by Tim Gilmore, 6/27/2012
At the end of June 2012 came a hundred-year flood.
As night approached, children swam across Park Street, the traffic backbone of Riverside.
The tops of handrails on footbridges barely protruded above the waterline.
Teenagers canoed and kayaked down Ingleside Avenue and over Boone Park.
The crannies where a professor had picked muscadines and elderberries with his daughters the day before dove down deep in the overflow.
At St. Johns Avenue and Copeland Street, the top of a car peeked out above the water and a Great White Heron stood on top of the car. He had been doing this kind of thing for tens of thousands of years, but the car was new to the planet and didn’t fare so well.
At two in the morning, the air was heavy and hot and smelled like a sour fart.
Fire ants walked on the water in the air, never having heard of Jesus’s feat / feet on the Sea of Galilee.
Rats swam under the porches and missionaries proselytized innocent indigenous children. A snake sank and a frog swallowed a cell phone battery.
All kinds of records were set, but as usual, most of them were unrecorded.
