← Columns

The Great Flood

The Source

Sociologists and historians agree…..a society needs a common folklore. When you say that he could chop wood like Paul Bunyan, plant trees like Johnny Appleseed, or you refer to someone as Chicken Little, your audience needs to understand the myth or half-myth to which you’re referring. I once mentioned the TV western Bonanza to a group of 7th-graders and most were clueless…we lacked a common vocabulary. So it gives some small ray of joy to go through something like the recent flooding. Local historians can tell you that people in the latter part of the 19th century could mark their birth as “before the big freeze” of 1836 or “after.” The folks who could remember when they heard about Pearl Harbor are slowly replaced by those who remember the announcement of JFK’s assassination and they are being supplanted by a generation that remembers neither. It’s nice to have a common bond, albeit tragic, with our neighbors. Tales of the Great Flood of 2011 are beginning to seep out of the barber shops, hair solons, and coffee shops, and as with all folklore, the tales expand a bit with the addition of a bit of water….or coffee…or a Bud Lite. A old fellow in Beardstown once told me that during one of that town’s big floods he actually saw a neighbor of his floating down the Illinois River on the back of his Holstein cow. He said the fellow waved as he passed by and he could swear he saw the fellow eating a sandwich. Although the Jacksonville flood stories haven’t reached that hyperbolic proportion, it’s simply a matter of time. My brother hatched a plan to rent a hotel room in South Jacksonville for ninety bucks, rent out shower time for ten dollars a pop, and simply stand there providing fresh towels while raking in the dough. He didn’t say anything about group discounts for those wishing to shower together, but in hard times we can compromise. One prominent Jacksonvillian was a bit flummoxed by the dire warnings accompanying water usage and the boil order. He told me, “Our family lives just west of town and we’ve been using that so-called ‘dangerous water’ from Naples for about twenty years. Nobody told me we were dying from it.” He added, “Sometimes there’s a little sediment at the bottom of your glass, but you just skip drinking that part.” I’m sure that all of us have had a grandpa or grandma who drank untreated well water and lived to the ripe old age of 95 when the “bad water” finally killed them. Another J’ville family came up with the “new” old idea of putting out a rain barrel. God only knows that was one source of water that was still plentiful. Several resorted to the “Navy shower.” Wet yourself (well, you know what I mean), shut off water, soap up, rinse off. This is said to use just one-fourth the normal quantity of water and at least in the Navy the failure to do this resulted in a shower using Bilgewater. Word has it that the out of town laundromats did a booming business. One lady told me, “I change socks twice a day in the summertime. When you have to haul your socks to Waverly you just change them once.” Another friend said, “I really had no idea how much water it took to wash myself when I was taking a shower. In fact, I still don’t. But when you are bathing out of a bucket you not only gain a fresh appreciation for clean, running water, but you know exactly how much it takes.” Which put me in mind of hearing old timers talk about the irritation of being the youngest in the family…the one who could take his bath only after the others had spent their time in the tub. Okay, I live in Arenzville where those who have indoor plumbing had no problems with a shortage of water, but I did get tickled to travel into town and eat and what’s perhaps the town’s fanciest restaurant….off paper plates. So despite our recent woes, we at least gained a common bag of stories which we are now entitled to stretch, bend, inflate, and out-right lie about to anyone born “after the flood of 2011.” Perhaps the most salient tale from the great flood came from my brother again. While the town was floundering around in too much water, his son Doug was leading a youth group on a mission trip to Rwanda where he and his kids spent two weeks ministering to AIDS patients and seeing to the needs of a refugee camp. From his Facebook page: “They spent a day assisting folks in a village carry water a couple of miles uphill. I think I can handle a boil order for a few days.”