You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
The sheriff knocking on your door at 10pm demanding you pack up your life in 10 minutes.
That’s what happened to me Sunday night.
I am the skipper on my own private Gilligan’s Island. The river behind our house was raging, lapping at the garage and splashing under the deck like aquatic fire ants with a bad case of intestinal discomfort.
The river was an ugly brown, choppy. and downright defiant.
The Harpeth, a generally calm lap dog of a river had all ready claimed lives in Middle Tennessee and dozens of homes in my neighborhood.
BANG BANG BANG
It is the unmistakable, “F-OFF” COP bang on the door.
I’ve heard this bang a hundred times. It’s the knock you hear on a warrant search, a dope raid, an INS operation.
“HOLA PEDRO! Donde Esta tu Carde Verde, cabron?”
It’s the heavy handed knock of a law man whose only goal is to make sure that BANG reverberates into your skull.
I am upstairs watching Tom Hank’s HBO series Pacific. Quite honestly, I am nervous and not paying attention to the story line. Everyone is dying and it is very depressing and honestly, I need something brighter and cheerier right now to take my mind off the fact that the water is trying to eat my home.
I have all ready walked like a soldier down the middle of my street. I have all ready watched my trees disappear and I have all ready seen all manner of personal possessions race by in a class five rapids.
My neighbor has all ready lost his mini van, after trying to drive his family to higher ground. His family mobile stalled in the high water at the end of our street. He reportedly had to rush his own children to safety.
Scary huh?
People who have lived in Middle Tennessee their entire lives, forty, and fifty years, say this is the highest the roughest the craziest they have ever seen.
BANG BANG BANG
I race downstairs knowing it might be the sheriff or even the National Guard. They have been working the neighborhood.
I open the door and it’s a Williamson County Sheriff deputy. He is a Sgt. He says his name quickly, angrily. I don’t hear it and I don’t much care. It’s a Mexican stand off. He is pissed at me and I am certainly ready to eat the gelatinous goo that makes up his eyes.
He tells me that I need to evacuate.
I tell him to eat my ass with a simple “NO.”
He says that I am now an island, cut off from the rest of the county.
“There is no way to get to you, he says.
I just walked through the DMZ, douche. I think I get it.
“I realize that,” I say.
“We might have to cut your power,” he says.
I feel my eyes roll with rage.
“Why?”
“There’s a threat of fire,” he says with the compassion of wet moss.
“Great!”
Then he piles on, telling me that the gas will probably be turned off soon.
No cooking. No hot water. More good news.
“Where am I suppose to go?” I counter.
He doesn’t have a good answer. He doesn’t care. That’s not his mission.
“What’s the harm of me staying ?” I ask. “I mean if the river is coming into my house, then it is coming in the house. I can’t stop the river. It’s going to do what it wants to do. So I’ll move my family to the second floor. If it reaches us on the second floor, my moving will be irrelevant. If it makes it to the second floor you better start lining up the animals two by two.”
“What if there is a medical emergency?” he says. “Once we leave we aren’t coming back.”
“Then that’s on me,” I say wanting to punch him in the head.
This guy sucks. He is here on the premise that he is going to help me, but all he has done is make me very nervous, make me very upset, and he is questioning my parenting skills.
I feel like saying: Oh, you’re not going to come and get me? Really? That’s what you yahoos do. You live for river rescues. You live for coming in with your big brass balls, with your rescue boats and life lines. This is why you signed up dude. To save dumb asses like me in your little rescue skiff. If I call 9 1 1 and say I have 4 children who are in danger, you really aren’t going to send in the Calvary? F-YOU!
I almost ask this young guy how many floods he’s worked. Maybe one a year? He’s a county officer. How many times does the
county he patrol flood? Once? Twice? Zero times a year?
I on the other hand, because of my job, probably cover 5 to 10 floods a year. In every county across the state. In my 20 year career that is 100 to 200 floods. All floods are the same. The water looks the same. The damage looks the same. The muddy water looks the same. The devastation is the same. The tears, the devastation, the anguish, FEMA, the fly overs, the disbelief.
SADLY; IT IS ALL THE SAME. HORRIFIC, BUT THE SAME.
I feel like saying; Look Johnny Law. Been there done that. Get out my face!
Before the long arm of the law arrived, I had patrolled the back yard. I had noticed a slowing of the river’s approach. It had been coming up at an alarming pace earlier in the evening, but now it was slowing, barely nipping at the garage door.
It was just what I needed to calm my frayed nerves. Then this douche arrives.
The sheriff didn’t want to deal with me anymore. I felt the contempt in his eyes.
How many people are in this house, he asks me.
Six, I respond.
He yells into the darkness; “Six souls Jim.”
Like we’re an airplane, I muse to myself. What are you going to do, paint a six on the door like this is some kind of bumpkin Hurricane Katrina.
He left and I felt a nausea filling my stomach. Five minutes ago, I was thinking that I had made the right decision, now I was feeling like my face was on a wanted poster at the Department of Children’s Services.
I go back in the house and sit down. Suddenly I cannot watch HBO. The war is just too loud. I get up and walk to the back deck. The water is ferocious and dark.
I sense it is there and I can’t tell whether it is receding or not. You see the thing about a river is; what’s happening at your house is all you care about, but the dynamic of a river is much more complex.
Where does it begin? What is going on there? Is it overflowing the banks up stream? Is that reducing the tension where you live? If so the river will recede. If the pressure below is backing up, then you might be the spot where the river decides to dump its fury. It’s impossible in the dark of night to know.
I turn on the news and all they have is storm tracking this and flood victim sound bites that.
It’s too much pressure.
“I’m going to bed,” I say.
It’s a tossing and turning kind of sleep where sleep never really gets to REM.
I wake up at 6am and rush to the window.
My bleary eyes look out and see green grass and driveway.
“WooooooHoooooo! We made it,” I scream.
The cats stare at me with big yawns. They don’t care. Their litter box is clean and their food bowl full.
“Yawn now felines, but you boys almost got orphaned,” I say to the cats.
And that’s the crazy good news.