Flood--1

I sent this picture to my granddaughter, told her to guess which one was her grandma. Truth is, I wasn't sure myself. Now that I look at it on the screen, she's no longer hidden; but when I peeled it from a wet page of a sodden drawer full of old pictures, I had some trouble myself. I thought my granddaughter would get a kick out of her grandma of the 65 Western Christian cheer line.

Once my little game is over, it will be my spouse's choice as to whether this sopping wet newspaper clipping gets some drying time and holds on to its place in the scrapbook of her memories, where it would be today if it had not been so rudely displaced by the Floyd River's decision to break out its banks and go on a spree of destruction none of its neighbors could have predicted or imagined. Us either.

If you want to know the story of the deluge, listen up. Starts with me--no, starts with 12 to 15 inches of rainfall on what was already soggy ground. Truth be known, no country bridge is going to sit still with that much water making a beeline to Omaha.

When all that rain joined forces, the lazy Floyd, hardly a crick for the last year, swelled up mean and hungry in a way that I'd rather not rethink. 

It was five when I was awakened by the toilet gurgling obscenely, bubbling up in a way that made me think that rain last night wasn't a pittance. I turned on the porch light and saw something we'd never seen before--the Floyd River licking up the front of our deck. The record-breaker, years ago, stayed sixty feet out. 

I ran to get Barbara to show her--by then it was another four or five inches up and lapping at the sliding door. We bought a sump pump last flood, but had never used it. I called my neighbor to help me check it, which we did. I shoved the end of the hose out a window when I looked down at the water. Our neighbor left on the spot; he had his own concerns. We called our kids, who trooped over.

By the time our own forces were at its strength--one grandma, one mama, a grandson, a pregnant granddaughter and her husband--things were being dished up out of the wading pool the bottom floor of our house had become, all that hard work being done without me, a cripple, waiting for surgery. It was a mountain of work done arduously in rising waters--grab what you can, get it up the stairs to safety before.. .what?--before what finally happened: before the rushing Floyd turned into a bully, popped out the glass patio door and bullied its way into the house, filling up the bottom floor until five feet of water took out book cases (and books) and made retrieval of anything about impossible. There were scary moments because all of that river didn't justt saunter in but rammed in with force enough to make the kids and my daughter worry and try to keep balance against the tide. Our new grandson-in-law actually went under for a flash in the rushing water. No, I'm not making this up.

Eight days later we're still looking for some things that were swept away. After three solid days of hard, dirty work and with the help of a wonderful gang of volunteers, that first floor is bare naked, down to the studs. The hum of fans and dehumidifiers are the sounds of silence in the house. My kids and the cloud of witnesses who weren't just witnesses are now gone, leaving the work of paging throgh sopping-wet albums in search of not to be tossed photos to us because it's a job only we can do.

Pictures like that one up there, a Barbara Van Gelder no one in the family ever knew, a foreigner really, the girl she left behind. So why save the picture, right?

Years ago, when I was a boy, an old yellow megaphone was in an upstairs closet in my bedroom. I'm sure there was more there, but all I remember right is that yellow megaphone with the brown letters--O H S in mega-letters down the sides. My mom was a cheerleader--Oostburg High School, class of 1936. I used to take it out, put that silver mouth piece to my lips and just pretend. I was way too masculine to let out a yell.

Oddly enough, my first real girlfriend was a cheerleader for our most hated rivals, the Cedar Gove Rockets. My senior year, the coach put in a "tackle eligible" play, just for me--turned a 10- or 12- yard gain too, right in front of her. I was the eligible tackle.

And I married a cheerleader too--that young woman on the right end of the lineup. She's been my wife for 52 years last Thursday, as a matter of fact, just four days after. the two. of us were made homeless. 

So I say, keep the shot. You just never know really, what magic those old artifacts might create. Of course, now I've got it on my phone, close to my heart--I'm trying to be romantic. 

That old megaphone is long gone, has been for decades. Mom herself probably tossed it when they left the house I grew up in. I'm guessing she held it up to her lips too. Yell out a cheer?  Maybe so, if I know my mom. 

All of that from a 59-year old picture sopping wet.