Dam the Lickdab

     Tableau: The two truck drivers sat stopped in mid-chew, forks suspended in action.  They were fascinated by the sudden movement by fellow diners, the move towards the windows that lined two walls of the truck stop café.

     In one booth, two boys about 2 and 4 years old stood on the seat cushion, foreheads pressed against the window.  Most adults showed a little more restraint than the boys, only a few actually  rising and going to the windows, but everyone else turned, leaned, stared out the windows.

     It was raining.  A crack of thunder attracted everyone’s attention.  The two truck drivers were from Indiana.  They had seen rain. 

     “Those two kids have never seen it rain,” I said to the drivers, feeling the need to explain, to excuse the behavior of my fellow prairiebillies, as they must have thought us.  They smiled, acknowledged my explanation, caught each other’s eye, resumed eating. 

     The scene was sometime after 2002, a year dryer than the thirties according to one old neighbor.  He said the sunflowers grew in the ditches during the thirties.  In 2002, the ditches stayed winter brown, and even the dandelions in the farmyard dried up and failed to bloom.

     Well, it’s gone and done it again, rained, .9” in about five minutes.  There was enough hail to remain in unmelted piles the next day.

    We have had rain this summer, plentiful by recent standards, milder thundershowers, day-long drizzles.  This was a toad strangler, a gulley-washer, a turd-floater, a cow peeing on a flat bed rock.  Water “stood” everywhere.  Actually it was running everywhere.

     There was a calm after the storm.  I stepped out of the shop where the noise of the hail and driving rain left my ears ringing.  The Goodwife stepped out on the porch at the same time.  We surveyed the scene.  Then the silence overtook the visual. 

     “What’s that sound?  Is a car coming along the road?” she asked.  No, for two reasons:  There was no vehicle to be seen, and the noise was stationary. 

     “It’s running water,” I said.  “We better go take a look.”

     “We’ll get stuck,” she said.

     “Nah.  It came too fast.  It ran right off the roads.  It hasn’t had time to soak in.”  In the first mile we met a neighbor out checking the damage to his newly-planted wheat.

      “Have you ever seen this?” the Goodwife asked, as we topped the rise and saw the water gushing down the Lickdab.          

     “A long time ago,” I said.  It must have been more than 40 years if she has never seen “this.” 

  

     “We used to call this a waterfall,” I said as we watched the muddy water spilling over the creek bank.

     At the top of the next hill, we stopped and got out to check out the scene.  The dam was already half full.  “What’s that brown stuff?”

     “Probably flotsam and jetsam, don’t you think?” I answered.

     On the way home, another neighbor passed us, out checking his corn and newly-planted wheat.  “Get the millet all picked up?” I asked.

    “No, we lacked about four hours of getting done.”

     The Goodwife was amused.  “The rain sure brings out the farmers.”

     The rain fell on Monday.  On Tuesday, I took a hike to check out the dam.  The water had stopped running.  Some of the overflow went around the west end of the dike the way it is supposed to, but some went around the east end.  The erosion from water going around the wrong end of the dike will create an oxbow which will circumvent the dam and leave it useless.  A little more dirt work is required.  It will be awhile before that can be done.

     My visit to the dam brought back many memories.  When it held water, it was our swimming pool.  But that’s another story.

     Running water and rain still fascinates us drylanders.  Indiana truck drivers will just have to go down the road if they need to find a saner populace.