Flooded Streets

For many years, my mom worked at the Lopez-Ruiz Clinic in Morgan City, Louisiana. She worked in the front office, moving patients in and out of this family medical practice. There were times, for whatever reason, I had to accompany mom to work and hang out. When you are five, six or seven years old, it doesn’t take long to get bored and I had to find ways to pass the time. Dr. Lopez was my doctor growing up, for all the little things like giving me my immunizations, treating me when I had a sprain or a sore throat, doing surgery on my big toe when I had an ingrown toenail and even big things, like having to set my arm and put it in a cast when I broke my arm thanks to Kim Jackson.

When I was five years old, my dad and I stopped at Jerry and Faye Jackson’s house on Main Street in Patterson to have a sandwich after my kindergarten class that morning. Jerry was the owner of Jackson’s TV and Appliances. I loved going to that store. In the front part of the store were Motorola and Zenith television sets, stereos and a few appliances. In the rear of the store was Mr. Jackson’s shop where he worked on the televisions. In a time when Lost in Space was a popular television show, it seemed like Jerry Jackson had all the gadgetry one would need on a spaceship or some other futuristic vessel. Scopes, monitors, tools, vise grips, giant magnifying glasses to see tiny parts, you name it, he had it. Jerry also had these giant boxes that the television consoles would come in and if I was lucky, Dad would bring one home with us so I could build a fort in the front yard.

On this particular day, while dad was deep in conversations over Community Coffee with Jerry and Faye, I went into the living room to watch TV with their son Kim, who was probably 7 or 8 years older than me. I guess Kim had been watching some kind of circus show because he had this bright idea of me running across the carpet where he would be laying on his back with his knees bent and when I got to him, I would put my hands on his knees and with his hands he would gently push me in the air, where I would turn a flip and land safely on my feet. Did I mention he said land ‘safely’ on my feet? Well, I did my part of running across the shag carpet, putting my hands on his knees and then I felt my body lift into the air, my head tucking toward my knees, my body doing an end over end thingy and then landing with a thud on the carpet, on my belly with my arm underneath my body. Crack…broken arm and off my Dad and I go to see Dr. Lopez.

Back to Dr. Lopez. Sometimes when he had a lot of patients, Dr. Lopez would let me hang out in his private office and watch TV so I wouldn’t have to hang out in the crowded waiting area. When I did find myself relegated to the waiting area to stay out-of-the-way, I would always find and look at that famous blue book, found in every doctor’s and dentist’s office back then. Appropriately named, “The Bible Story Book,” it was the first volume of a set of story books that had colorful pictures and simple to read stories taken from the Bible. The idea was to showcase the first volume and then you could order the other volumes in a mail order book club.

Two stories in particular fascinated my young mind. The story of creation with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the story of Noah and the Ark. I especially loved the part about why God made the rainbow. Any time it would rain, I would look for a rainbow. No matter how hard or how long it may have rained, I would think about the rainbow and the Bible story that said God made the rainbow as a promise to never destroy the Earth again with water.

In South Louisiana, that promise was always comforting because for one, you are surrounded by water and secondly, between the many thunderstorms and occasional hurricane, you often wondered if God truly was going to keep up His end of the bargain.When it would rain for days on end, I would think about the story in that blue book and the picture of the ark, all of the animals, Noah and his family, and of course, the rainbow.

Maybe I’m just a simple man who understands things better when there are pictures to illustrate a point or tell a story, but I can think of three Illustrations regarding Noah’s Ark that have impacted my simple mind, my life. I have already mentioned the stories in “The Bible Story Book.” The other two are from Gary Larson who created The Far Side cartoon.

I love the cartoon that tells the story of what really happened to unicorns. Noah is standing on the deck of the Ark with several pairs of meat-eating animals looking down at the dead unicorns. Noah says, “Well so much for the unicorn, but from now on, all carnivores will be housed on ‘C’ deck.” Unicorns were always a mystery to me until Larson poignantly explained things. Haha. The second Larson cartoon explained how all those animals were loaded on the ark and in what order. On the day before it started to rain, Noah had gathered all the animals outside that soon-to-be-floating zoo of Gopher wood. Looking down at the animals he says, “Listen up! We are going to do this alphabetically.” What’s funny is above the zebra’s head is the word ‘Damn,’ as if that is what the zebra was thinking upon hearing Noah’s words. I love it.

The kids who grew up on Rosemary and surrounding streets in the 1970’s loved long days of sunshine. Those hot days of summer were meant for riding our bikes, shooting basketball in my driveway, playing tackle the man with the football or grabbing our toy guns to play army man. Were we disappointed when we woke up and discovered it was raining and some of the things we had planned to do would have to be postponed? You bet! Did it stop us from having fun? Most of the time, no!

In the past few weeks a lot of rain has fallen in Louisiana. Land so saturated that flooding is widespread because the water has nowhere to go, the threat of losing your house or even your life, are all very serious issues. I don’t want to seem unaware or callous as I write about rainfall, hurricanes or splashing around in standing water. Our parents took on the role of protector for us, sheltering us from danger and doing the worrying for us. As kids we merely looked at each day as another opportunity for fun and adventure, rain or shine. As I read about the heavy rain and talked to family and friends back in Louisiana, I started thinking about those rainy days on Rosemary Street from long ago.

Sometimes the rain would be heavy, falling fast, a deluge from heaven that kept everyone inside. I recall opening our front door, watching through the screen door as the rain fell, and seeing our street slowly fill up with water. The rain fell so fast the drains could not keep up, causing the water to back up into the street. Of course water backing up into the street from the drains and probably sewers, brought all kinds of interesting things with it, but when you are a kid, you don’t think about germs, diseases or what else may be lurking in the dirty water. We would find eels, tiny fish, frogs, and an occasional snake, but that didn’t deter us from playing in the flooded street. We would hop on our bikes in our cut off jeans and t-shirts and ride as fast as we could as water splashed out from under our tires.

In no time we would be soaked, dirty water dripping from our hair, smiles radiating on our faces. Other times we would pull our homemade boats behind us as we rode our bikes or ran through the water. Back then, our boats were simple crafts made out of scrap lumber or if we were lucky, Balsa wood. With a nail hammered into the front of the boat, a string tied to the nail and the other end tied to our bikes or in our hand, we would be off and would enjoy hours of fun. The part about lucky to find Balsa wood goes back to being able to find a discarded old offshore life jacket. All over South Louisiana, people who worked on tug or crew boats, drilling or production rigs offshore, wore these bulky orange life jackets that basically were blocks of Balsa wood covered by a bright orange material with straps that snapped together in the front. If we found one of these jackets, we would strip it clean of the wood, discard the material and go about making toy boats.

Most of us kids had your basic foot long piece of wood that we had crudely shaved down in the front for a bow and a tiny strip of wood nailed to the back of the boat, hanging down to look like an outboard motor. That was what most of us had, but not Kirk Brown, my neighbor across the street. You see, Kirk’s Dad, Mr. Andrew had built a shop in their backyard that housed all kinds of tools, saws, spare lumber, hammers, nails and anything a person who could build anything, would need. On top of that, Mr. Andrew loved to make and build things out of wood, even toy boats for his son Kirk.

Mr. Andrew worked offshore 7 on, 7 off. This meant he was offshore on a platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico working 7 days straight and then home for 7 days straight. Mr. Andrew chose to work in his shop but I would guess, although I would never ask, that Kirk’s mom, Ms. Jackie, probably said at some point, “Andrew, I love you and I’m glad you are home, but you better find something to do and get out from under my feet.” Smile. This of course led Mr. Andrew to build a workshop and then build these cool boats that us kids would play with when the streets flooded. While I pulled my very basic and simple boat, Kirk would pull a toy boat that was a piece of art with sides of wood shaved or cut perfectly, sanded smooth with a carved motor on the back. Great work Mr. Andrew. Kirk you lucky boy.

Another advantage of enduring heavy rains was mother nature turned my front yard into a muddy mess of standing water, mud and a slick field of St. Augustine grass. Dressed in our white football pants, Saints or other team jersey, shoulder pads and cheap plastic helmets, we imagined ourselves as 10-year-old gladiators playing for a Super Bowl win. Basically, we wanted to tackle each other or catch a pass in a way that led us to get wet and muddy. The more mud and grass that stuck to our uniforms, helmets or skin, the more proud we were and the longer we played in the muck. One time, after suffering through an extended drought that had us boys missing muddy football, we decided I should turn the water faucet on in front of the house, letting the water run through the hose all night, causing my front yard to be full of water the next morning. Yes, that was a ‘good’ idea one time. For reasons most people understand, we tried that tactic one time and one time only. Right Dad? Smile.

Sitting here writing after spending a beautiful day outside working in my yard and garden, I recall all of the incredible days just like today when I was a kid and had the opportunity to just play all day under a blue sky and bright yellow sun. I also think about those rainy days when soggy, dirty boys like Kirk Brown, Donald Boudreaux, Kenny Russo, Randy Fontenot, Lonnie Easley, Kenneth Barr, Steve Achord and others played just as hard and just as long in the rain and mud. Wet or dry, rain or shine, we were never bored. Play on kids.

From Son of a Preacher Man, by Steve Achord