Red River Rising Part 4

Saturday May 24
The phone man arrives at noon.  Flood water had damaged the phone line entering the house.  He re-sets the line, four feet higher.  Wanda calls.  Her crew’s ready to get rid of some wood.  They arrive in a van pulling a trailer of tools and equipment.  They’re from Christ the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.  Dave, a civil engineer, Paul, a computer programer, Scott who works at a Coca Cola bottling plant and Roger, an on-line computer program designer.  These four men and Jim proceed to rip out 1000 square feet of historic maple flooring.  It takes them 3 hours.  It took about a week to install that flooring.  Again, small mercies.  I take photos.  Scott uses a rotary saw to cut down the middle of the floor then they use crow bars to lever up the maple boards, like peeling an apple.

Ripping up old growth maple wood flooring

My photography professor, Harley Straus, was never without his Leicas.  That’s how he navigated the world, through a viewfinder.  He even documented the last days of his life, as he was dying of lung cancer.  I appreciate that more now. My hands are cold, my wood’s being ripped up and I can’t find the batteries for the flash and I forget to push the film. 

Complete strangers drive five hours to spend time doing the  most horrible work I’ve ever witnessed (so far).  I will probably never see theses four men again yet this afternoon spent with them is the most religious of my life.  When they leave we drive downtown to spend time amidst real carnage.  Nothing like a little perspective.



               

                    The Minneapolis Angels with the last of our wood
 
Sunday May 25
After church Naomi and I drive over to the Columbia Mall to drop off rolls of film then drive back to her home in the Riverside Park neighborhood.  Her basement clean-up is going well except for her negatives, including a documentary project for a summer internship she did at an archeological dig in New Mexico.  All gone.  I’d always meant to ask her for a favorite print of her work there and now it’s too late.

When she drops me home I sink into a funk.  Jim takes me to see Lost World, which oddly cheers me up.  A T. Rex in San Diego, how refreshing.  This is the first thing we’ve done so far that the kids at home are sorry they’ve missed.  Centreville neighbor Melissa took Anna grocery shopping.  Friend Bob took them to Burger King then the toy store.  He buys each of them something and they’re delighted.

Monday May 26
We’ve stepped into a first name only culture, which is humbling.  This work isn’t about recognition.  Wanda calls to see if we want four Baptists to come over to power wash and sanitize the basement.  The appropriateness of their work makes me laugh.  Wanda’s incredible.  She knows the lay of the land, rather water.  Her home was flooded earlier in the year.  She met her husband years ago while doing disaster relief and they’ve been a team ever since.

Marty McCarthy is a Gulf War vet from Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Bob Bottoms, the boss, is from Kentucky; Dallas James and Paul Merwin, a Baptist preacher, are from Tennessee.  It’s sunny and warm.  The lads arrive and start unloading their huge gas-powered washer and gallons of bleach.  This is going to be pretty intense.  We all take turns in the noxious basement, them power spraying, us using yard brushes to ‘sweep’ the water into our basement bleach.  The the same routine with the 50% bleach solution, followed by the squeegee sweep.

During our breaks, we drink soda on the front porch.  Bob’s hat has medals from almost every disaster in the past decade, he’s been there, cleaning up.  The Southern Baptists are disaster missionaries.  Marty and Dallas are veterans taking off a week from work to come up here to help.  We’re talking vigorous holidays here.  Paul’s a preacher, he’s the most talkative, telling us about his wife and his dog, named Dimples.  He makes us laugh.  He’s the youngest of 16 children.

After the cleaning I get out my camera and we gather around their Disaster Aide van to take pictures, as if it were Easter Sunday.  Well, I guess it sorta is.  Maybe specially in disasters-we need these rituals.  As they’re driving away I realize it’s Memorial Day.
                    

                                     The Power Wash Gang

Jim and I go downstairs.  We re position the industrial fans, pointing them toward the windows so all the moisture is blown out.  The dehumidifier's humming.  Our basement’s isn’t unique anymore.  But it’s no longer dying.
                      

Bare basement bathroom fittings

Tuesday May 27
Brother Mark arrives at 11:30 a.m.  His truck is a mobile DeWalt showroom, plus saw horses, tool boxes filled with exotic tools.  He surveys the damage making a list of needed supplies.  As he carries in his tools five single engine bi-planes do acrobatic formations in the intensely blue North Dakota sky.  We go to the hardware/lumber store.                  

Mark measuring for drywall

It takes Mark three 15 hour days to bring things back to normal.  There was, needless to say, a lot of water damage.  We take Mark to get a tetanus shot then to borrow a moisture meter from the city and test all the studs, learning quickly that wood is wettest at the bottom, gravity pulling the water down. 

Moisture meter to determine water content of wood

Any boards more than 11% water have to be replaced otherwise mold could set in.  We’d used some old salvaged wood to put in the bathroom walls all those years ago and they hold the water the worst.  Those walls need to be completely rebuilt.  Mark also puts in the drywall studs.  It’s Molly’s Critter Play at school this evening.  This is the first time we’ve ever missed a school event.

Friday May 30
We have the drywall delivered then take Mark out to dinner at a Sport’s Restaurant.  It used to be the Main Street Restaurant.  I have the best hamburger I’ve eaten since a friend’s Texas Cattlemen’s BBQ when we lived in Galveston.  Jim and Mark watch sports tv, I watch the people.

Saturday, June 1
Today Jim and I learn how to drywall.  I get the battery DeWalt drill, a leather belt pouch full of screws and proceed to goof up for several rows then get the hang of it.  Jim and Mark hoist and drill the drywall onto the studs, I fill in the support grid.  By the end of the day I ache all over but it beats sanitizing. We go back to the Sport’s restaurant for dinner.

We get home and resume drywalling.  It’s a nice spring night.  Naomi drops by.  She comes downstairs and sits on the saw horse, drinking a soda, as we hammer and drill.  She talks of anthropology, history, the flood.  The room’s lit with two lamps I remembered to bring, creating a warm incandescent glow.

Monday June 2
It’s pouring rain.  I drive out to the Buffalo Farm and buy Mark a bison skull.  His entryway of his historic St. Louis house is decorated in a Southwestern style.  Mark’s generosity is awesome, like Anna’s, who taken care of Claire and Molly for a solid month.  How does one ever repay such gifts?

Tuesday June 3
Mark leaves early, before dawn.  He works for the Missouri Highway Department and this is there busiest season.  If it weren’t a disaster he couldn’t have joined us.  At 8:30 a.m. the Army Corps of Engineers finally hit our street to remove the trash.  It takes 45 minutes for umpteen dump trucks and two pay loaders.  We spend the next two days painting the outside of the house.  I go to Target and buy a bunch of red peppers to hang on our redwood gate.  The lilacs are in full bloom.  It’s Claire’s band concert tonight.  She’s struggling with the viola and I want to give her a hug.
                       

Army Corps of Engineers supervising flood clean up trash collection on Fallcreek Court

Thursday June 6
We leave Grand Forks at 2 p.m.  We’ve listed the house with a realtor.  It feels sad to say goodbye to this place.  It’s half the size of our Centreville house, but it’s well designed and it suits us.  We’re comfortable here, even without the wood.

We drive through McDonald’s for coffee then head south.  The sky’s so blue, with billowy clouds.  When I first moved away from North Dakota I dreamed of this sky, this blue.  I ponder W.B. Yeats' poem, Easter 1916 describes Ireland's push for independence of English rule as a 'terrible beauty,.'  A terrible beauty is an apt description of North Dakota too.  Some places are just more dedicated to molding ‘flesh and body into soul.’
             

Classic North Dakota sky