This is the road I take almost every weekday morning when I’m heading home after the radio station. It’s Wood Road, and if you follow it south all the way into Kenosha it becomes 30th Avenue, the street on which WGTD is located. Yesterday morning, this little stretch of Wood Road (just before the county line) became Wood Lake, and it was a sobering sight as I came upon it in my little Honda Civic. I knew we had suffered some torrential rains and that flooding had occurred, but I wasn’t expecting the flooding to be quite so close to home. I guess I should have realized how bad it was when an email went out yesterday morning from Carthage, instructing people to move their automobiles out of the lower parking lot and to park up on Campus Drive- which is usually a cardinal offense right above Grand Larceny. But the powers that be were genuinely afraid that the Pike River would completely overflow its banks and totally flood our lower lot. That didn’t quite happen but there was some flooding- and Carthage’s baseball diamond remains under water. And the forecast- More Rain tonight.
I’m one of those people that actually likes rain- and even storms (which terrified me as a youngster.) And I also think that I have that condition where weather can really affect my moods- but its drought that depresses me, not long rainy spells. Terrible drought just seems like such a lifeless state, while Rain at least means Water – and Water means Life. But of course, too much water in the wrong places can mean destruction and even death. I think over the years I have made a common mistake of failing to appreciate the damage of floods. When you see pictures of flooding, it’s often from the air- and it can often look very peaceful and even beautiful. It takes a bit of added effort to really process what those images truly convey- to picture the inside of that house that has water up to its window sills or even higher. The other night when it was raining so heavily, I kept going to the top of our basement stairs, wanting to hear the reassuring hum of our sump pump doing its thing. And as I let my imagination start to run wild, as I tend to do, I pictured water coming in and Kathy and I running around frantically, grabbing everything valuable off of the floor and trying to find safe places for them. If you knew how much stuff is in our basement, and how much of it is on the floor, you would understand why that vision was a truly terrifying one. Thankfully, we were spared that. We know a lot of other people were not.
So if tonight’s torrential rains come as they are predicted, I will be leading you in a chorus of “rain, rain, go away. Come again another day” to be followed by “Let the Sunshine In.” Make sure you’re in good voice.