By Colleen Nelson
I did this pen and ink sketch of my favorite old photo of Daily’s Drug Store that I ran across in 1997. I turned it into a poster and a T-shirt design for Rain Day. It was fun capturing the many small details of the 1950s, the patterned socks on the “Cloud Catchers”, the jaunty tilt of their straw hats, the camaraderie that reaches out and shakes your hand when you look at them sitting there.
Now, twenty some years later, I can’t remember where I found that photo but the art is still here to tell the tale. My best guess is the old filing cabinet that lived in one corner of the Observer-Reporter office on Church Street. Writing newspaper articles about Rain Day was my window into a past that is still alive in this rural western corner of Penn’s woods. I recognize the humor, honesty, alertness and hard work ethic that my farming neighbors still practice. It connects them to what the land and the weather have to tell them.
Legend has it that an unknown farmer – finally sleuthed out in 2019 to be Civil War veteran Caleb Ely – stopped by J.T. Rogers & Co. Drug Store on High Street one hot July day in 1874 and told pharmacist William Allison it would rain on the 29th. How did he know? Well, it always seemed to rain on his birthday, he allowed. When it rained as predicted, Allison made a note of it. In time, this prediction would become a bet-your-hat wager with traveling salesmen; eventually those who commiserated on the drug store stoop would call themselves the Cloud Catchers and keep vigil all night waiting for the first drops to fall around Waynesburg. What a fun time that must have been!
As the decades went by, statistics showed it was a safe bet that there would be rain on Caleb Ely’s birthday, so salesmen beware.
Rain Day was baptized in sorrow when Boys of Company K died on the field of battle in France on July 29, 1918. The 20th century was bringing its changes – William’s brother Albert took over the Rain Day record and passed it on to Byron Daily in the 1920s.
Cub reporter John O’Hara picked up the pace of this down home celebration in the 1930s with wit and journalistic verve. He sent out yearly press releases challenging the world to take the bet and many famous people, including Cassius Clay, did. When O’Hara became a stringer for the Associated Press, his stories about Rain Day went worldwide. Over the years July 29th became the day to come to Waynesburg for fun and maybe a little rain. One year High Street might be shut down for a carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel. The next year might pass with only a hat exchange on the courthouse steps. The occasional bathing beauty contests became the Miss Rain Day pageant when a special events commission was formed in 1979 to make this home grown celebration an official yearly street festival.
In 1980 O’Hara, then 76, had his crowning moment when he persuaded Charles Kuralt and his “on the road” team to stop by on July 28th to describe and announce the upcoming festival. The segment was aired that night on CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
Imagine my surprise when I moved to Greene County to be a country artist and discovered that the whole town of Waynesburg turned out for my birthday (yes, I was also born on July 29). Live music on the courthouse steps, people dancing in the street, good food to eat, games to play, sidewalk sales galore. Heck yeah! I started inviting the family down to join the fun. One of my sisters met the love of her life at Rain Day and she has me to thank, I allow.
For more than a dozen years I would design, screen and deliver a new year’s worth of T-shirts to the Colonial Inn – now a grassy patch on High Street – on Rain Day, get my free birthday beer then be out on the street listening to live music and sometimes running for cover as a real honest to goodness summer storm took the bet and charged down High Street, knocking over booths and cutting through the heat like a knife through butter. What did we care? Farmers don’t mind getting wet. Open your umbrellas and smile – it’s Rain Day!
