IT RAINED IN SUNNY ARIZONA

Which reminded me again. Not of rain and what it's like. Not how badly we need every drop. Not even the rain that is wasted because we have no gutters or reservoirs to trap and encase the water.

What it got me thinking about was Joe Arapio, our sheriff and the Stupid Motorist Law. Sheriff Joe is the nation's most famous law enforcer. We do have relatively low crime. Except for car thefts. For some reason, Phoenicians can't keep their hands off others' autos. But Joe, recently re-elected, does a fabulous job. He's as serious against crime as anybody, although some don't like his methods of rounding up illegal aliens and making his prisoners wear pink underwear.

But that doesn't have a lot to do with the rain. Our Stupid Motorist Law does. Since we have no guttering, we have washes, pronounced warshes by some. These areas are gulleys that hold the rain until it soaks into the ground or evaporates. Some washes are rather large and deep, catching rain runoff from hills and mountains.

And some people try to drive their cars through such quasi-or pseudo-lakes. That's where the law comes into play. If you get stuck in a wash, you're fined $100, which is about $85 less than a speeding ticket in our berg. You're forever branded by having Stupid Motorist on your record.

No more rain than we receive last night, I doubt any driver could be ticketed. But when they do, I laugh.

LAST RIGHTS

As a takeoff from The Bucket List, I present The Last Rights. Very simply, which of these would you most liked to have done in your lifetime? Or, if your a younger reader still posed on the threshold of life, which one would you pick as the best? Also, feel free to add your own.

Number 1--fight the bull as the matador pictured. With full regalia in a stadium with roaring fans.

Number 2--ride the wave. Surf into the curl, the pipeline. Ride it on your board with tv crew recording.

Number 3--slam dunk a basketball. Not off a trampoline. Off hardwood floors. Hang on the rim with both hands. Pull yourself up on the rim.

Number 4--kick the game winning field goal. With no time left on the clock. Watch and wait as the football rises and splits the uprights.

Number 5--bowl a perfect game. Know that you need only one more strike and the crowd is buzzing. As you hit your mark, watch as the ball rolls into the 1-3 pocket.

Lots of other Last Rights. We've all had them. Maybe not to that magnitude, but in our own lives, we've hit the perfect golf shot, we've played the perfect piece, we created the perfect picture, we sealed the perfect business deal, we've made the perfect meal, we've inspired, we've perspired, we've dreamed, we've achieved.

Celebrate what rights are lasting. And, by the way, why are they rights? Just because they felt so right, so good.

ENGLISH MAJORING

was tough back then. Maybe it is today, too. I know it ran a friend of mine out of sticking with it. She couldn't hack the two years of foreign language requirement back then.

Symbolism almost got me. I'd see one thing, if pressed, but my profs would see other things. In those days they acted pretty aloof, pretty smug, in fact down right elite. Theirs was the only answer, and if you didn't follow, if you didn't support it, then you were an intellectual squid.

"High on a throne of his own self he sits," is a line from a poem entitled Macfleckno, if I'm correct. (And I may not be in title or in the word self.) But it's close enough for my purpose. "What is the image?" good old Dr. Bensinger posed.

Eliciting no response from his question, he waited. I volunteered, or rather hazarded a guess. "Macflecnoe rose to power by his own means. He was a self-made man," I added.

"Oh goodness, that's wrong." Macfleckno is a tragic satire about a king sitting on a toilet." That was the right answer.

While no others in the class knew either, after the revelation, most thought they were part of the inside joke and I was the dolt who thought Macfleckno a success story.

So what does that have to do with Dorothy's shoes and the yellow brick road? Well, you see, I was thinking. Oz was a movie in 1939. The war years. This Frank guy could foresee Japan with their red and yellow flag entering the war and...

MY SENIOR PICTURE IN HIGH SCHOOL

No, this isn't it. This is some guy named Robbie Williams. Not Robin Wiliams, that's Mork. This is just a dork.

Well, at least his hairstyle. Which gets me to my Senior picture for the yearbook.

You got one shot back then. No professional studio. They did take just a bit more time with you then, maybe because most guys wore a sportcoat and tie. So you earned that luxury.

Miss Hopper told us the day Senior pictures would be taken. To this day I remember her saying, "Rest assured, it will rain on that date." She was right. How'd she know?

As a Senior, I didn't quite become a total convert to the Beatles moppy, floppy hair. I knew I had Church League Basketball season coming up, so I wore a modified Beatle with bangs and a part on the left side.

Senior picture rain left a gap in my modified Beatle hair; a space between my bangs that was undesirable, yet not mentioned by my photographer, Nelda Simmons (yearbook advisor) or friend Kenny Troutt in line behind me. So the space showed up in black and white. As I look back, I think sans space,it was still a goofy style. Either be a Beatle or don't.

Robbie Williams will look back someday and think the same thing. "What was I thinking when I went with that hairstyle?" It's embarrassing.

THERE WAS THIS CONE, SEE

and it was just floating around in the atmosphere. It found my index finger which I had stuck into the air. And matter was created. An entire universe, in fact. It's a parallel universe, granted, but it exists.

Hey, that makes just as much sense as the Japanese scientists who reported yesterday that the earth was possibly formed 4.3 billion years ago by the collision of two asteroids. They created the matter that started the whole process. No design, no scheme, no grand master plan. Just two asteroids.

And this was newsworthy. I read the whole article. Well, almost. But from what I read, I didn't find any proof, any record of the two asteroids. No preservation of any documents substantiating any claim. But, hey, it's good enough for me.

I'm a believer now in such randomness. How it can create. How the asteroids were created. Was that from nothing? It must have been. We all know that matter can create itself from the depths of nothingness. It happens all the time. Just like in my parallel universe. Come visit sometime.

IT ALL STARTED WITH THE CARDINALS



My fascination with the color red. It continued when I became a minor league Cardinal in Little League at the age of 8. Next I was a Field School Redbird. And, yes it continues today. The color of my car? Candy Apple Red.



I recently read that if a woman wants to attract a man, she should dress in red. It somehow had to do with a study that measured men's pulses that rose at the sight of a woman in red rather than any other color. As much as I like red, I'd have to question that study. Common sense would tell me it would depend on who was wearing what.



My obsession continued to the St. Louis Football Cardinals. Then they moved to AZ. I followed them a few years later. Believe it or not, I'm actually rooting for them again. Even against my St.Louis Rams today. Whether my new hometown, Kurt Warner, or the color red has the deciding vote for whom to root for, I don't know. I guess there needs to be a study.



College years, well Rend Lake Warriors had some red in their unis. So did the Illinois State Redbirds and SIU Salukis, although the latter was maroon.



The sun used to bleach a little part of my hair red, but no more. It's too hard to get through all that gray.



Maybe I'll change colors. You know, to match my hair. Are there any salt and pepper, mostly salt teams? What? The Raiders. Nevermind.

WHERE DO STRANGERS GET THEIR GOOD CANDY?

One thing we always stressed with our kids was not to get in a car with a stranger until they got the candy first. You can't trust a stranger. He may say he will give you candy, but if you don't get it upfront, you have no assurance.

You just can't trust people these days. There's no honesty anymore. It even boils over into advertising. For Halloween this year, I went to Wal-Mart to buy single edge razor blades. They're so much easier to shove into apples, but wouldn't you know it--I cut my hand badly because they were double edge blades mismarked on the package or misleadingly labeled.

So I don't know what this world is coming to. I mean there's just no justice anymore. Even O.J. found that out on Friday.