Yesterday was my first opportunity to see with my own eyes the flooding in Racine just below Holy Communion.  I knew things were bad because much of that neighborhood was actually evacuated and Lutheran High School underwent extensive sand-bagging to prevent serious damage to the structure.  (I’m not sure to what extent those efforts made any sort of significant difference for the better.  I hope they did.)  By the time I came around yesterday,  the waters had receded quite a lot although a portion of Spring Street – one of the main east-west streets in Racine – was still completely covered by water at one point and completely impassable. But the front end of the park where Dave Krueger and I play tennis looked almost normal- with the street and the sidewalk beside it bone dry.  (The river, right there,  was really high but basically within its banks.)   But as I rounded the first curve in the park,  I realized that the sidewalk I was walking on (really a bike trail more than anything) was about to head straight into the river – my first clue that the river in fact was not within its banks at all.  And as I looked ahead, I saw that the baseball diamond, tennis courts and picnic area were all underwater – and not just covered over by placid, lake-like waters.  The Root River was actually flowing over all of this – rushing water where last week Dave Krueger and I played a spirited tennis match.   It was really hard to get my head around what I was seeing and even now, looking at the photographs, it still seems somewhat surreal.   (And every so often,  you would see on top of the rushing current a family of ducks swimming.  What must all of this feel like to them?  Maybe like heaven on earth, in some ways.)  I was actually able to make my way into the picnic shelter which was now, in a sense, right on the bank of this swollen river – whereas once upon a time a baseball diamond and a walking trail stood between it and the river.   I could have stepped right off of the porch area and right into the river, if I had been so inclined – which, of course,  I was not.  (The water was the color of apple cider and I don’t think would have been nearly so tasty to drink.)  There were maybe five or six people in the park at the time,  looking things over with I’m sure the same sense of wonderment and bewilderment that I was feeling.

It was walking back out of the park that I noticed for the first time, through the trees,  the homes that are on the east bank of the east channel of the Root River.  (The river is in two channels at this point in the city – with Highland Park lying between them.)   There were sandbags in front of all of them – sandbags which I doubt were sufficient for the task at hand – and the sound of pumps removing water from all of those basements.  And there were people standing there with very tired expressions on their faces… feeling so depleted, I’m sure, from all with which they have to contend.  At that point,  I felt truly embarrassed to be strolling through the park as an interested gawker,  camera in hand, curious to see if my favorite tennis courts were in fact underwater.   For me, this had been an amazing spectacle.  For these people, in a relatively poor but rebounding neighborhood, this was and remains a catastrophe.

I truly hope that they didn’t see me.  And I will think twice before I do anymore gawking without at least trying to help as well.  At least those are my impressive-sounding sentiments right now.

pictured:  the tennis courts where Dave Krueger and I play tennis in the summer.  Just to reiterate- the water you see in this picture was flowing water, not standing water.  That’s what haunts me about this scene more than anything.  Flowing water means that there’s more coming all the time.