I was between 8-10 years old, so this would make it the late 1950's. In Michigan where I lived. My Mom and dads kids we went out to work, at a young age to help with the bills with my mom and dad having so many children. Dad was in poor health, and us kids didn't mind going out and helping to do some kind of odd work, to help with the household expenses. However at the time we didn't know why we really had to help out, after all we were just kids. But in those days kids didn't question when asked to do something, they just did it.
My sister and I found out from the girls next door to where we lived, about the McKals (not the real name of this farm) family where they had patches of strawberries that needed to be picked. That we could earn 25 cents for each quart that we picked. And since it was in July when the strawberries were ready to be picked, they were nice and big and didn't take long to fill a quart up.
So Mom asked us if we would like to go and do that. She just stated it would help out in the house hold budget. My sister and I didn't know what that meant she said, all we knew is we could keep 25 cents a day to pick them. So the next day, my sister and I got ready to go to the McKals farm to pick strawberries. We got to the farm, wow I never seen so many strawberries in my life time. Mom and dad had a patch but not that big. It seem to me the strawberries went forever in the big patches they had.
Mrs McKals came out and told us they had three fields, this one was ready to pick now, the one in the middle be ready next week and the third one in a few weeks. She told us up by the barn was lugs in which we carried our quarts in, to bring to the barn and she would look them over and make sure they were good and put down, on a sheet of paper how many we picked. So she could pay us each day we picked the strawberries.
The wooden lug carried many quarts of berries. I picked it up and the lug itself was heavy. My little sister could hardly even carry the wooden lug. But we made it to the patch and went back and forth to the barn several times that day.
The next few days turned really hot, so hot that the 9 or so kids in the strawberry patch we were, so over heated with no place to get out of the sun. We complained because it was so hot. Some sat on the ground too tired to move, others stood and drank all their kool aid up they brought from home. I stood there and just looked up thinking "It sure would be nice if it would rain".
The sky was as blue as could be, there were fluffy white clouds all over. How would it rain looking like that, I was thinking to myself. Then all of a sudden a big black cloud came right over the top of me and it rained so hard, it soaked my clothes in a matter of seconds it seemed. I was jumping up and down telling everyone else to come, it was raining. All the other kids looked at me as if I was stupid or something. No one came over. I just danced around in the rain as it poured onto my head, cooled off my body and made mud where I was jumping at.
Not sure how long that lasted actually. Then the dark cloud was gone and only the pretty blue sky above. My friend Jo came over and asked how the ground was wet where I stood and how did I get so wet? I told her it rained. She called me a liar. I said to her "I told all of you it was raining and no one came by me". She asked "How it would just be over me and not all the other kids in the patch? I told her "I didn't know". Well all the kids came to where I was standing and they all seen me soaking wet and the ground all muddy where I stood. Someone went and got Mrs McKals and she looked at me and the spot I stood at. Asked me what happen? I told her the cloud of rain did this. No one believed me. But I knew what happened.
We had lunch and still the other kids are all hot and cranky and I am feeling good. Nice and cool. The other kids wanted to go home as they were too hot to work. I said I was going to work and get more. I did and picked more strawberries then they did that day.
I went home, told Mom of the cloud and I thought of the rain, and the next thing there was a cloud over me only. And it poured down rain onto me, making me all wet, and the ground muddy and I was nice and cool for the rest of the day.
Later in our teen years, the girls who lived next to me, told me they seen me yelling and screaming at them to come over it was raining. Yet from where they were standing it was not raining at all. They didn't see no black cloud or no rain. I told Jo, "Hey you just got to think it, and it happens". She shook her head and walked away. This doesn't work all the time for me, but in the past and even now it does work.
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