What She Said

I was lucky enough to be in both floods, along with Mary and our brother. I still remember how Mom chickened out and flew back to Texas right when the water was barely starting to come over the levee down the street from my brother's house. Like she didn't want to live in a tent in the rain for a month. Like that's not fun.

This hurricane has brought back lots of fond memories of the 1973 flood. I was only about 7 and didn't mind missing the last month of school. All I remember is going on a really long road trip. We drove all over, visiting friends and relatives. I think we stayed with every aunt and uncle we had, driving all over Missouri and Oklahoma. I don't remember if we had any pets, or what kind of car we were cruising in.

After our road trip we spent a month or so living in a house in St. Louis county, in Florisant I think it was. The house was nice enough, and there were tons of other kids to play with. I learned to ride a bike there. I had been afraid to learn at our house because we lived on a gravel road. Knees and gravel roads just don't mix. I remember having gallon tubs of government peanut butter and blocks of cheese, going to government and charity offices and waiting while Mom filled out forms, or picking up clothes or food. Mostly I just remember playing and having fun.

I remember a lot more about the 93 flood. I didn't have as much fun as when I was 7. I think Mary had it worse because she had two little kids to take care of, sort of like Mom in 73. Our brother didn't have any kids then, but he did have a dog to take care of. I had two dogs and two cats. Our brother moved 3 times, and each time he got flooded. Each time he moved he took less stuff with him. He hardly ended up with anything.

I was the last one to get flooded in my family. We thought we were ready for anything. We just bought our house, and had only made about 2 house payments. When we bought the house we knew it was in a flood zone, but they told us it had only gotten about a foot of water inside when it flooded in 73. We put everything up on concrete blocks, or on the kitchen counter or the closet shelves. Everything was going to be fine. Then the water came up. And up. And up. It finally topped up at about 5 feet inside my house.

And then it stayed there. It might have gone down a foot or so, but then it just stopped. Every day the weather man would say there was another 10 inches of rain in Iowa. So even if it didn't rain here we didn't get any relief, but most days it did rain here. We didn't stay in the local shelter, the high school, because we couldn't bring our dogs and cats with us. We could bring them with us to the state park, so we did that instead. Mary's daughter broke her arm, my brother's dog went in heat, but I can't think of anything really bad that happened to me or my husband.

Actually, I never could really complain about being flooded very much. I mean, I didn't enjoy it, but I was able to look at it from a fresh perspective. The flood gave everybody a chance to pull together. Some people had to suffer to allow other people the oportunity to be generous and helpful. People suddenly realized how much material abundance they had. They could share the wealth and it made them feel good. I didn't mind being the helpee instead of the helper.

I didn't have any real problems until the water finally went down. When I saw my house and everything I owned covered in mud and debris, I just froze up inside. The temperature was so high for so long everything that didn't get submerged got covered with a thick layer of mold. Even the stuff in the attic was ruined. The flood was one thing, the recovery was something else.

Part of the problem in my house was I lived in a subdivision surrounded by our own little levvee. One by one the surrounding levees broke, but ours held out until the very end. Unfortunately, our town's sewage treatment pond was inside the levvee, too, so while my brother and sister were dealing with thick black mud from the river we were dealing with sewage. And it was stinky, let me tell you.

Oh, yeah, those were the good old days.