MARY ANN FITZMORRIS / L’Observateur / July 24, 2000

My car is dead.It was a brief illness.Brought on by unnecessary exposure to the elements, I think.

Last week I was caught in a flash flood I pulled off the main road in a deluge so intense it was impossible to see and even more impossible to drive But I was going somewhere specific, so I was happy to stop. There should be signs in the area warning of flash floods, just as there are in dry arroyos out west.

Flash floods in dry arroyos I’m familiar with; it’s the urban kind that stump me. But I got an education that day. I learned that flash floods really do build as fast as they say; I learned that experts can sometimes be wrong; I learned that an idea that began in Samaria hasn’t held up very well two millenniums hence.

But mostly I discovered something I should have known from living in these parts: Don’t venture off the main path. After leaving the highway I found myself unable to get back there without some very skillful driving.

Unfortunately, my driving was not nearly skillful enough. There must be revisions on the old instructions about negotiating flood waters in the wrong craft because I was absolutely the only person on the road (and there were many) driving as I was.

Attempts to navigate this swiftly moving current began after I gave the underside of the car a good dunking by backing away from the business where I had just spent five nervous minutes. The flood waters rose noticeably in that time. We should have sat it out there, but didn’t.Mistake number three. One was leaving the highway, and two was leaving the car to go inside. But why stop at three?I was confident that all I knew about flood driving would keep us safe. It didn’t. Mainly because it was wrong. I soon learned that driving down the middle of the road works only if the water is shallow. It was, relativelyspeaking. The street was invisible at the curb.None of this seemed to bother the other drivers, who passed the neophyte creeping slowly in the middle of the street. They sped through the water fast enough to create a wake so forceful it slightly rocked my unseaworthy craft.

To get out of their way I abruptly turned left across the current to head for higher ground. The car stalled at the sidewalk. My daughter began to whimper; my son perked up. A good adventure was at hand.I too, must still crave adventure, because we proceeded to Mistake Number Six. Five was the left turn. Four was leaving the business.Mistake Number Six was absolutely the dumbest. After letting the car recover for a few minutes, I left higher ground in an escape attempt. We crossed the current and stalled again. Here the water was so deep it made me nervous enough to get out of the car in the deluge and try to push it to higher ground.

Coincidentally, we were right behind the service department of a car dealer, and several mechanics watched me try to push the car, alone, in nearly knee-high water.

As I watched them watching me I wondered if I’ve become too matronly for the Damsel-in-Distress thing to be effective, or has feminist sisterhood ruined it for us all? There was no time to ponder this deep philosophical question. I was too busy thinking of the soaked undersides of my car. And soon I had to stave off the pleas of my son, who was so titillated by this predicament he was now begging to jump out of the window and into the flood waters to help me push the car to higher ground.

Other motorists flashed me annoyed looks as they sped by, which fueled enough adrenaline for me to push the car to a relatively safe height for it to dry out.

Finally we were able to drive away, but my mind kept returning to the Matron vs. Damsel thing. I decided that to dwell on that would be the biggest mistake of all.Back to Top

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