The 'Flood Of The Century' Can't Happen Twice in 12 Years

Once again, in what seems like almost a yearly tradition, the flood situation is escalating quickly in good ol' North Dakota, my hometown, the motherland-

"Cradle of fuckin' civilization!" -sorry, that is totally hit or miss. If you've seen the Black Bush skit from Chappelle Show, you're probably laughing. Not quite LOLing, I don't like to throw that term around very often, but at least smilling. If you have no idea who that guy is, go watch the skit, bitches.


For all the non-Nodaks reading right now, you might want to give this a read, as there will be many references to it throughout this post. It won't count towards your final grade, though, so a quick once-over will suffice.

When I lived up north, this was the kind of thing I bitched about, how seemingly every year the media would start mashing the panic button as soon as the snow started melting, successfully getting everyone worried...and then the river would crest, a repeat of 1997 would be averted, and you got pissed for getting concerned in the first place.

However, this year the threat is very real. Although my parents' house SHOULD be safe this time around, and Grand Forks is in better shape than Fargo (a role reversal from 1997) the fact remains that the river is in the backyard of my dad's office, and only a British Open par 5 from Culligan Manor. If this new multi-million dollar dike isn't up to the task, once again many people I care about are gonna be effed, big-time- especially considering I have a bunch of friends living in Fargo these days.

I've been getting mildly sick to my stomach thinking about the possibility of 1997 happening again. Partly because I'm older now, so I actually realize the ramifications of a flood occurring; and partly because I live 700 miles away now, and immersed in the dog days of tax season, so helping out is not feasible and I feel guilty.

The first time around, I was 14, and I remember that we didn't take the possibility of a flood seriously, and sandbagging was basically an excuse to get out of class:

"Dude, I heard that Skinner's english quiz is a real grizzly bear, and I totally didn't study. If I fail that thing, I'm screwed!"

"Fucking prepositional phrases! Well screw it, let's go fill sandbags for a couple hours, our parents will sign notes for that."

"Nice thinking...I'll try and swipe some half-smoked cigars from my dad's ashtray, we'll smoke them in the park across from Sandbag Central."

(Side note: how much more annoying would we have been if Wedding Crashers had already been released back then? I probably would've said "You sandbagging son of a bitch!" approximately 32 times. Per day.)


On the day that things stopped being polite and started getting real, my buddy TJ and I happened to be at Sandbag Central, when a guy got on the loudspeaker and announced that a number of neighborhoods were being evacuated (including his house) and we actually high-fived, because we figured he would just crash at my place for a few days and it would be awesome. Sleepover, dude. Bring your EA 4-way Play.

Our parents, obviously having a better grasp on the situation, quickly shot that down, and the next day the shit really hit the fan, and MY neighborhood was being evacuated, despite being miles from the river. Bummer, man. Soooo can I still borrow your 4-way Play? I might want to fire up some Live '95 while we're evacuated.

A few weeks later, after we were let back into town and saw what the river did to our house, I got my first glimpse of my parents being 'real.' Cracks in their facade, if you will. I had never actually seen my parents, my mom in particular, being legitmately distraught, and it rattled me a bit. I think this memory is responsible for at least 70% of the pit in my stomach when I think of the possibility of another flood.

But it wasn't all gloom and doom after that; in fact, that summer, in my mind, became one of the "Golden Eras" of my life, that I remember very fondly. We spent 12-14 hours a day gutting and rebuilding our basements (although in my case, I use that term very loosely. Pretty much all I did was haul shit out to the curb. Meanwhile, my brother, two years my junior and a sixth grader at the time, was using power tools and helping my dad make important decisions. However, I could name the starting five of all 64 teams in the NCAA tournament that year. So I had that going for me, which was nice. On a scale of 1-10, my dad's disappointment in me has to rate at least a 7.5. Minimum.)

As a result/reward of this responsibility being thrown on us at that age, most of our parents kind of let us run wild at night. This may not have been a big deal to some of my friends, but my parents were far and away the most strict, and they loosened up to the point where I had no curfew (although that would've come to a quick and painful end if they had known we were still snagging Dutch Masters from time to time.) It wasn't a bad routine: work hard all day, chill out and catch the 11:05 pm episode of The Simpsons, and gather for a midnight pickup basketball game under the lights, while comparing horror stories about our houses. Lather, rinse, repeat. Golden Era.

Anyways, things eventually turned out OK, and the city rebuilt, and now it's much, much nicer than it ever was before. But it would suck if it got demolished again by this dipshit river that decides to flow north. Good luck to everyone up north.

You sandbagging sons of bitches.