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Article: Fourteen feet of water in my house.(flood in the town)
- Article from:
- Harper's Magazine
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Harper's Magazine Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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My hometown flooded. Prediction, as usual, failed us. Come midnight I was the sixty-year-old owner of a river-view colonial, asleep on his second story. By 3:00 A.M., the river was my first floor and wanted my second.
I kept an aluminum flatboat in the back yard; hadn't thought of the thing since last bass season. And yet it waked me like some good pet. Its prow kept beating gentle against my upstairs bedroom wall. Spooked, I set my bare white feet ... into six inches of cold gritty water. I soon went headfirst out my highest window into a waiting boat. It was all so weird it felt natural.
A 1970 outboard motor, untouched for months, somehow sputtered to ...