Thank you to all my friends who have left me heartening messages.  I appreciate your words of advice and love to hear from you.  Unfortunately I have not been able to leave messages on any of your spaces for quite a while now.  MSN swears they are making progress on my problem, so maybe soon I will be able to comment.  I have visited your spaces and have loved reading about your thoughts and doings.  Thank you.

The other day I was moving dressers, bookcases, and file cabinets so that I could use my shop vac to suck my carpets dry. When I started pulling back the carpet and removing the pad I had a flashback and suddenly realized that I had been cleaning up flooded basements my entire life!  Okay, not my entire life, but since I was about 9 years old.

My mom and dad built a beautiful large home on the front corner of our 25 acres of land.  Dad's farm was toward the back of the acreage. The house was a large ranch on a full basement.  It was an 8 bedroom, 3 bath home with lots of room for fun.  Besides all the regularly appointed rooms (dining, living, family, etc.) it had a rec room, ping-pong room, pool room, and theater.  My brother, Storyteller, made the theater using chairs salvaged (I think) from our church's choir seats.  It was set up with about 5 rows of 3 seats each (if I remember correctly) and had a “projection booth” in the rear.  I think he even put small lights on the end of each row of seats and had a dimming switch for the overhead just like the “real” theaters.  Nowdays, it seems everyone has a theater in their homes, but back in the early 70’s it was quite a novelty. 

In one corner of the basement ping-pong room my Dad had a very deep hole in the floor.  This was the hole to measure the level of the sub water. Every spring this water would rise and rise until it would come right up through the floor and soak everything.  Every fall the level would drop.  We would have to monitor the water level constantly.  There was a very long pole that we used to measure the water level.  When the level reached a certain point we would have to start the pumps.  There were 3 large powerful pumps that ran continuously from spring to fall every one of my growing up years.  When the pumps were running everything was okay, but if a pump broke or the power went out, the water would steadily and quickly rise and create a swamp in the basement. To try to forestall any problems my Dad purchased a large generator.  Everyone in the family was trained on two important things.  How to check the water level through the hole in the basement floor, and how to start the generator and switch the pumps over to it’s power in case of an outage. 

In spite of all of these precautions our basement was flooded many times. It always caused my heart to sink when I would come home to the news, “the basement flooded again”.  My bedroom was in the basement.  I liked my room and tried to keep it nice.  I was always disheartened when the things I tried to make nice were ruined.  More than once I remember waking up and getting out of bed only to step right in water.  The time I remember most vividly was when I came home from school and was greeted with the dreaded news. I went directly to my room to see what the damage was and saw that I had left my lamp on.  Without thinking I slogged through the water to unplug the cord.  As soon as I touched the cord I received a horrific electrical shock.  My heart was pounding hard when I realized what a stupid mistake I had made. I was so lucky to live to tell the tale.

Then an ironic thing happened.  About 5 days after I graduated from high school I was watching my brother, Brian, work on the lawn mower.  It was a Saturday morning and I was supposed to mow the lawn before going off on my own.  Brian had a small portable radio going while he worked.  Suddenly the music was cut off and an announcement came on stating that the Teton Dam had burst and a flood was headed right for us.  This news sent everyone into a frenzy as people were evacuated to high ground.  My dad worked feverishly on the farm trying to prepare for the worst.  My Mom and I realized that Brian’s wife was still at their apartment in town.  Brian called her and asked her if she had any water. She said, “just a minute, I’ll go check”.  She went to the sink and started the tap.  She came back and assured him that yes, she did have water. She hadn’t heard about the dam breaking. Mom and I decided we should go and get her.  We were met with a roadblock at the town’s edge.  A policeman did not want us to pass.  We told him we were going to retrieve a family member and he let us go.  Once we got downtown we noticed how eerily quiet it was.  The apartment was located on a narrow street with tall buildings on both sides.  At the end you could see Main Street. I kept expecting to see a rush of water careen past.  I was very scared. We picked up Brian’s wife and headed back to the farm.  I still can’t get over how quiet the town was.  It was spooky.  At the house a few of us worked doing what we could emptying our basement.  The town was between us and the dam, so we knew we had a little time.  As long as the water hadn’t reached town yet we were okay to stay and work.  Finally my Mom packed up a few of us and some food and water and drove onto the hill.  From here we could see the flood coming.  It was huge!  Miles and miles of water everywhere in the distance and it was headed our way.  My dad stayed at the farm and monitored the irrigation ditch that ran past the farm.  The water was barely contained in it and kept sprouting leaks which my Dad and brothers would immediately fill.  One neighbor showed up with a back-hoe and was going to tear down our side of the canal bank. His thought was that it would divert the water from his side.  There was a heated discussion and the canal bank was left intact.  After quite some time it was decided that we would be safe if we went back home.  I remember sleeping on the floor of the main level of the house.  My Dad stayed up all night watching the ditch bank.  The water peaked at about 2 in the morning and then started to subside.  In the morning the danger was gone and we were not flooded.  How ironic that when thousands of people in our town had flooded basements, ours was dry!

The aftermath of the flood affected everyone, though.  If you lived in the area, you were a flood victim. Marshall law was instated, no one could leave or enter the area. After a few days the phone company finally set up 2 phones on a corner where everyone waited in line to let family outside of the area know what had happened. The flood water had washed through a fertilizer plant and left traces of chemical blanketed everywhere.  Soon the entire town had, what was affectionately “the dam flood cough”. The National Guard came in and helped, as did busloads of people from everywhere!  I’ll never forget the sight of helicopters hauling away dead bloated cows.  It was a common sight for days.  The people in my town worked hard and banded together.  Neighbor helped neighbor.  In what was actually a fairly short time houses were demolished and rebuilt, businesses were reopened, and life went on.  I think our town is actually better for having gone through this. It was a refiner’s fire.  It brought out the best in most people. Everyone realized that “things” were not that important.  The only thing people really mourned for was the loss of photos and other irreplaceable momentos.  Humor still survived.  One radio announcer said that the baseball game at Smith Park was cancelled due to the house on first base.  This type of good humor was common as we all realized how much worse it could have been. 

So, if I grouse a bit at my little trials in life I need to just thank my lucky stars that the “dam cough” went away, my bedroom is now on ground level, and there’s no “house on first base” in my game of life.