August 4th. . .in which when it rained, did it pour.

What a difference a year makes. . .

            Emile Zola once wrote a miserable little story called “The Flood” in which a man’s entire extended family drown in a flood. Personally, I thought some of the family members seemed awfully anxious to throw themselves into the flood waters – before (so it seemed to me) it was strictly necessary to do so - but what do I know?

            As it turns out, rather more than the average person. It was on this day one year ago when a raging flood largely destroyed my childhood home, and much of the rest of the neighbourhood. I did not lose any family members – mine, being rather more patient than Zola’s – but lost a great deal else.

           It was a very warm Sunday I remember. I had spent a larger part of the afternoon vacuuming the floors of my abode, having grown weary of the thick layers of dust that had settled there. I had rewarded completion of this onerous task with a leisurely game of Tripple A. I am aware there were a great many more sensible things I could have done with my time, but there you have it.

            It started to rain. Heavily. I took no notice.  But then a puddle started gathering in the back yard, and the rain kept falling and the puddle kept growing and some of us began to go “hmmm”.

            The memory gets a little hazy here. I think it was my brother who came in and said “you gotta see this.” I took off my shirt, not wanting it to get wet (and being perhaps more than a little vain), and followed him out into the pouring rain, to the creek about two doors down from the house, where some neighbours had gathered at the bridge. I dropped my jaw on my toes at this point and pinched myself for good measure. The waters had risen up the very edge of the bridge and were threatening to wash over it. This was a good ten feet above their normal level. I had never in my life seen them rise that high.

            I started taking things upstairs, expecting some leakage, but not much more than a damaged carpet. Electronics, like my laptop. My bass amp. Books off the bottom shelf. Precautionary measures, but no real panic. Then, the puddle in the back yard turned into a pool, and then the back yard itself turned into a pool. And the water kept coming.

           

            Again, memory grows hazy. The street was now a river, the water now rising up over people’s lawns and up to their front doors. At some point I stripped down to my underwear and swam out to check on the elderly neighbours. They were fine, if a little disconcerted by a half-naked neighbour appearing on their doorstep. Then it was back downstairs to save what I could before the water got in.

           

            

 

Footage courtesy of Brother Mike

Quick: all your worldly possessions are collected in one room, you have ten minutes to take what you can out of the room, after which every thing else gets trashed, starting . . . now!

           

            What do you take?

            I snatched up all my writings, my short stories and drafts. My journals, my tax-documents, my Doctor Who autographs and passports. My clippings from Ryerson. My stuffed toys, whom I’ve had from infancy, picture books I knew I couldn’t replace. . . All the while, my brother was applying duct tape to the windows to try and buy us time. We struggled to unplug Dad’s Marantz amplifier from the wall, a ten-ton behemoth he bought forty years ago, his pride and joy and our (we hoped) our inheritance. I couldn’t reach the friggin’ plugs. Then the windows above burst, and the water rushed in like a veritable Niagara, swallowing up the Marantz, and just about everything else in the room. Dave looked at me and I looked at him, and the realization hung telepathically in the air:    

            Give it up guys; you’ve lost.

            Even then I was able to snatch up some of my vinyl from beneath the cascade. I was walking around ankle deep (and rising!) in water, painfully aware off all the power bars and electrical outlets My bed started floating like from Winnie-the-Pooh, and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

            During this time they’d somehow managed to clear out the garage and get his car in away from the tides. Dad managed to shut off the power with a broom-stick. And just when I’m ready to stop and take a breath, Dave calls me over to the kitchen door. “Look at this,” he says.

            The water had risen past the ceiling, and all the way up to the head of the stairs. I could see bits of my books floating in a dark pool of stinky now-sewage tinged muck. The little basement study where I’d probably spent most of my life was now submerged under a cess-pool.

            “Close the door.” I said. What else could I say? When all else fails. . .

            I had just shut the door on my past. 

            I sat down on the couch and realized I was still in my underwear; in my haste, I hadn’t brought up any clothes. I didn’t even have the clothes on my back anymore. Just my Dark Side of the Moon Boxer shorts.

            I don’t much remember the rest of the evening. I think we cracked open a beer. What else could we do?