Swan Dive

On Saturday, May 1st and Sunday, May 2nd, Nashville had a record two-day rainfall of 13.5 inches. The previous two-day record had been less than half that. It was an ugly storm, with a sickly green gray sky whipping down hard sheets of rain.

At 8:26 am on Sunday, my girlfriend and I were in my condo watching the TV special reports, when we heard a loud explosion and the power went out. A few minutes later, I heard the trickling of water in the kitchen. We have a flat roof at the condo, and fairly new drains, but there was no way they could handle the volume of water pooling up on the roof. As the old song says: Something’s gotta give.

The water was streaming down the vent above my oven hood. Thinking fast, Helen rigged up a kind of Rube Goldberg-esque device, made from duct tape water slides, glass casserole dishes and colored drinking straw siphons. Over the next few hours, as the rain kept coming, we must’ve emptied thirty gallons of water from those dishes. Water that would’ve ruined my cabinets and walls.

Outside, our backyard became a river. The current carried huge branches, flower pots, deck chairs, and at the height of its power, it lifted our dumpster, which was full of garbage, and sailed it right into a nearby tree. It was an awful and amazing thing to behold.

Our basement, which holds storage units for thirty-two units, along with washers and dryers, flooded with four feet of water. The condo was without electricity for eight days, and we’re still without hot water. Relative to the folks in town who lost their entire homes, I know that I’m fortunate. But nevertheless, the cost to clean-up and restore the condo is going to be huge. We’re on a flood plain, so we have flood insurance, with a fairly low deductible. But the insurance won’t cover damage to the grounds, pavement, etc. I’m told we’re applying for a FEMA loan.

I lost pretty much everything in my storage unit. While there was nothing of great monetary value, there were items of great sentimental value that can never be replaced. Among them:

Twenty years of personal journals and songwriting notebooks
My original Sterling Huck letters and responses
Letters and postcards from friends
Photographs from my early years in Nashville
My only complete set of Performing Songwriter magazines, which represents ten years of my working life

I’m trying not to dwell on the loss. In some weird way, it’s kind of liberating not to have all that ballast down below my condo. And there’s nothing I can really do about it now either way. Onward and upward. And hopefully dryward.