At some point in time, a bad spell of wet weather came over a southern state, flooding many counties. The water was about six feet deep outside and inside their house, so one family spent its time sitting on the porch roof, watching the wreckage float by.
The son noticed a nice straw hat as it went downstream. “My,” he thought, “I’ll bet the person who lost that hat is sorry now!”
After the hat floated out of sight around the corner of the house, the boy kept watching the river. Suddenly, much to his surprise, here comes the hat, floating upstream against the current!
This was obviously very strange, so the lad kept his eye on it. It floated upstream and around the other corner of the house, and came floating back down again. After a while, it came back upstream yet again, rounding the corner of the house.
Finally, the boy could stand it no longer and pointed out the hat to his mother, asking her whatever could cause such a sight. His mother replied, “Oh, that’s just your grandfather. He swore it’d take more than a few drops of rain to keep him from mowing the lawn today.”