“Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up!”

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One result of our moving into a house built in 1840-45 was getting to be on a first-name basis with the owner of the local hardware store. After being here fifteen years, we have gotten to know three generations of the Hunter family. The matriarch of the family was Carl. Yes, her name was Carl. Her kindness to me is one of my first memories here in Gainesboro.

Not long after we came, I stopped by the hardware store one rainy afternoon to get one of the gazillion things we needed for our new old house. Carl told me that I had better get home right away and to be careful while I did. She knew what I didn’t know. Our little corner of Jackson County is one of the many that is prone to flooding. After experiencing it eight or ten times in the last fifteen years, we are certainly in the know now.

We are blessed to live on a little rise, so the floodwaters have never reached our house. Flooding out our way is more of an adventure than a crisis. We have lots of flood stories. One of my favorite is about the day we got a call from an official who asked if we had seen someone floating down the river on top of a car. I assure you that they didn’t need to call and ask us that. If any of us had seen someone floating down the river on top of a car, we would have called 911 — without prompting.

Let me stop right here and pretend I am your mother with some heartfelt advice. Never, ever, ever drive through water during a flash flood. You just can’t tell how deep the water is and you don’t know if the road is even still there. Flood waters don’t just cover roads. They wash them out, too. I read recently that the highest percentage of deaths from flooding happen in vehicles! So be careful!

When the flood waters rise out our way, they are simply an inconvenience. If we are home, we have to stay here because we can’t get out. If we are away from home, we can’t get back home, because we never, ever, ever drive through water during a flash flood!

Flash floods are really flashy around here. They leave as fast as they come. We had a tremendous amount of rain on Wednesday. That rain came in the midst of the rainiest winter I remember. We totally understand the saying that someone will do such and such, “if the creeks don’t rise.” In our case, the problem is a rising river.

We were carefully driving home from church on Wednesday night when we had to come to an abrupt stop. The water had so saturated the ground on the bluff beside one of the roads we take, that a tree had fallen and completely covered the roadway. While Ray gingerly turned around between the bluff on one side and the guard rail on the other, I called 911 to report it. Concerned about flooding, I asked the dispatcher the best way to get home. He suggested a long detour and we followed his advice. We saw a mini-rockslide and another downed tree (we were glad that tree only covered half the road)., and arrived home safely, but much later than usual.

We went to bed wondering what our nearby river would do during the night. What it did was rise, spread out over the river bottom, and flood us in from both directions. This is what the road a three-minute walk past our house looks like on a normal day.

This is a slightly different angle and a slightly different spot, but this is what that same road looked like at about 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. Let me describe what you are seeing. The trees on the left are on a bluff to the left of the road. The trees that seem to cut through the water are the ones that lie to the right of the road. The water to the right of the trees is the river. Beneath the water between the two lines of trees is the road! I estimate that in the deepest place, the water was about 3 or 4 feet deep.

By early afternoon, cars and pickup trucks were passing our house as usual. By late afternoon, our sitter had arrived at our house and Ray and I were on our way to Cookeville to hear a C.S. Lewis scholar.

The water comes up and the water goes down — except for the time a few years ago when we were flooded away from home for a couple of days! But, hey, it makes a great story.

I have only two childhood memories of floods. One time the Cumberland River flooded in my hometown. I remember seeing water heaters from the water heater factory floating in the floodwaters.

My other childhood flood memory is singing “The Wise Man” song in Sunday School and at Vacation Bible School. As you know, that song is about how a person builds his house and what will happen to that house when floodwaters come. There is a wise way to do it and a foolish way. Thank you for every time you choose the wise way. Those children who live in your house are blessed to have you make those choices. Jesus said:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine
and acts on them, may be compared
to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 
And the rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew
and slammed against that house;
and yet it did not fall,
for it had been founded on the rock. 
Everyone who hears these words of Mine
and does not act on them,
will be like a foolish man
who built his house on the sand. 
The rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and slammed against that house;
and it fell—and great was its fall.
Matthew 7:24-27

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