“We are one day closer to a good rain” (drought joke)

“We are one day closer to a good rain” is a positive outlook someone might take to another day of drought. The phrase has been cited since at least 1964 and is still used, especially in Texas and Oklahoma.
 
   
19 July 1964, Lawton (OK) Constitution-Morning Press, pg. 27, col. 5:
WELL, we are one day closer to rain than we were yesterday.
 
3 April 1971, San Antonio (TX) Express and News, pg. 4B, col. 2:
“Every morning when I get up and see the sun shining and the wind blowing my land away, I figure we’re just one day closer to rain.”
(An “optimistic rancher”—ed.)
 
15 April 1971, Abilene (TX) Reporter-News, “Stamford Takes Drought in Stride” by Mike Cochran, pg. 8A, cols. 2-3:
And, said Gene Swenson, one of the executives of Swenson Land and Cattle Co., Inc.:
 
“We’re getting a day closer to it (rain) all the time. I don’t know when it’s gonna be, but we’re getting a day closer all the time.”
     
3 July 1988, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN), “Blue, clear sky and brittle fields bring tinge of panic”:
At a Thursday evening gathering at the Weises’, their friend Jim Welle exemplified how people look for the bright side: “We’re one day closer to rain,” he said.
   
Google Books
Renderbrook: A Century Under the Spade Brand
By Steve Kelton
Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press
1989
Pg. 165:
The rancher’s certainty that each passing day in a drouth carries him one day closer to rain is mirrored in the oilman’s apparent conviction that each dry..
   
21 May 1989, Washington (DC) Post, “Midwest Drought Is Older But Not Wider This Year” by Bill Peterson, pg. A3:
“Every morning, I get up and say, `We’re one day closer to rain.’”
     
28 June 1996, New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), pg. 72 ad: 
PETE MOSS’S GARDENING TIP
Remember…today we are one day closer to rain!
(Newman’s Nursery—ed.)
   
Beef Magazine
The Drought Dilemma
Apr 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Doug McInnis and Clint Peck
(...)
“Our philosophy is that for every day this drought goes on, we’re one day closer to a good rain,” she says.
   
Google Books
My Nebraska:
The good, the bad, and the husker: with original sketches of Nebraska scenic sites by the author
By Roger L. Welsch
Guilford, CT: Insiders
2006
Pg. 78:
Still, as a Nebraska farmer told a reporter who asked about the drought, “The way I figure it, every day of drought is one day closer to a good rain.” If that isn’t typically Nebraskan…
 
Texas Farm Bureau
Drought takes toll on South-Central cattlemen
Friday, September 5, 2008
By Paul Cañada
Field Editor
(...)
Good Texas cattlemen share the common optimism that they’re one day closer to a good rain. For cattlemen across many parts of the Lone Star State, that day can’t come soon enough.
   
East Texas Farm & Ranch News
Published: July 09, 2009 12:04 pm        
Today in East Texas— with Horace McQueen
At least we are one day closer to a good rain —that’s the response from a neighbor when I complain about the lack of wet stuff. It is getting awfully dry in much of East Texas — with the spring rains just a recollection of the past.
 
Find Farm Credit
One Day Closer to a Good Rain
Tim Knesek | Capital Farm Credit | { 07.23.09 }
On the topic of weather, my former boss, Gaylon Oehlke in Capital Farm Credit’s South Texas region, said it best: “It’s always raining somewhere, just not always here.”
(...)
I’ll end with a quote from a former Farm Credit director, Curtis Albrecht, who farmed around Nueces County near Corpus Christi — a place that has seen its share of dry times.  To this day, he is one of the most jovial and optimistic farmers I have been privileged to know. When Curtis was asked about the South Texas droughts, he would always say, “Boys, we are one day closer to a good rain.”
 
Southwest Farm Press
Drought losses continue to grow for Southern Texas farmers
Aug 6, 2009 12:51 PM, Jeffrey R. Stapper, Nueces County Extension Agent-Ag/Natural Resources
(...)
It is hard to find anything optimistic to say with current conditions, except that old saying, “We are one day closer to a good rain.”