On the waterfront...

Bam! Bam! Ding dong, ding dong, bam… That was the sound we awoke to last Sunday at 5:30 am, when the world was dark as the inside of a bat infested cave in Kentucky. What the heck..?! As the Rock struggled into his clothes to go downstairs and answer the door I tried for some semblance of consciousness. As a joke (only a joke), I called out to his retreating backside, “I will not evacuate!” Well, can you imagine my chagrin when the Rock came back up and said we had just been informed by a member of the town’s finest “disaster specialists (heretofore called firemen) that there was a voluntary evacuation in progress. A few dooors down the voluntary part of that warning was not an option.

By golly, that was an adrenaline rush I can tell you. Having suffered a shortened and fitful night’s sleep to begin with, this news pushed us over the edge and into action with coffee, black and strong, being the first order of the day. After the caffeine titration started to take effect we began the preliminary process of pacing, assessing and planning, all the while accompanied by copious hand-wringing on my part. Oh, have I neglected to mention that it had been abundantly and briskly raining for a few days prior to all this? How silly of me. It had been abundantly and briskly raining for a few days already, prior to this calamity. And it still damn is… Ooh, did she say “damn?” Yes she did and she should’ve known better than to mention dam(n) right now while the rivers are still rising and the rain is still briskly and abundantly streaming…one damn week later!!

Our street was seen on national media outlets. But we were still better off than a certain little town not so far from here…called Alstead. Those poor folks! Well, I can’t even express how sorry I am for them. Our little city was inundated and the arial shots made us look like a mini New Orleans (sans the looting, of course). Our house was about a driveway and a half away from the worst flooding around here. Some folks were waist deep in the water in the street and I don’t need to even tell you what that meant for their humble abodes. They were the ones unlucky enough to be evacuated with no “voluntary” about it.

The rain actually did stop for a time but the water continued to rise for quite awhile. Our sump pump was very adequate but at 9:30 am the power company visited the pole outside our house and the sump summarily stopped. Because of danger to the folks in the flooded areas all the power was shut down and we went without electricity for the next 38 hours. Bummer! Dark. Cold. NO computer!!! Aaaaaaagh..! My window on the world was figuratively boarded up. No news, no mail, no morning puzzles, no blogging, no “light” in this corner of the room. I called the sonnies, who live in this town, and made sure that they were alright. They were alright.

Meanwhile, the Rock was in the basement, bailing by hand so as to keep the edge in our favor, totally expecting that the water out there would go down quickly and the power would be restored soon. After all, the rain was stopped or at least down to a light drizzle off and on. Nope! It was not to be. There was a lot of activity out on our street though as neighbors began to sally forth to get a gander at the new lakefront in our neighborhood and ponder whether it was in our interests to invest in boats and perhaps erect some docks and maybe a little sand for the beach. In the end, the sand we envisioned in our humor-filled fantasies ended up in bags for the not-so-lucky among us to “shore” up the breaches.

The water filled street and yards remained for most of us a curiosity and we truly had no idea of how far reaching the flooding actually was nor how serious. Neighbors chatted at the water’s edge and caught up on each other’s lives and some took pictures and after an interval more folks began to show up from who knows where? Canoes began to appear and row boats and kayaks too. And yahoos in big trucks with huge wheels and who blithely and with complete disregard of the swells they were making and whose basement they were putting in jeopardy, began plowing through the water only to discover it was deeper than they thought and the rest of us had a diversion watching the steam come out of their sputtering vehicles. I didn’t hear of any betting going on but the comments I heard were quite entertaining.

We live on a corner with our driveway around that corner from the house. Right behind us on that street we have a new neighbor and a swell fellow he is too. That street didn’t have their power turned off so he strung a heavy duty extension cord over from his place and the Rock had another one which he attached to it so it would reach the basement and even though we had no lights, computer, what-have-you, we did have power to the sump pump. Consequently, we never had a wet basement and the Rock didn’t stroke out as I was afraid he would. His parents’ house in New Jersey suffered extensive flood damage in the past and whenever it rains the Rock goes on high alert. It was “touch and go” for awhile but it ended up as us being touched by the kindness of a neighbor and the water going away.

Friends of ours were not so lucky and for them we have the greatest sympathy. One of them does woodworking in his basement and it flooded totally and they had to be evacuated and he won’t be doing any woodworking down there for awhile. Personally, I think they should buy our house since the Rock built a workbench which wouldn’t surprise me if it was earthquake proof. We have a new workbench in our future (we hope), which is ensconced in the basement of what we consider our dream house and is being sold by friends who actually are related to the young woodworker’s wife. Our house is on the uphill side of the street and we have always been very lucky water-wise. I hope our dream house’s basement is at least as continent as this one has always been.

Oh, did I mention that during the horrible rains and just before the flood the realtor brought someone through our home who might have been interested? With all the folderol happening this week I haven’t heard from the realtor in a couple of days. Maybe she floated away…