating the totally dismal weather. It was a very dark morning and the skies were a dark leaden color. The brightest thing in the whole scene was the parade of students that I joined who were wearing yellow slickers and helmet hoods going up the sidewalk. About 30 yards away on another sidewalk going across the great front lawn of the school was an even larger number of sixth graders wearing many more slickers and helmet hoods. The distant yellow slickers looked huge on the sixth graders and I could tell that they were already drenched by cascades of rain on their long walk to school. It looked like they just spent an hour under a fire hose, and they were not happy about it. The sixth graders besides being big were a tough crew and I could overhear several of them grunt, groan, and even curse the pouring heavens and their raincoats as they walked up the sidewalk making great jostling noises with their slickers. “I just want to rip this raincoat off. I have been getting soaked in my raincoat for an hour.” “Ugh! I’m dressed for a hurricane in this frigging raincoat and it’s making me so damn hot and wet.” “Errgh, these raincoats!” “This raincoat blows!” “Thank God my mom only makes me wear this cornball raincoat when it’s pouring down rain like this.” “My mom thinks this raincoat is going keep me dry in this pissing rain. Ugh!” were just some of what I heard from the sixth graders. Like I said, a tough crew… I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear some of the mothers an hour earlier forcing some of those streetwise kids into their slickers in the face of much resistance. Mothers armed with the long rubber slickers to cover their sons and daughters must have been getting steamed having to keep saying: “Wear the damn raincoat!” At school whenever there was all-day heavy rain, I had great fun taking note of the classmates in raincoats who otherwise never wore them. And from my brother and my sisters, I knew what lay ahead of these sixth graders on any morning of heavy rain when they reached junior high next year. Putting on your big boy raincoats and big girl slickers went along with wearing boxer shorts or big girl panties as your body grew into adolescence and you gained greater maturity and independence. You wore your raincoat to be ready to be exposed to the wet down that poured on you in every heavy rainstorm.

Closer to me, I could see that the rubber raincoats on my fifth grade classmates also had the added allure of being glistening wet. The rain was blinding and pelting in a downward wind-driven diagonal. The rain drilled our raincoats at its predicted full force. Taking in the sight of all the students in their long billowing yellow rubber rain slickers and helmet hoods hulking under the diagonal slanting rain made my day. The image of yellow slickered brigades of students dashing up the sidewalk through waves of sadistic drenching rain would be etched forever in my memory.

Coming up under the overhang of the school entrance, the rain buffeted at the shoulders of my raincoat. Unlike those in the drenched slickers who had a long walk to school, my raincoat was just very wet. Inside school, all you could see and hear were the jostling and rustling of gleaming wet raincoats and slickers and the clomping of rubber boots. I only wish we could go to school every day in a rainstorm like this. I loved seeing all of us coming into class dressed in our wet raincoats.

The teachers admired all of us coming to school in our wet raincoats: “All of you are dressed for a hurricane just to come to school in this pouring rain! All of us had to wear our raincoats and slickers today. This rain is absolutely torrential! Our raincoats get so wet when it is pouring like this!” One teacher said: “I am so glad that all of you are wearing your rubber slickers today. I used to love wearing those rubber raincoats to school. You can just let the rain pour on those slickers. It was the only raincoat that ever kept me dry! The raincoat I wear now gets soaked.” Another teacher said: “What a day for the raincoats! This is the first day we have all had to wear our raincoats since we started school. It is good that we are all covered up in our raincoats. I am glad to see that all of you have your raincoats on today in this downpour. In this drenching rain, we need to be wearing those raincoats for dear life.” One teacher joked: “We have really soaked our raincoats today. In this rain I’m not sure whether we need to be wearing raincoats or scuba suits!” We took off our wet raincoats and hung them up until we ran out of space on the coat hooks in the back of the room. Then some of us had to drape our raincoats over the back of our chairs. Seeing me in my raincoat, my classmates said that I looked like a lawyer with my raincoat and briefcase. My teacher complimented me for wearing the long tan raincoat with the winter liner and the bomber hat and boots. “Joe, you always have a good raincoat on whenever the weather is bad to keep you warm and dry! You are well-dressed for this downpour.”

I looked around the room at the class of almost 30 students and there were only three or four of us who were not wearing raincoats. Among the girls I was surprised that almost half of them were now tall enough to be wearing adult trench coats, including some whose heavy plaid cloth raincoats and matching hats were a vintage hand-me-down from their mothers or aunts. The rest of the girls wore a clear vinyl raincoat meant to be layered over a spring weight poplin coat or they wore a rubberized canvas benchwarmer rain parka similar to that worn by my younger brother. One boy wore a black Balmacaan raincoat like mine. Another was in a black rubber slicker with the brass clasps. The rest of the boys’ raincoats were divided evenly between glistening wet yellow rubber slickers with helmet hoods, some very drenched canvas benchwarmer raincoats, and my closest friends who were wearing the flowing vinyl NFL ponchos in team colors. The classroom was a proverbial sea of raincoats. As the raincoats were hung up or draped over chairs and tables to dry out, we started our schoolwork as the rain continued to come down heavily outside the windows.

School day anxieties relieved and with my brothers and I now at our respective schools, Mom was free to bitch at the rain so that it would pour down even harder. Pulling on her London Fog raincoat at last, Mom rushed out to do several errands, urging on the downpour to just soak the hell out of her raincoat and kill the damn drought. Taking my father to the bus and making the mom run to the school had just been a tease. She growled like a cougar: “Now I can soak this coat right down to my skin”, giving herself another anticipatory growl as she put her raincoat on again. The long flowing raincoat complemented her tall height and she felt its drape over her rear end for the first time in a long while. She turned up the collar on her raincoat as the rain soaked her shoulders and ran down the back of her coat. So wet and now so sensual. The wind and rain sent her raincoat billowing over her skirt and swishing against her nylons. She felt like a woman again. Put together. Complete. Powerful. The coatless months had gone on much too long. Other school moms eagerly ventured out on errands with her in defiance of the downpour, letting it drench their already streaming wet raincoats and vanquish the drought.

My mom and the other women soaked their raincoats just getting in and out of their cars. They turned up their collars as they dashed across parking lots and let the rains cascade down on their raincoats in drenching waterfalls as they came in and out of store entrances. When the women saw each other in their completely soaked raincoats they smiled, and they seemed almost grateful to be showing off their drenched balmacaans and trenches to each other as they celebrated the end of a drought. Thinking back to their own school days, the women were used to wearing wet raincoats and getting thoroughly drenched. It was that way before they were married and had their own children. They were commuting to a job in the city and wearing a raincoat so that they were always prepared in case it started pouring rain. For years, they understood that putting on a raincoat and going out in heavy rain or to be fanning yourself in your open raincoat in the heat of summer thunderstorms or having the cold come up your butt under your zip-lined raincoat in the winter months was the mark of becoming and being an adult.

Mid-morning, some of the neighborhood moms gathered at home on our covered back porch with my mother. It was easier to warm up over coffee outside under protection from the downpour where they could keep on their wet raincoats and not burden my mom with numerous dripping coats, rain boots and rubber over shoes in the house. They talked about getting their husbands and their kids out the door that morning to work and to school in their raincoats. First they had to find the raincoats for their kids after the long drought. The moms with students in junior high talked about putting their kids into the long yellow slickers: “They just get drenched on that long walk downtown and then they have to stand outside waiting for the doors to open when they get there. You have to cover them in rubber. They have to wear those slickers! It just pours on them. My kids actually want to wear their raincoats!” Another mom with a daughter in the sixth grade and a son in high school added: “I got Terri into Billy’s outgrown rubber slicker and hood. Now that he is older, Billy hates raincoats; I made him wear his father’s old raincoat with the winter lining. You try to dress these kids to keep dry but they insist on keeping these schools open - even in a hurricane. They assume that all of these kids will wear their raincoats. Still, my kids were drenched the minute they were out the door! Fortunately, Terri was wearing the old-fashioned yellow slicker with the hood and boots. She walks to school with her classmates in the sixth grade. Thank God that they were wearing rubber slickers. It was a monsoon! But the older kids? The heavens kept pouring on them! Billy was getting so wet in his father’s raincoat. He looked pissed! I had to fight so hard to get Billy into that raincoat and it’s no use; I could see that he and some of the other boys were getting soaked even wearing whatever raincoats they could.”

My mom chimed in: “I know Bobby got drenched going up to the high school. He was wearing the black raincoat that he used to wear over a jacket and tie for Catholic high school. He still wears his raincoat willingly, but he was cursing the heavens knowing that he was going to get soaked in that raincoat going out in the monsoon downpours this morning. I try to keep him dry but heavy rain goes right though these raincoats. They’re really meant to keep the kids dry in showers. Like today! Damn showers!”

Mom continued: “On most days it’s not a problem if it’s pouring torrentially in the morning. We make our teens wear their raincoats knowing that they are going to soak those raincoats in a downpour. When they get to the high school, they put their wet raincoats in a locker. And often, the rain lets up or even stops before school gets out and they’re done with that raincoat! By the end of the day they can leave their raincoat off and carry it home. But in this downpour? The high school kids will be wearing those wet raincoats all day – even if they are soaked! Ugh! At least Amy wore her long rubber coat today. That surprised me. She prefers the new London Fog raincoat that my aunt gave her especially when she dresses up in a skirt like today. She gets so hot when she wears a slicker. You should hear her bitch when she puts it on. You know it’s really pouring out when she is wearing her rubber raincoat.” One of the moms mentioned that she saw my sister Hilary walking to school wearing a long yellow slicker. “We get these torrential rainstorms but they never cancel school!. You just have to completely raincoat these kids. It comes down on them in buckets. Jeff still wears his long rubber slicker to high school. He wore his slicker, rubbers and rain hood. Full rubber everything in this downpour.” My mom agreed: “Hillary was covered in rubber from head to toe. She looks like a crossing guard. She always knows how to dress for drenching rain and whatever the weather throws at her! I let her get away with wearing jeans today. Usually I insist on everyone wearing black dress pants in the rain. They seem to dry out faster. We have a family uniform when it rains: raincoats and black pants”, my Mom said laughing. “My girls like to think that we are all on our period when we are in the black pants and raincoats!”

Several of the mothers observed that it was not long ago that we seemed to be stuck in a drought in New Jersey that lasted through most of the 1950’s and the first half of the 1960’s. Their oldest children might have been wearing their rain slickers in heavy rain only four or five times a year, if that. And as my mom observed, the kids often only needed their raincoats for half a day and that was usually only for torrential rain to walk to school in the morning. On rainy days, the skies seemed to always open up in the morning drenching the raincoats. By midday the sun came out burning brightly and everyone cursed the blazing temperatures and humidity in their infernally hot raincoats. Some of the most memorable rain storms in the 1950’s and the first half of the 1960’s were during drought-breaking hurricanes, especially Hurricane Donna, which soaked both the men and women commuters and students in its relentless flooding torrential downpours. The wind-driven driving rain came down in sheets upon the billowing lightweight plastic and nylon travel raincoats covering both the commuters and older students struggling to get to work and school. It drenched the college and high school students completely, whether they wore the lightweight travel raincoats or the balmacaan coats, and pounded down on the grade schoolers in their helmet hoods and slickers thoroughly soaking them in their raincoats.

Now since this current group of neighborhood kids started school in the mid- 1960’s, it seemed that all-day heavy rains were becoming a regular occurrence. One mother said: “The only raincoat that will keep the kids dry is those long rubber slickers with the brass clasps. My kids seem to be wearing their raincoats more than they have to wear a winter coat. It seems to rain all winter long. You hardly ever see snow anymore.“ My mom said: “I really wanted to find for Joe a long rubber slicker with the protective hood big enough to fit him. He is hard to buy clothes for, especially since he got so ‘chunky’ after his surgery. I have to find something for him now to wear in these downpours. It’s about a 45 minute walk to school and he really drenches his raincoat right through. One woman remarked that having the perfect raincoat was so needed for the weather that we are having and yet finding a raincoat that will keep you dry was very hard. To say nothing of the task to constantly have to do the battle with husbands and kids when they chafe at having to wear their raincoats. “It’s like Billy this morning,” his mother said. “I pulled out his father’s old raincoat for him to wear. When he protested, I had to say: Wear the damn raincoat!”

Her closest friend mentioned that my mom seemed to have no trouble getting all of us to wear our raincoats. My mom agreed saying: “Whenever we have a forecast for heavy rain, my kids know they’re going to be in their raincoats. Joe was so excited about the forecast last night. He couldn’t wait to wear his raincoat. He loves when it’s pouring and he can wear his raincoat. He wants it to be heavy rain all the time so that he can wear his raincoat every day. But it’s not like he is wearing a long rubber slicker with the helmet hood like the other boys are wearing in this torrential rain. His raincoat is a coat like ours. Joe is going to soak the daylights out of his raincoat. On most rainy days, it only rains hard for about half a day. If he soaks his raincoat in the morning, I can usually put him into his winter jacket at lunch for the rest of the afternoon. Especially if I know that the rain is going to let up. But he hates having to take his raincoat off and to wear something else, especially when everyone else at school is wearing their raincoat. Look at this downpour. It’s relentless. It’s not letting up. At least, Joe will be happy. He’ll going to be out there wearing his raincoat in this torrential rain and just soaking his raincoat all day. Damn heavy rain! We won’t be able to dry the raincoats out enough during their lunch hour.. The kids will have to wear their soaking wet raincoats back to school.What is it with our husbands and our kids? You make them wear their raincoats and they still can’t keep the rain off their backs. As if women are any better? Remember the raincoats women used to wear. They were lady-like: smooth, silky, rubbery, and waterproof. This is what the liberation of women gets us. Look at how we dress! We now dress to work in the same careers as the men and we wear pinstriped suits and the same raincoats that our husbands do. Which means that even with our raincoats on, we are out there in this weather getting totally drenched just like the men! Maybe that’s why I am obsessed with keeping my kids dry!”

“I know,” one mother observed. “I told my son that he had to wear his boots, his raincoat, he had wear everything! The rain just dumps on these kids. You have to raincoat them to the hilt! And it’s so hard to find the right raincoat.” “Yes”, another Mom agreed: “Fortunately, my son is now tall enough that he can wear my old raincoat on days of heavy rain. I had to put my son in my old raincoat again this morning to go to the junior high. We both saw that the rain was really pouring. I knew that he was going to get drenched just the same, but at that point I was glad that he was willing to wear anything to try and keep dry.” One of the other mothers mentioned that Sears has the football team rain ponchos that work so well. She got one for her son who started wearing it last winter and said that he was wearing his poncho today. “It’s so big and flowing and it covers him up perfectly for this kind of heavy rain. In the poncho, he can stay dry in a monsoon. Certainly in this drenching rain an umbrella will do him no good. He needs to be wearing the ‘rain pon-cho.’” This mom’s southern accent underscored “rain-poncho” for emphasis.

“Joe really needs to have a rain poncho or a slicker to wear for these all day downpours. Even if wears the tan raincoat in the morning and it soaks through, he can change into the rain poncho for the afternoon. Or vice versa if the morning is just showery and it starts raining hard at lunchtime. I have made the kids change into their raincoats at lunch before. I wanted to go to Sears this morning to buy him a rain poncho. He has a football team rain poncho in Maine. Now that he’s older, he’s going to be out in the rain a lot more, especially when he will be walking to junior high. Those rain ponchos are perfect for long walks to school. But the highway is probably flooding by Sears. I may have to do what you did and put him in Amy’s raincoat this afternoon. That raincoat looks so adult on her. It will be a little big on him but he can still wear it. That’s what I’ll do.” Her friend said (laughing): “Oh he’ll like wearing that. You want to keep Joe dry? Put him in his big sister’s raincoat! As with everything else in life, women have better raincoats!” The mothers laughed in agreement.

Mothers of the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s tended to think that their sons and daughters needed raincoats even more once they reached junior high and high school with the longer walks to school and overall greater independence which could only expose one to the weather even more. For me, that fifth grade year would offer 18 opportunities to wear my raincoat. It was among the more frustrating years for wearing raincoats. The extended fall drought was a setback costing us about four rainstorms that we might have had normally. More positively, there were 10 memorable rain storms of over an inch of rain during that fifth grade year. In my sixth grade year the number of raincoat wearing days would increase to 26 along with 13 days of rainfall over an inch. Then in the three years of junior high, I would get to wear my raincoat 72 times. On 36 of those days, my raincoat had to protect me in rainfalls of over an inch. High school was more frustrating. As a sophomore, junior, and senior, I was able to wear my raincoat 54 times with 22 days of rainfall of over an inch. Alas, over the four years of college that followed,, I was able to wear my raincoat 111 times which included a wonderful 41 times during my junior year in 1983-84. There were also heavy rain days to soak the daylights out of the raincoats during my college years as well. There were 39 days of rainfall of over an inch but these were predominantly concentrated during my junior year which had 16 days of heavy rain. In terms of the frequency of wearing my raincoat and in days of heavy rain, this was my best year. It was actually a record-setting rainfall year in New Jersey. The most difficult year in terms of getting the opportunity to wear raincoats was my senior year in high school in 1980-81 when I would wear my raincoat 12 times with only 4 days of really heavy rain. During this final year of high school, I wore a grey plastic fold-up Pacamac travel raincoat that I wore on a choir trip to Europe during the previous summer.

My mom’s friends secured their raincoats and plastic accordion-style rain hoods and silk headscarves before going back out into the pouring rain. It was raining hard and they were so thoroughly soaking their raincoats crossing the street to their own homes that they hardly noticed that they were wetting their panties from the pressure of the morning coffee hitting their bladders. Two of the women walking together in the pouring rain observed as much to each other: “Oh darn it. I’m trying not to pee my pants. The coffee went right through me.” “The other woman said: Well, I guess that it doesn’t matter now. I have to pee bad too. We’ve soaked our raincoats so much that we can’t get any wetter if we wet our pants!” As they splashed through the puddles in the street in their raingear and rain boots, and having just given each other tacit permission – they had to let go of the urge and peed a flood under their raincoats right through their panties and pantyhose. They sprayed their pee on the street where it splattered on the pavement with the rain. As the two women groaned and ferociously peed through their panties and nylons in satisfaction and relief, the heavens completely opened up on them soaking through their raincoats right down to whatever clothing was still dry. It prompted one of the women to recall: “I remember one night at college. My roommates and I were invited to a beer party by some guys and it was pouring out. Of course we drank too much and then we had to walk home in the pouring rain in our raincoats. And we all lost it and had to pee our pants walking home in the rain just like now. Fortunately, we were all together. It was night and no one saw us peeing our pants.”

The two women laughed at both this undergraduate memory and at the ridiculous downpour as they came to part ways and went into their homes. It was just after 11AM and they had 20 minutes to get ready for the school lunch period. Inside they swept off their raincoats and inspected the damage to their clothing from their accident. It wasn’t as bad as they thought. They quickly stripped off and changed their wet panties and pantyhose, and put on a cardigan over the rest of their damp clothing and got themselves ready to deal with their kids and more wet raincoats in short order. It was a day to just accept feeling soggy. They could completely change clothes after the back-to-school run following lunch. The women would get wet many times today as the rain was by no means over. They kept putting their wet raincoats on again and again all day.
Post Reply