Learning to Survive

Of the ten Georgia deaths during the September flood,
most could have been prevented.

People who thought water on the road not too deep
to drive through were swept into a creek or river
where the automobile was quickly submerged. Drivers
did not know to lower the windows before the vehicle
sank and while the engine was still running. Nor did
some know a door can be opened after the auto fills
with water so that the pressure on either side is equal.

And they failed to understand the nature of floods or
they wouldn't have entered the water in the first place.

Surviving drivers usually exclaim something about how
the water didn't look that deep, "It wasn't up to the
guard rail", or, "Just a couple feet, I thought I could
make it." This is not standing water. There are strong
undercurrents.A couple of feet of water moving
across a paved parking lot turned an empty school bus
on its side.

Two boys tried to swim to an partly-submerged car
thinking its occupants in danger. One boy was
rescued by a firefighter, the other was swept away,
his body recovered much later. He was 14. There
was no one in the car.

During the 1990 flood, five years before that boy was
born, a man aged 42 drowned under the same
circumstances: he tried to swim to an automobile that
had been abandoned in the same flooded field near
Trion.

Most of the Georgia deaths occurred in the Atlanta area.
There were reports of a hundred-year flood in parts of the
area, and of a five-hundred-year flood in other parts. There
was also speculation that this flood was so much worse than
previous floods because of the proliferation of new housing
developments and other construction, not only near Atlanta
but throughout the neighboring counties. Where once were
fields of permeable ground there now are seas of roofs and
mile after mile of pavement.

The changing landscape has affected people's lives in many
ways. Perhaps one effect has been to distance us from the
natural world. There is a wealth of information about self
defense against muggers and swindlers and other varieties
of criminals, and perhaps not enough about surviving the
raging elements. Maybe we should be made more aware
of that aspect of nature which is "red in tooth and claw".

Don't Rescue Me

The creek thundered and crashed along, 8 or 9 feet
deep in places, foamed and spewed into the air as it
slapped against the trees several feet from its banks.
Muddy brown water swirled around my house and
across my yard all the way to the road and over the
road for part of one day, and water covered the pasture
to the side and back of me. Water rushed across the yard
toward the creek.

This was my tenth flood, and the biggest. Once a year,
usually in February. The water would spread over the yard,
two to three feet deep, but stop short of the highest part
near the road where I could park my van and keep it safe.
The flood would last all day, but toward evening the rain
would end and within a surprisingly short time the yard
would be drained, the creek again confined within its banks.
It was as if the plug were pulled, much as one might empty
the bathtub.

One year the creek flooded twice, in the fall when a
hurricane struck the Florida coast, and again in February
as usual. During the two years of drought there was no
flooding.

This September flood surprised me. Frequent and
prolonged rain for the past couple days had swollen the
creek so that it lunged along barely confined. All earth
around it was saturated. And then came the deluge.

I had parked near the road, moved buckets and yard
tools to the highest ground or the porch. During the night
the water reached the road and I went out to move the van,
planning to take it to a nearby house on a hill. I couldn't see
the edges of the culvert so I got back out of the van and
waded back and forth, probing with my stick to find the
drop-off to the ditch.

Walking back through the yard, water poured over the
tops of my calf-high rubber boots that had been adequate
in the previous floods. The boots made heavy with water
may have helped keep me on my feet, for the water was
swift, the current pulling at my legs, tugging my stick away
each time I lifted it.I believe if I had fallen I would have
been swept into the creek.

The rain kept up all night, heavy at times. I kept monitoring
the distance between the water and the porch floors. I didn't
believe it would come in the house, it never had, not even
during the hundred-year flood of 1990 that flooded the
Trion school and the cotton mill.

There was only a slow drizzle by early morning. It was
exciting to sit on the porch as if I were on a ship in the midst
of a rolling sea, watching cars come down the road at their
usual speed, then abruptly slow when they hit the water,
v-shaped plumes of water shooting high on either side.

One woman stopped and made frantic gestures toward me. I
thought she was having car trouble, but she pulled away and
went on. I was told later it was she who called 911. They
sent the Rescue Unit.

A fire truck loaded with men wearing hip boots. There were
300 cots set up in a church for the refugees from the
Frogtown section of Trion which was inundated when the
Chattooga River breached the levee. I thanked them and
they moved on. I could have used a pair of the hip boots.

My middle son called several times that day from the Atlanta
area where water was over the interstate, thousands of
houses flooded, some with the lower storeys filled, bridges
out, pavement ripped up, roads closed. His own home safe
on high ground, he was urging me to get out. I was staying
put. A day off, an exciting view, plenty of food and coffee
in the house.

John Muir once said we must learn the language of nature,
including the language of floods. I've learned the language of
this section of Cane Creek. I've walked its banks when they
were brimming full and listened to the music of the normal
flow, watched it when it was barely a trickle and, during two
summers of drought, walked for miles along its dry bed. I've
traced it on the map, from Tennessee to the Chattooga River
where it added its waters to the flooding of Frogtown.

I read accounts of the 1990 flood which came right after this
house was built, and I interviewed people who witnessed that
flood. The builder told me the water reached the edge of the
front porch. It was about six inches short of the edge this time.

The creek started flooding Sunday night. The rain stopped
during the day on Monday and by Monday evening the
water had drained away and I went to bring my van back
home.

Buckie with Valerie, my granddaughter

I've learned from past experience not to mention to most
people that my dog has died. Eight out of ten of them
would say, with little feeling, "Oh, that's too bad." And
then, inevitably, "I know where you can get another
dog.." Or, "Have you been to the shelter? They're
advertising all the time..."

And I feel like replying, "Say, that good friend of
yours that died? Not to worry. I'll help you find
another. Let's go to the mall. Lots of people walking
around there. We'll get one of them to be your friend."

Those who have had great relationships with dogs
know better. They know that dogs are not
interchangeable.

A former neighbor used to irritate me by saying she
was a dog lover and so was I.

I don't love all dogs anymore than I love all humans. I
care about their welfare, like being around most of
them, and have dearly loved two in my lifetime.

Yesterday I thought about planting something to cover
the bare ground where I dug Buckie's grave. I'd like a
blanket of roses, but they require sun and the grave is
shaded by trees near the creek where he splashed and
played, and where he went to drink first thing every
morning.

Paging through some catalogues, I found the perfect
plant: a kerria. This shrub, with its small fluffy
yellow blooms, has been around a long time. I've
heard it called a kitchen rose. It was described in
the catalogue as tolerating part sun but preferring shade.
Now I have to see if I can find one locally. The one in
the catalogue has double blooms, but I'd just as soon
have the old fashioned kind.

Not only do I want something to cover the bare ground,
but I keep thinking an attractive bush might ensure that his
grave remains undisturbed. I won't be here so very much
longer myself, and I don't want any subsequent owners
digging in that spot.

Writer's Block Road Block

The ordinary crises of daily life have kept me from
writing for this blog. And more. Getting a building
erected and moving about 8,000 books and pieces of
ephemera into it, a process still going on, along with
a winnowing of the books and bits because the building
from which they are being moved is about four times the
size of their destination. And more.

Three members of my family have died this year, most
recently the dog that has shared my life for a bit
more than thirteen years. And only those whose lives
have been as interdependent with that of a dog or cat
will understand when I say that my heart was pierced
more severely by his loss than by the loss of either
of my relatives. For I had contact with them only
occasionally, but Buckie was with me every day, greeted
me each morning and evening, rode along in the van with
me most of the time, and slept beside my bed each night.
I've had one other dog and one cat that I dearly loved,
and several that I liked a lot, but Buckie was the most
wonderful dog I have ever known. He leaves a big hole in
my life. All around me now are echoes of his absence.

Closet Southerners Tweeting Away

I'd barely gotten used to the cellphone tweeters when I
heard about twittering.

Getting used to them doesn't mean I've become more
tolerant, just that I don't look around when a stranger
barks out "Hello!" near me. I still wish I didn't have to
hear all the details of people's lives. Do they have to
talk so loud, are they afraid their phone won't actually
carry their words to the person on the other phone?

"Oh, nothing much.
I'm sitting here in the dentist's office.
What?
Mary's here.
Mary's right here with me.
What have you been doing?"

I knew that many were texting to one another when
they were not communicating verbally, now they can
also report their progress through life to the whole
world by twitting.

"I had dinner at Uncle Fred's then
drove to the park, saw Robert standing in
his yard and waved to him..."

My old dog ties me down, he needs a lot of
attention. I haven't been north in a few years, so I was
thinking that the cellphone talk I hear was particularly
Southern, this compulsion to report with endless
detail, and to inform. That was the atmosphere in
which I grew up. They noticed everything. They knew
where you were and where you had been and many
of the things you did or said while you were there.
There was no privacy.

Then I heard about twittering and looked at it and now
it's clear to me. There's a bunch of closet Southerners
out there typing away on their little keypads.

I bet when I do get to go north again or if I head west
and find myself among people talking on cellphones
that I'll feel right at home.

New Year's Traditions

I had forgotten about the traditional New Year's dinner
until I saw the grocery ads at the end of December.

My folks never forgot. Every January first there were
bowls of turnip greens and black eyed peas and a
platter of hog jowl on the table.

The greens were supposed to represent bills, the peas
coins, and the meal an assurance of good luck all the
year, as one of the grandmothers would remind us.
If Grandma Brewer was there, she and Daddy kept
urging one another to another helping, joking about
how rich they would become if only they could eat
enough greens and peas. Grandma's chin would be
shiny with grease from the fat meat. Grandma Jones
would even laugh and comment on how much the
others were eating, and she would put a little more
on her own plate than usual.

Nobody paid any attention to me, they knew I would
be picking at the food. The greens weren't bad with a
dash of vinegar from the bottled hot pepper and there
was cornbread with a bit of margarine, but the peas
were cooked until the water they were cooked in was
thick as brown gravy. The little slab of fat meat- they
couldn't afford a large piece- had been cooked in the
peas so it was also as brown as the pea stock and it
quivered when anyone walked across the floor. Even
if I believed that it meant good luck, I couldn't bring
myself to touch it.

And I didn't believe. Every year the same ritual with
the peas, the greens, the jowl, and every year there
were months when the rent wasn't paid, the many
breakfasts that consisted only of biscuits and margarine,
the school lunch times when I would work at my desk
while the other children ate.

I don't think they really believed in the magic of peas
and jowl, either, but my grandmothers had always had
the special New Year's dinner and my parents carried
on the tradition. Traditions are comforting, and who
knows? maybe this year would be better. I think it was
a ritual not of belief, but of hope.

The Blago Book Club

The Chicago Sun-Times "opinion writers", under the
heading of "Blago Book Club", are having a discussion
with readers of the 78 page indictment of Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich. What did you like best
about it? Which part is most interesting?

in a related matter, Barack Obama's senate seat is for
sale on eBay, not by the Illinois Governor, who was
doing his best to auction it off, but by a college student
who will send the winner a before-and-after picture of
the supposed seat and by a pair of young men pictured
holding the "seat" aloft and promising a free domain
name to the winner.

Blagojevich is probably kicking himself for not having
thought of eBay, he must have forgotten Sarah Palin's
example. Too bad there isn't a Nobel Prize for
corruption. Blagojevich would surely win it this year.
He has even shocked the citizens of Chicago, that city
where offices and whole wards have been for sale,
where the dead rise from the graveyards and march
to the polls.

But one Chicago woman, after reading about
Blagojevich said: "We might as well open up the
jail house and turn those people out to run the
government.