You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
A hundred year flood happening to a community before the hundred years is up. I don’t know when the clock started on this hundred year B.S. but I don’t feel like I got my money’s worth.
DATELINE: Nashville
In case you didn’t see the news. In case FOX couldn’t report anything but the oil spill. In case CNN was only reporting on the Time Square “almost” Bombing.
We have a little something going on here called NATURAL DISASTER 2010
We’re calling it the Historic Flood of 2010, but that’s too kind. It should be called River Beat Down 2010, or I’m gonna flood you SUCKA 2010, or who you calling Bitch Bitch 2010.
The Harpeth River and the Cumberland River and the Duck River and Percy Priest Dam and the Old Hickory Lake and the….
Well you get the idea. 18 inches fell in 2 days. In comparison, Katrina only had a fraction of that rain total. Of course New Orleans had a little Levy problem to deal with and a lot of looters and nayer-dee-wells.
I was lucky. The Harpeth River runs behind my house. The real estate agent told me when I bought this property that the 100 year flood plane was in the corner of my yard. Imagine a chess set. I am the Black King and across the board, on the other side, way in the back is the White Castle. That is what the real estate agent told me was my flood plane.
WELL…..
Check Mate!
It turns out the real estate agent is a money grubbing moron like most real estate agents and Mother Nature is one bad ass bitch because the new flood plane is my garage doors.On the chess board analogy I just described, that means the demarcation line is up the queen’s ass.
On Friday afternoon I mowed my grass. By Sunday morning, I was jacking that riding mower up with the car jack in the garage to put the wheels on bricks. The grass was a memory, replaced with an angry swirling river of turbidity and bad attitude.
Our deck was a boat ramp. Our driveway had waves like the break water at the bay.
I watched garbage cans whip through my back yard on this river. My son snagged a wicker love seat from someone up stream.
“Hey that’s nice,” Zander said as he waded out into the raging current to collect his free river gift.
“Put the wicker furniture back in the raging atrocity”, I felt saying.
My daughter took a cell phone video of the next door neighbor’s play set going down. The teenagers laughed as the five year old who played on that swing set cried hysterically.
Sadness and awe gave way to fear Sunday night.
I had to trudge home through my street like a Vietnam soldier, rifle over head, wading through a Mekong Delta Rice Patty
The river was in the street. There was no street. It was waist high, raging, angry river, over the top of four foot high mail boxes. It was up to the stoops on everyone’s home.
I parked my car on a hill and gathered my belongings, and then began the 1/2 mile walk through the river. It was a struggle to move. I was weighted down by my heavy work boots and blue jeans. I was exhausted and every time I got to an opening between the homes, I could feel the rapids pushing me into the next neighborhood.
Along the way, my son came and got me. He met me and helped carry my belongings. He told me stories of the river and the neighborhood and how bad it was at the house. Most of all, he made me feel like I wasn’t alone. It meant a lot to be greeted by a friendly face who cared.
Many more stories of survival to come. I have now seen the raging rivers from above and below. I don’t like what I see, but we shall endure and over come.
The good news; we won’t see this for another 100 years.
HAH!
And that is Crazy!