Last Tuesday dawned
cold as ever, with snow all over the ground; but the birds were singing their
courting songs, regardless. The little male sparrows strut along in front
of the females with their tail feathers sticking up and spread out, quite as if
they’re related to wild turkeys. 😄 So funny to watch.
I wonder
how much money Wal-Mart loses when they ship me things? Sometimes they
split a large order five ways or more: a
small tube of lip balm arrives in the U.S. Mail, while another one arrives via
FedEx in a large box also containing two or three heavy jugs of juice – and a
box of cereal. Guess what the box of cereal looks like.
I worked
on the Stars table runner most of the day, and finished the top late that
night.
I got
about 75% of the paper picked off the back of it (I paper-pieced it) before I ran
out of steam.
I like quilting
and sewing at night. It’s quiet, the phone
doesn’t ring (or if it does, my heart pounds violently), and I can just
go happily about my own business without interruption (unless one of the cats
throws up 😝). (Teensy hardly ever throws up anymore, since he’s
been on medication for hyperthyroidism.)
Wednesday, I went back
to quilting the New York Beauty quilt.
Would Larry’s fix-it job of the previous week hold? He was
hoping... I was hoping... the cats were hoping...
Everything worked perfectly. I quilted until time for church, and I
quilted again after we got home and ate a late supper. Some time in the early morning hours, I made
it to the middle, the center of the quilt!
There were just a few more triangles to quilt, and I’d be rolling the
quilt forward and starting on the second half.
More pictures here.
A friend asked, “Are you still enjoying the process, or anxious to get
finished?”
“Both!” I replied.
“I enjoy it as it goes along... and I’m anxious to finish.”
There are so many
other quilts I need to make, so many other things I want to do! 😊 I keep wondering if
I’m going to have trouble putting on all those pearls... getting them in the
right places, sewing through the lace, while not sewing all the way
through to the back.
Thursday,
after a day of rain and warming temperatures, there was flooding all over the
state from snow and ice melt, ice jams in the rivers and creeks, and more rain. Many people were stranded, especially in
rural homes, but the 60 mph winds kept the National Guard from getting to some
of them. There was garbage strewn all
over our yard, as the trash collectors had been unable to get to our house, and
the wind had blown the can over.
Hester sent a video
of Keira, who’s saying a lot of words and imitating a lot of sounds (and tunes)
lately. Hester sings-songs, “♫ ♪
Dum-dum-dum ♪ ♫ Dum-dum ♫♪ ” — and Keira, after listening intently, sang, ♫ ♪
Dum-dum-dum ♪ ♫ Dum-dum ♫♪
She imitated the upswing-then-downswing of the ‘melody’, got the consonants
and syllables right, and even had the same rhythm, funny little copycat. 😄
There was even a coda, doubtless a wee encore because her Mama grinned
at her.
Hester said, “The
happier she gets the higher her voice goes.”
I looked out the
window. The wind was now blowing at over
60 mph. The bird feeders should be taken down – but mah lovely locks were all
fixed purty, and ah din’t wanna git
all messed up. I got a notification that
Highway 81 had been closed to the north, where Shell Creek was flooding the
road. A man had gone missing in floodwaters in Norfolk.
Here are the usual
suspects who reside under the quilting table when I’m quilting away. They will only sleep in their Thermabeds in
the cold winter months. Therefore, they’ve been sleeping in them a lot
in the last few months.
While we coped with
the most severe flooding I’ve ever known in our area, a blizzard was raging in
the west, dropping a foot of snow in some locations. We started hearing
about bridges getting washed out, levees and dams failing, and roads and
railroad tracks being comprised by raging waters.
Larry helped
sandbag around Jeremy and Lydia’s beautiful, almost-finished home, and around
his nephew Nathan and wife Abbi’s newly remodeled home, just across the road
from Jeremy and Lydia. Nathan is a cousin to both Jeremy and Lydia.
The Loup River is not very far at all from their houses, and pastures next to
their properties had already turned into lakes, and the ditches between their
yards and the road were full of fast-moving water.
I went on quilting,
hoping that the big black locust tree outside my east window didn’t come
crashing in on me. One of these days, I’d better ask Jeremy to come with
his boom truck with the grappling hook and saw to take it down by about half.
It’s tall and spindly, as several branches have broken in years gone by.
As I was preparing
to start on a new section of the quilt that afternoon, the lights went out...
came back on... went out... came back on... and then went out and stayed out.
After a while, I
called our rural electric company, but both of their phone lines were out. Later, we saw that some big utility poles
that carry large transmission lines had gone down near the company’s offices,
so I imagine they had lost power about the same time we did.
I did the next
thing on my list of Things to Do When Things Go Wrong.
Y’all know what
that is, right? Right. I called
Larry.
He was soon coming
home, and he said he’d bring fuel for the generator, propane for the forced-air
heater, and we could go get a barrel of water later, if we needed it. We
have well water – but of course the pump runs on electricity.
The electricity
came back on in about 45 minutes. I let Larry, who wasn’t home yet, know
the crisis was over, and went back to quilting.
On radio and
Internet, they keep warning people to stay home, or to drive slowly, if they must
go out, because there is flash flooding from the broken dams and levees
upstream, and there could be more at any time – and they’ve run out of
barricades all over the state.
We learned that
earlier that morning a farmer had taken his big tractor to rescue some people
who were stranded by the flooding north of town. A bridge washed out as
he was going over it, and he was killed.
He was 50 years old.
Every time I got a
news update, more roads and bridges had been washed out. Towns all around
us were flooded and being evacuated. A small community of big, beautiful
homes on the other side of the highway from us, homes that are built around a
pretty lake near the Loup River, had been evacuated just before it was completely
cut off.
Larry and I went
out and drove around the countryside, then into town. The bridge over the
Loup was closed, and the water, carrying enormous ice blocks and large pieces
of debris, was gushing under the bridge with only inches to spare. Usually it’s a long, long ways down to the
sandy riverbed. The river was flowing a
good 3-4 miles wide; normally it’s no wider than a football field. (That’s
kind of a wild estimate; I’m really not good at guessing distances. I
know how wide it was flowing that day,
though, by where it was on the county roads.)
In town, we watched
as a National Guard helicopter that had landed in Pawnee Park unloaded rescued
people to waiting ambulances and other vehicles, probably warming them and
providing dry clothes before ferrying them to a shelter or one of the motels
just across the road. A drive through
the motel parking lots revealed that a good half of the vehicles in the lots were
from this very county, Platte.
We saw a newborn
calf in one muddy, waterlogged field. The pasture was far enough from the river that
it shouldn’t get flooded out, but that little calf seemed so cold and unsteady
on his feet, I really was quite worried about him. His mother lay nearby, not standing and
licking him off as cows usually do, and I was worried about her, too. But the farmhouse was only a few hundred feet
away, and we saw men in the barnyard, some getting in a pickup, others milling
around, doubtless heading out to check on their livestock soon.
Along Shady Lake
Road, a small herd of cattle was trapped on a knoll with rushing water all
around them. A feeder was still standing nearby – that thing must be
anchored deep the ground – and several cows were braving the cold, churning
water to stand in it and eat hay. Only parts of their backs were above
water. Larry said the water was lower in that field than it had been
earlier in the day, so hopefully those cows would survive, although the water could
well rise again, especially if other dams failed.
As for our house,
it’s on a hill; water won’t come this high. If it did, one wouldn’t even
be able to see the peaks of the
houses in Columbus.
I took this photo a
couple of miles south of our house. The
water up there by the second phone pole is surging like Class II rapids.
When we got home, I
began packing things, because we were going to take a trip into north Iowa the
next day to get a skid loader Larry had bought.
Our route might take longer than usual, what with all the flooding and
washed-out bridges! As of right then, there were still ways to get
there. We planned to stay overnight Friday night and come back Saturday.
Friday morning, Amy
sent pictures of their new baby lamb with its mother. She took the lamb into the house for a little
while to warm it, and the children fed it a few times with a bottle, as the ewe
had a rough time with the birth, and didn’t eat or drink for a time after the
baby was born. They had to call the vet
to come treat her. The little lamb is doing
well, and the mother is improving now.
That morning,
Jeremy and Caleb headed toward Omaha to take down a giant walnut tree.
But they had to turn back before they got halfway there, because water was
running three feet high over the road. Jeremy
owns Precision Tree Service. Take a look at some of his pictures, if you
have Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/precisiontreeservice/ He has posted some shots of the flooding, in addition to photos of his
work with trees, wood, etc.
Near Valley, the
Platte and Elkhorn Rivers are flowing together like one giant river.
Valley is (usually) between the rivers: Valley, Google Maps
The floodwater near
Jeremy and Lydia’s house was down two or three feet that day, and the major ice
jam in the Loup that was causing the trouble had broken up. Dams farther
upriver were still in danger of failing, and engineers continue to release more
water in order to save the dams and levees that are still all right.
So... the situation can still change.
A little white
helicopter flew fast and low over our house that afternoon. The National Guard, and private helicopters,
too, were busy rescuing people who had gotten stranded when floodwaters came up
too rapidly for them to escape.
We delayed leaving
for northern Iowa that day, as the man who owned the skid loader got stranded
in Des Moines Thursday, and had not yet gotten back to his home in Ledyard.
He’d gotten stuck in his two-mile-long gravel lane Thursday morning, as he had
a good two feet of snow. We planned to stay in a nearby motel Friday
night and go to the man’s home early the next morning, when the lane would still
be frozen.
But... I think the
number of times Larry has been stuck in his life has now gone well into
infinity. Maybe I should stay in the motel and let him come pick me up
afterwards??
Larry has sometimes
gotten stuck when out squirreling around... and many more times while working,
with that big boom truck. He’s gotten quite adept at getting himself out
of mud and snow, though. More than once when there was no other big equipment
around to give him some assistance, he used the outriggers and the boom on his
truck to shove and inch himself forward until he got to solid ground.
Look what I found
in one of my bags, as I prepared to zip it shut. A stowaway!
You know, he might think he
wants to come along, but he’d sho’ ’nuff change his tune as soon as we started
rolling (and bouncing) down the highway.
It isn’t so much that he wants to go
somewhere, he just wants us to stay. Maybe he figures he makes a good bag anchor?
We left home around
6:30 p.m. Ledyard, Iowa, is about 285
miles away; it would take about five hours to get there.
West of Columbus,
we passed a field chockful of new little Black Angus calves. Thousands and thousands of ducks and geese were
flying overhead; the sky was full of their V formations, as far as the eye
could see.
“They’ve never had
such easy fishing,” remarked Victoria when I was telling her about it, “and so
few places to eat.”
The sun was
shining brightly in a blue, blue sky; nary a cloud to be seen from horizon to
horizon. Several rescue helicopters were
flying. Lakes and streams dotted the
area, where lakes and streams were not supposed to be.
By 8:00 p.m., we were
heading back home again, having gotten stymied north of Schuyler. Unbeknownst to the GPS on our tablet and
phone, they’d closed that road, fearing that the bridge over Shell Creek had
been compromised and the base under the road may have been washed out.
If we wanted to
continue, we would have to backtrack west of our house, then head north
again. But it was getting dark, and we
figured there could very well be other
closed roads that were not yet marked on our electronic devices. And what
about roads that should be closed and
weren’t, that we wouldn’t be able to
see in the dark of night?
The Department of Roads had run out of barricades,
after all. They were trying to put vehicles
with flashing lights in strategic places, but were having trouble keeping up
with it all. There were
dangers lurking out there!
And anyway, the
closer we got to our house, the more we could hear the Mexican pizza in the
freezer calling us. So we turned on Old
Highway 81 and came on home to see what it wanted.
The above picture was taken near
Fullerton. There are slabs of ice as big as garage doors in the rivers, and balls
of ice bigger around than truck tires. The
force of the water flung them around all over the place.
I wonder about all
the dams that were in danger of failing, but held. Aren’t they most
likely damaged? And won’t they need to be bolstered up or repaired?
I can’t imagine all the work that needs to be done to get the road-and-bridge
grids back in place, or the dollars it will cost. They say it’s been 50 years since we’ve seen
floods this bad... but it wasn’t this bad, when it flooded when I was
young. Columbus didn’t have the dike
alongside the Loup River, and water rushed into the town; but flooding was not
nearly as widespread all over the state as it is now.
I remember water
flowing down 42nd Avenue in front of our house. Ours, being on
a bit of a hill, was the only house for blocks around that didn’t have water at
least in the basement. I stood at the window and watched the older man in
the house across the street help his teenaged daughter into a galvanized metal
tub, and then push her around in the water (they evidently didn’t realize how
contaminated floodwater is), while she laughed and squealed, especially when
the tub tipped and spilled her out. I wanted to go out and play in the
water, too, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it.
The kids who lived
in the boxcar house down the street – a bunch of little kids – were out
playing, and we saw one standing at the gutter drain at the corner, looking
down into it, while water swirled madly at his feet and gushed into the
drain. My mother gasped in horror and said, “That child is going to
drown.” I was too little to understand the danger... but Mama said, had
he slipped, he’d have gone right down into the sewer system. There was too
much raging water between us and the child for us to do anything helpful.
Maybe the boxcar
people figured they had too many kids anyway?
🙄
He was playing
happily in the mud the next day, so I guess he didn’t slip down the drain. Or if he did, he swam back out again, none
the worse for wear.
Somewhere in that
same timeframe, a lightning strike split a maple tree in half vertically right
in front of our house. AND it welded the teapot to the burner on the
stove. My parents were quite stunned at that teapot, stuck to the burner
forevermore.
(No, they didn’t
leave that teapot on the stove forever after that. They bought a new
burner. And a new teapot. Another
time when I told that story, I didn’t add this detail, and at least a couple of
people thought the teapot remained on the burner, atop the stove, always and
eternally, and we had to work around it as we cooked and prepared meals.)
A friend told me
about a time lightning hit their electrical meter. They didn’t realize it had been damaged until
they got their bill – and it appeared they had prepaid the bill, though they knew they hadn’t. The meter was registering backwards.
She promptly called
the electric company to report the matter.
They sent out an employee to fix it.
He did so, and then
affixed a red flag to the meter and said in a threatening manner to the
people’s preteen-aged son, “Now if
anybody messes with this box, we’ll know!”
The boy told his
mother, and she, in righteous indignation, called the company to report that matter. They apologized.
Somebody needed to
box that guy’s ears for saying something like that, especially to a child.
If the people were trying to cheat the company, why in the world would the lady
have called them and told them about
it, for pity’s sake?! Maybe there was
bad communication between employer and employee; but even so, the lowly peon should
have known better.
One time I went
grocery shopping... got out to our vehicle with a full cart... looked at the bag
of cat food on the rack under the cart – and realized I hadn’t paid for it.
I put the other
stuff in the car, then back we went into the store with the cat food (and all
the kids) to pay for it. The manager, seeing us returning (we made a
scene, just by the sheer number of us), came to see what the trouble
was. So I told him, “I tried to steal this bag of cat food, but my
conscience got the better of me, so here I am again to pay for it.”
He looked at me in
amazement for a moment before throwing his head back and guffawing so loudly
that everyone at the front of the store turned to look at us – so he told
them what I’d said! Acckkk... I’m shy! Really, I am.
In school, when we
were supposed to give an oral report, my stomach would be all wrong side out
for days beforehand (even though I was well-prepared, as I always got my
assignments done well before they were due). But then, when the time
actually came to stand up and do it, well, ... I’d gather up my
fortitude, and, like Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts fame, I’d put on a stiff upper
lip, hold my chin up (always made Charlie Brown’s face contort, trying to do
both at the same time), march up there, and launch in with vim and vigor.
Once I got started, I actually reveled in it.
I spent several
hours quilting on Saturday. See more
photos here. I feel like
I’m creeping along on this quilt. I keep
saying, “I’m alllmost to the middle!” – then I quilt for six more hours, and
see that I’m still ‘allllmost to the middle’.
A friend recently
found out that her ancestors arrived in America on the Mayflower. “Do you know about yours?” she asked.
I told her this
interesting tidbit: My 13th-great-grandfather,
John Rolfe, sailed with the Third Supply fleet from England to Virginia in May
of 1609. He married Pocahontas on April 5, 1614. Pocahontas, my 13th-great-grandmother,
later died in England and is buried at St. George’s Church, Gravesend, diocese
of Rochester, Kent, England. Their
two-year-old son Thomas Rolfe, my 12th-great-grandfather, survived,
and returned to the States with his father.
Sunday
afternoon, we repacked anything we had removed from our bags, as we planned to
leave for Iowa that night. We’d eaten
some of the food, so there was no repacking that.
But
first, there was a wedding to attend!
The groom is Kurt’s older brother, Timothy. His bride is Allison Tucker, a cousin of Jeremy’s
and Maria’s.
I
wrapped their gift, the copper-coated Dutch oven along with
the casserole-dish cover, hotpads, and fingertip potholders I made last month. I didn’t
have a bow, so I made one from the leftover wrapping paper.
Loren and Norma sat across the table from us at the
reception.
We got home a little after 10:00 p.m. We changed clothes... I washed the dishes...
Larry took our stuff back out to the pickup (making sure there were no feline
stowaways)... I gave the cats their food... gave Teensy his medicine... cleaned
off the table... went out to the pickup... climbed in... Larry cranked the key
--------
The battery was almost flat. It wouldn’t start.
That, because he’d been working on it Saturday, trying to
figure out why the turn signals kept blowing the fuse every time he used
them. Turns out, it had something to do
with the switch for the hazard lights. But
while he worked on the pickup, he had the doors open, which meant the interior
lights were on – and the battery got run down.
He hurried to the garage, got his jumpstart pack, hooked
it up to the pickup battery, cranked the key –
The pickup started.
We were off. (With the jumpstart
pack in the toolbox, just in case.) It
was 11:16 p.m.
It took five
minutes to back down the lane and onto Old Highway 81, because it was very dark
out, and the pickup’s backup lights don’t work.
So Larry shined a flashlight out his window, and we backed up, slowly
and carefully. At exactly 11:21, we were
on our way. Going forwards, which is
preferable.
At 11:49
p.m., we went past Madison, 27 miles to our north. We had over four hours to go before we would
get to Estherville, Iowa, where we planned to stop at a motel. Well, unless the pilot got caught trying to
look at the road through his eyelids.
But we had to get to Ledyard in the morning, because the man who owned
the skid loader was leaving to vacation somewhere in the south, and he wouldn’t
be back for a while.
It was
four minutes before midnight when we drove into Norfolk. Tune in next week for the rest of the story.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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