Written for Friday Fictioneers 100 word photo prompt.
We didn’t care that the rain came in sideways, driven by the same scouring winds that had delivered the dust from farms hundreds of miles away for so many summers now and sent our own on a similar journey. As long as there was enough to drown our despair at fly-blown carcasses in the paddocks, 100 year old trees falling like majestic matchsticks and harvesters rusting in sagging sheds because now real seeds only produced phantom crops. We hoped it triggered flash flooding and washed out the roads and cut off the power; that was pain we could gladly endure.
Six Crooked Highways 
Sympathies. It’s a hard sun-baked road to hoe, it’s a feast or a famine. Whatever grows gets washed away, washed up or wastes away. There’s no balance at all.
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Thanks. I’m a simple country veg grower but I’ve seen the effect on real farmers through one of our longest droughts in history. Doesn’t make the news like the bushfires but far more devastating. My story Bush Rescue on my blog attempts to capture that despair.
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Typical Australia, one extreme or the other. I think the droughts are kind of kept hushed because the public might start to question who is using the water and the dams. Follow the money trail.
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Wonderfully atmospheric, especially because the environment is described through character
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Thank you, Neil.
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Dear Doug,
A rather bleak and well written tale.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Thanks, Rochelle. Life on the land can like that sometimes but at least it was raining 😉
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Difficult times, indeed!
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I’m not sure I could endure such pain. Nice one Doug.
Here’s mine!
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Thank you, Keith, but somehow some people do.
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This reminds me of stories from the Depression years. Hopeless, sad, endless windblown dust, endless grasshoppers, endless searching of the sky for even ONE small cloud!
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Wonderfully descriptive. It drew me in.
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Thank you, Tina.
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You’re welcome. ☺ Thanks for sharing.
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Rain can be a curse or a blessing. It can either destroy everything, or revitalize it. Same with the sun.
I’m glad you got some rain.
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