Tuesday, March 25, 2008

sophisticated fat ass/when the levee breaks.

I just got done making some little pizza's made with Na'an bread from Trader Joe's and fresh mozzarella and pepperoni from Sendik's deli. There were quite delectable, especially when accompanied by some Mendocino Summer Ale (3 bucks a 6 pack-thank you very much).

They are predicting ANOTHER winter storm for us this Thursday after receiving a foot of snow last Friday and nearly 100 inches for the season.

This still doesn't top the winter of 96-97 when I was an undergrad at the University of North Dakota. We had around 100-120 inches of snow, but most problematic was the ice storm followed by the 15 inches we received in April around the time the Red River was scheduled to crest. The result of all of this was one of the worst floods in the history of our country and at the time the largest evacuation in the history of the US until Katrina in 2005. I lived in a basement apartment with my brother and his dog. After spending some time helping sandbag that day, we learned in the wee hours that there was a levee breach and that the entire city was under mandatory evacuation. It as a surreal scene. We gathered what we could, and headed down to our parents home. On the way there we listened to Desi Cortez on KOA out of Denver. Late at night in North Dakota you can get radio stations from Denver to St. Louis to Chicago and points in between.

The next day, several blocks of downtown Grand Forks went up in flames. There was little that could be done because the streets were flooded. I remember watching it unfold from Ralph's Corner Bar.

The early days after the evacuation I would also call our apartment every day. One of those days the phone started giving the busy tone. That was probably the day our apartment filled up with water. We weren't allowed back into the city for several weeks, but when we got back we saw utter devastation. The whole city stunk to high hell and home upon home was wrecked. Dirt lines marked where the water had risen-in some cases there was no line at all and the houses were swept off their foundations. The city eventually got back on it's feet. Houses and schools were rebuilt and the dikes were made stronger than ever. I go back every now and again.

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