Addressing the Day!

1/3/2019

It is starting out to be a difficult day to get done what I must get done. The rain continues, of course, and the first item on the agenda is to haul something in the truck. It won’t get harmed by the rain, but I fear, I will. Grr. Oh well, I guess I’ve been wet before. Others, more native to the area than I, say 2018 was the wettest year they can remember, especially the last half of it. Don’t know much about weather, but under northern conditions we sure would have already had record snowfalls for the Winter—and Winter just started. 

Does this sound grouchy? Kinda does. Sorry. Often, when my day starts like this, I take myself back to some miserable days in my past and then this one doesn’t seem so bad. Take the time, about 4 years after we had built the church building in Texas. a torrential rain hit the area about 5am and for an hour or so, gave us about 3.5-4.0inches of rain, then stopped. Our drive for the parking lot of the church circled back close to the building at one point, the low point of the drive. The level of the drive was about 4 inches lower than the extreme porch corner of the building and ran very close to it. 

When daylight came, I took a look at the corner, and silt had come down the hill and settled somewhat in that low spot, an area maybe 10ft. wide and 8ft. long, headed down the drive. But hardly any water on the drive, and it had stopped raining, so I went to the coffee shop at about 7am—the sun was shining. Five minutes or so after I got my coffee, it began to rain again. Not paying any attention to how hard, I visited with the gang, laughed, drank more coffee and had a good morning. At about 8am, my son called me and said, “Dad, I was leaving for work and noticed the drive, I’m standing in your office looking out at it and I think you better get here quick or you’re going to have water in the church. I have to leave or I’d help!” 

So I ran out in the pouring rain, got in the car, turned on local radio which always warned of flash flooding—not unusual in the area. They said another 5 inches of rain had fallen between 7:10am and 7:50am!! 5 inches in 40 minutes!? Good grief! I got home, got my big square bottom shovel (almost like a small scoop) and went to that low corner. The previous low pile of now packed silt was about 8inches high in that 10×8 area I mentioned, which formed a dam across the drive and there was water backed up and making its way around that dam, flowing rapidly straight at the corner of the building!

I began to push through the silt—took me about an hour as it continued to rain, just to redirect the water away from the building. Another 3 hours or so to clear the silt off the pavement. Hard work with a big shovel and heavy, water-laden silt & rocks. Bad morning. Another reminder of being thankful to now live on top of a mountain, don’tcha know.

Incidentally, every time it rained after that, I had to be sure and as quickly as possible shovel the silt off that spot in the circle drive. Also, I went up the hill to where the silt came from, re-directed as much runoff as I could, but torrential rains brought it anyway. (When the building was being built, I paid an engineer $400 to tell me the downhill flow plan was fine, wouldn’t be any problem with water flow—sheesh!)

8 inches of rain that day. Many Texans in the area used to say, “We get 28-29inches of rain every year, and we enjoy both days!” As you might imagine, there are other flooding stories. We’ve been through some floods, could write a book. Perhaps I am.

The SIMH this morning was Nat King Cole singing “The Greatest Thing You’ve ever learned, is just to love and be loved in return.” The name of that is Nature Boy. Written as a poem by Eden Ahbez. Beautiful song, not the greatest thing you’ll ever learn, but as to this world, a great principal upon which to build a community around you.

Thanks for reading, the Elder