The Flood

There is something magical about living next to the water, something calming, maybe even primordial.

However, I had never much considered the appeal of living next to the water until I first saw … the creek. This little creek came into our lives in our search for the first house that we would own together. My wife and I were drawn to the creek; it was peaceful, attractive, charming … We were smitten, and we bought the farm, I mean, the house.

Hey, we are not idiots! Both the real estate agent and the neighbors assured us that, oh no, the creek almost never flooded, maybe only once in twenty years! Well, that was certainly good enough for us.

The creek was an endless source of amazing sights and entertainment. We were treated to the sight of huge snapping turtles, endless baby ducks and geese and their highly protective parents, muskrats, patient, wading hunters like the great blue heron, and the antics of my big red dog, Big Red.

Big Red was our golden retriever, and he loved the water. So the creek looked like a natural fit for him, and I was happy to oblige. Once every two weeks or so in the spring, summer, and fall, I would let him run free the length of the creek in our yard, and he was a very happy puppy.

April flowered into May, and then the Pennsylvania summer battered us relentlessly with the unending fury of three uncomfortably warm days in a row. September brought us the changing of the leaves, and October ushered in the first chill. One October morning I awoke with the strange sensation that something was wrong with my face. I could neither feel nor move one side of my face, and speaking seemed to be unusually difficult.

My wife was convinced that I had experienced a stroke. I was equally convinced that, if I just ignored the problem, it would go away by itself. This was my standard self-diagnosis for irritating medical conditions, and it had served me very well in the past.

As we pondered my affliction, the rain continued its assault from the day before. We both noticed that our bucolic little creek was no longer its usual eight or ten inches across. Instead, the water level was within kissing distance of the top of the banks.

My wife had to go into work, and I assumed the responsibility for watching the water level rise in the creek. Which it did. In the late afternoon, my wife returned from work, and we ventured through the deluge to the emergency room because my face was still paralyzed.

By the time we returned home, the creek had breached its banks, washing the largest snapping turtle I had ever seen onto the driveway and threatening the patio and back door. With a flash of brilliance, I knew that I needed to place one or two large towels at the base of the back door, but inside the house. This measure would serve to keep the floodwaters out. I smugly placed the towels, and we waited for the fury of the storm to pass. However, the storm gods had more humbling in mind for us.

The front room in the basement was below ground level; the back room was at ground level. When the water reached the front room, my wife started a pump borrowed from the neighbors to remove the water from the front room out the window onto the lawn. I explained to her gently that the hydraulics of water were simply moving the results of her pumping onto the front lawn, then swooshing them around the side of the house, only to re-enter the basement in the rear.

As we spoke to our neighbors about the vagaries of the flood, we noticed some of our lawn furniture floating by, never to be seen again. Following close behind was a six-foot ficus tree planted in one-third of a heavy oak barrel. I could barely move that tree because of its weight! And there it was bobbing along like the good ship Lollipop. I half expected to see Shirley Temple waving from the gunwales!

In time the flood waters receded, as they do in all such stories. The basement retained more than thirty inches of water for awhile. My towels, apparently, had not been enough. I was concerned that the water in the basement had become electrified. I proposed to my wife that we test for electrification in the water by throwing in the one cat that I didn’t like very much. My wife thought that was a bit extreme. In six weeks, my face was working again, and that cat remained with us for many years to come.