It's an attractive blue and white umbrella purchased many years ago while visiting Bergen, Norway, which has a climate much like Seattle. Memory doesn't work tell how it came back to America. Carrying it in the rain while I walked the best dog in the world, Trygve, got me reflecting on my life with, but particularly without, umbrellas.
Growing up as I did on a small farm in South Dakota in the 40s and 50s there were very many things we did NOT have. Umbrellas were only known to me from magazine pictures including a Norman Rockwell painting. In addition to the frugal way we lived perhaps there were other reasons for being umbrella less.
Average annual rainfall in eastern South Dakota was 18 inches in the 40s. It just didn't rain very often and when it did it was typically a violent thunderstorm with much lightening and gusty winds. We just did our best to be under a roof until the storm passed, (A small digression: Dad told of standing in the house looking across the yard and seeing lightening strike the shed attached to the granary. He went to investigate and found that the bolt of lightening had shattered a two by four rafter and started a small fire in the roof which he was able to extinguish. I suspect that this incident was before the farm was electrified in 1941.)
Umbrellas don't like wind that may be another reason for our lack of umbrellas. South Dakota is mid-continent and that geographical fact means almost constant wind. During childhood I'd see in disbelief pictures of New England snow scenes with snow piled on fence posts. "Snow always comes sideways" I thought, based on my experience. I do remember one snowfall of about a foot that came without wind when I was a senior in high school. The memory lingers because it was so out of the ordinary.
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