I like to associate important things in my life with songs. As I turned over the calendars from March to April, I began remembering the booming voice of Al Jolson singing about April showers. "When April showers come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May." Then later in the song there are the words, "so just keeping looking for the bluebird and listening for his song, whenever April showers come along." The meaning of the words are that showers are unwelcome and we must not fret about them because they will pass.

The author obviously has never experienced living through a drought.

When water is scarse nothing thrives. The ponds dry up, the crops wither, the household conveniences have to be curtailed or stopped and in extreme conditions even personal hygiene suffers.

The droughts of the '30s didn't affect me much because I was too small and just enjoyed many sunny days. But those in the '50s were memorable. We had bought a farm near Stockton, Missouri, that had a real good well and the house even had running water inside in the kitchen, bathroom and utility room.

We had two children in diapers when that good well went dry. You can imagine the problems we had. Lester brought water out from town in large milk cans, but we used each drop about three times before we were through with it.

There were no laundromats, disposable diapers, or quick food places.

Each time it even became cloudy we watched with eagerness for a drop of rain. We finally drilled a new well and before we moved from that farm we did have running water again. The joy of feeling water running on your hands, or in the bathtub after over a year of rationing every cupful of water was tremendous. My song those days was "Let There Be Showers of Blessing."

I am writing this column a little early because I'll be gone the day it is published. I hope that between now and then we will have had a little more of the April showers that we need so badly. Our pond that usually is within a few feet from where I write, has shrunk so that it is yards away from me.

We recently found some things that had been misplaced for years. One was the sheet music for songs by the Medical Mission Sisters. These guitar-playing nuns wrote and sang inspirational folk-type songs in the '60s and '70s. I still love them. One of my favorites is, "Joy is like the Rain."

Giving the words doesn't do it justice without the music, but it'll give some of the feeling. "I saw raindrops on my window, Joy is like the rain.Laughter runs across my pain, slips away and comes again. Joy is like the rain. I saw clouds upon a mountain. Joy is like a cloud. Sometimes, silver, sometimes gray, always sun not far away. Joy is like a cloud. I saw rain-drops on the river. Joy is like the rain. Bit by bit the river grows, Till at once it overflows. Joy is like the rain." The song regains the feelings I had as a little girl when I could run out in the rain and let my bare feet splash in the wet grass as I enjoyed letting the rain soak every part of my body.

Of course that was before I was old enough to worry about having bad hair days, or before I had to wash my own clothes.