At last the rain god intervened to clean the stinking streets — am I paraphrasing Travis Bickle? — after the hottest July on record in Philly. And now there’s a chance this will be the city’s wettest August on record.

Some people don’t like the rain, as the Beatles noted on the flip side of “Paperback Writer”:

If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.

Not me. I’ll take the rain over the heat and feel fortunate not to be in Texas, where a record drought continues despite climate-change denier Rick Perry’s much-publicized rain dance in April. I’m sure Perry is devoting much deep thought to this matter.

The Philly heat wave broke with a flourish last Sunday, when a morning drizzle turned into a downpour that rarely let up until evening. I took a break from writing and went for a run in the afternoon after I dug through the rubble in my basement and found an old bill cap to keep the rain off my glasses.

Running to the Delaware River and back from the Italian Market is my version of going to church on Sunday. It’s much better for body and soul, especially when the temperature dips below 90 degrees and you feel cool rain streaming down your back instead of sweat.

After my run I ducked into a coffee shop (not vegan) and dripped water all over the floor as I ordered. The counter guy looked at me funny, as most people do these days, and said, “Where did you get that cap?”

I took it off and looked at the lettering on the front: Super Bowl XXIII. I realized the cap must be from the ton of stuff left by my son Barney when he moved out of my house years ago. Where Barney got the cap is anybody’s guess, although I’m sure it wasn’t at Super Bowl XXIII, he was three years old at the time.

“At the Super Bowl, of course,” I said. “What’s the matter, it doesn’t look so good?”

As if it mattered. If I worried about looking good, I wouldn’t run in the rain.