Gurgle, Gurgle, Gurgle:
“Down by the water; Down by the old main drag” …………………………………………………………………………… The Decmberists
“ HISTORIC and CATASTROPHIC”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Vermont Seven Days weekly
It’s a Hard…. It’s a Hard…It’s a Hard…………” ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. Bob Dylan
See the sky about to rain. Broken clouds of rain. Locomotive pull the train. Music flowing through my brain………………….
Well, you know, I’m not going to try and fully capture the Great Flood, because, Hell, it’s been all over the NY Times and NPR and even Fox News (so even ardent climate deniers are going to have to ponder this one, along with the Canadian smoke-fest and the 92 degree ocean water in Florida……do we have a theme yet, or are we just really bad and getting our spiritual due)….you have all heard the trauma and seen the pictures. Suffice it to say…..Wow…who’d have thought our little stream would look like a class four whitewater raft rapids….but it did….we survived…we are well….there is a lot of helping going on and community spirit is abundant……
Now, onto the news of the weird……
When we left off last week, we had played hooky from Tim fest on Saturday and gone fishin’ more or less. So- dutifully headed over Sunday noon for day two only to find out a day late , dollar short…apparently it was only a two day except in Tim’s mind months ago and on the yenta land of Facebook…..so it was just us and the hungover stray travelers from hither and yon….which turned out to be the best group of impromptu musicians I have ever played with…sat in a circle for two hour playing feminist revolt songs (did I mention they were almost all women and all played in all-women bands from whence they came?)…..one of those moments you come across in blue moon for no apparent reason that are reassuring…..and in this case, clearly the calm before the storm…..
So, Monday it was driving rain for 24 hours, on top of an already dangerously high water table…wham, bam, thank you mam…. best new: state EMS were heroes this time and not a single person passed from the destruction….
When the dust settled on Tuesday and it the sun also rose, we set out to survey and offer help, eventually trekking down the just cleared road to Rutland to shop…..and encountered the Bizarro world that is mountain living, where Rutland seemed totally untouched, whilst villages around us had floated away….BIZ as usual….did manage to survive the throngs at the only Home Depot within a day’s ride to shop for a new fridge of all things…as TQ has divined ours is finally on the brink and that my pinpoint hammer shots will soon no longer restart the beast …such a worrier……after we decided on a fridge and went back to buy it, we came and decided to measure and found we can now not get it past our pantry opening sine we have our new counter tops, so it will have to come in thru the back 40 and up rickety steps…..which we have decided we will surprise the delivery men with and make their day with an exciting challenge to interrupt their boredom……..
Have I mentioned THE POND……WOW…it doth overflow……?
On way home from Rutland, my pent up emery required exhausting, so had TQ drop me 2 miles from home to jog back, which proved illuminating as Rt. 103 had fallen into the river in several places….and had me tiptoeing for fear of joining it…I mean it just fell in six foot wide sections….holy buckets……got home in time to find the Walrus Dumpmaster courting TQ and very disappointed at my jogging appearance up the trail…another lost opportunity….
Since he only place we could get to and had anything to offer was Rutland, made it down three straight days….Thursday was massive grocery shop, the depot, drug store and the Mart…….all on post chiropractic appointment…..at which I discover that in the general prevailing chaos I had left with no money, no wallet, NADA….so brazenly borrowed a hundred bucks cash money from the doc and dared myself to get everything on the lists or$100 or finagle credit…amazingly, got it all with my 100 and came back with mad money…and became one of those people, for first time ever, to feed cash into self-checkout machines….I always wondered who did that and felt a bit judgmental about it…..but no, I be them……
After two days of dry, was able to get Lucy and me out for dirt road walk to our usual go to nearby, and met The Raker, a 75 year old ZZ top wannabe gent who was out raking dirt up and down road in front of his house…..and who I mistakenly nodded to and aske of his health…..staggered away 45 minutes later having heard the entire family history and the chronology of many wins and losses in his battles with the evil empire ..and he raked the whole time…..
Been working on keeping carbs down, but TQ shows up with the weekly bread from Siri (not that one) which is this dense mélange of fine earthen flours…… And I instinctively drift into Carbland….bring me more, bring me more…..
Friday, we had to go to Dartmouth for a scan…and spent hours trying to figure out how we could get there around myriads of washouts …even WAYS was off and not keeping up…..managed to find a route through the Greens and arrived at med complex that is probably larger than Vatican City…..what a joint…kind of looks like the Mall of the Americas….the drive up was illuminating…..man oh man…..the destruction water can make…capped off a 16 hour fast with a trip to the Vietnamese sandwich shop for Banh-Mi haven……..
Yesterday we joined the Miller clan and spent much of the day looking for opps to be do-gooders……did not find may in all our Mount H. stops, but heard a lot of tales of woes and watched mountain men openly cry…..but found our groove down in the utterly devastated Ludlow, where stores floated away and the streets are surrounded by 30 foot piles of dirt and gravel in every discretion……got to fill up sandbags for hours at the fire dept. (did you ever wonder from whence sandbags came? And then cleared out the town trailer park of mounds of debris……volunteers everywhere…….great bonhomie…and got free barbeque lurch from food truck for our labors…
Came home and passed out to get up and do it again, Amen…..but looking like another bad rain day today so everyone is prepping worst if we get more than the barely receding waters can handle…so far, so good……doing my anti-rain dance……
Say a prayer for Owen Meany-and love to ya’ll,
Stu
