Flood of the Century

By Brent Yamamoto

A humorous short story collection about the lives of people living across
Southern Alberta. Our hopes, our dreams, our failures. From a young mans
dream to one day compete in a Mr. Fitness pageant to a father who uses Tiger
to teach his daughter how to be a winner on the golf course. From a trip to
the supermarket treated as though it is a big game hunt in Africa to a short
passionate romance in Cancun Mexico on Spring break. With a tone inspired
by Stephen Leacocks Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town and a style inspired
by Hemingway, these stories show the lives of small town people with
dreams and feelings as big as in any
major city in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463428174

Brent Yamamoto

None

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© 2011 Brent Yamamoto. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/29/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2817-4 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2816-7 (sc)

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

The Flood

Sincerity

Idiots

Starry Nights

Mrs. Johnson

The Long Miserable Life of Davidson

Tips

I am not Tiger - pre 2009

The Flood

So anyway, the city of Lethbridge is really two cities divided out of one, separated by the Old Man River Valley, the road sloping down from either side across a bridge that for some reason is called The Hill. There is the West side, which is the new side, and the North and South side, which are the old, and between us we have three out of the four directions covered, East being Coaldale, or Toronto, or China, depending on how far a person wants to take it. The North and South side have most of the schools, the churches, the history. Houses on the West side are newer, plus we have the university, though the South has the college and the Sportsplex, and the North has, well, that’s sort of the black sheep portion of the city with the industrial park and the road leading out to the dump. Each side has a Dairy Queen.

East of the river, down in the valley is the Country Club golf course; west is Paradise Canyon. The population on the old side is old, older anyway, families who have lived here all their lives. They out number the West close to six to one, a pretty static number. The wind comes off the bald prairie from the west but we’re closer to Calgary which is something we’re quite proud of.

The posted speed limit on the Hill is ninety kilometers. No one goes the posted speed limit which is okay except some go seventy while the rest of us go a hundred and ten. The seventy are usually seventy themselves and come from the old side, assuming they ever have reason to go further west.

Beginning at the top of the hill and heading east at a starting speed of around eighty, on a calm day, which it never is, in an average size vehicle, with the foot off the gas pedal, you will be going a hundred by the time you reach the bottom of the bridge; the police, who are known to set up a radar post at the bottom, well hidden from the top, don’t seem to understand this, as though braking against gravity is something everyone should naturally calculate into their driving. Nor do they understand that going west, on a windy day, which it always is, requires a driver in any car of any size to accelerate well past a hundred and ten going down in order to be going sixty by the time they reach the top. This is on a nice, dry day, much worse in the winter when the road is sleeted over with freezing snow and those seventy and over slow down to fifty and below, riding their brake lights all the way down, while everyone else remain at a hundred and ten in order to keep up pace. This can cause a lot of delay and hurt feeling on both sides.

The bridge itself, a cement structure, is thirty feet above the Old Man River. The river never gets more than a few feet up the thick columns supporting the bridge at the best of times, and is quite often in serious threat of drying up altogether, stone islands popping up with small green plants growing.

This all changed during The Flood of ‘95. That’s how everyone now describes it, whether you live on the new side or the old, brought on by four straight days of intense rain, combined with heavy winter snow fall and spring run off from the mountains. Actually, as far as natural disasters go, it was a pretty meek affair. I don’t mean to down play its importance but it’s not like the ice storm that hit Quebec, the forest fires that have ravaged B.C. and northern Alberta, earth quakes in California, hurricanes in Florida. Nor, as far as floods go, was it like what other regions have been hit with, especially down in the States, where, as in everything the States does, was big and loud and destructive, wiping out barns and fences and mail boxes, invariably ending up in Canada as a huge mess. True, there was a mess left after our flood as well, we had our fair share of flooded basements, but no casualties or sandbags. The two cities of Lethbridge are built high off the ground and the real damage was done in the surrounding area, the farm land, and of course, down in the coulee. While it may not seem like a whole lot in comparison to what other people have gone through, still there was a general consensus that this was more than plenty.

* * *

Don’t go, Mike, Sarah said, sitting in our kitchen in the early morning. She looked at me with concerned grey eyes, her auburn hair pulled back in a functional pony tail. It’s still raining out.

It seems to be letting up a little, I said which was a lie. The window was sheeted with rain. All the lights were on in the kitchen but the room felt drab and dull against the black sky outside. It’s supposed to stop later this morning.

What if it never stops? she said more to herself than me. What if it just keep raining and raining?

Don’t worry. You’ll be fine here. The electricity is working. The basement is dry. You have your cell phone.

Sarah looked as though I just didn’t get it at all. I’m not worried about me. Amy isn’t going to school today, so I know she’ll be safe. What if something happens on the road?

I have my cell phone. If there’s a problem, I’ll call for help. Sarah looked as though she seriously doubted it.

They say they might have to close the bridge this morning.

We had the radio on in the kitchen, listening for news and weather information. It didn’t sound very good out there.

Who do you think is going to need a football on a day like today, Mike? The Miami Dolphins?

I owned a small sporting good store on the north side of town. Doubt many people would be in need of hockey skates, I wanted to make sure the place wasn’t flooded out.

You just want to play in the rain, Sarah said.

* * *

Amy grumbled into the kitchen with her mom’s grey eyes, only fierce, and wearing a pair of pyjamas with cats and dogs on them. She grumbled over to the table and continued to grumble as she sat down and crossed her arms over her chest.

I heard there wasn’t any school today.

She sounded hopeful. Amy was in grade eight and went to school on the south side and had to be bussed over. Our side didn’t have either junior high or high school, only elementary. Sarah and I had been listening on the radio for school closures, and when we heard Amy’s school get named, both swore we heard a tiny yelp of glee come out of her bedroom. None of the busses were running and that said something about the weather.

That’s right, Sarah said. There’s no school today. She looked at me like if everyone else had enough sense not to go out, why didn’t I?

Amy grumbled about having to get up so early then but that disappeared with the realization that she could now go back to bed. She looked at us sitting apart. What’s going on?

Sarah sighed. Your dad is going to work.

So? Amy said. He always goes to work.

It was called earning a living, putting food on the table, providing for my family. And yes, okay, maybe so I could fix up the downstairs with a new flat screen and home entertainment system but what, I wasn’t supposed to enjoy the fruits of my labor? Where did she think the money for all her clothes came from anyway? Amy seemed to sense that if she wasn’t careful, I was going to tell her to go get dressed, since I was going that way anyway, I would take her to school, and in case it really was closed down, she could come to the store and count inventory, learn the value of a hard earned dollar. I had done it before. She quickly grumbled out of the kitchen. I turned to Sarah.

I guess I’ll go then.

Sarah looked at me like I hadn’t figured out anything.

I’ll only be gone a little while, I said. Just to check on things. I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek but at the last moment her face turned into mine and she kissed me hard on the lips. She held my face between her hands.

Just be careful, she said. Then she let me go.

* * *

I drove down University Drive for the turn off to the Hill. I wasn’t in a ghost town or anything. There were cars out and about and I wondered if they had wives or husbands who made such a big deal about them going out. It was only rain.

The rumors had indeed turned to fact in that the bridge had been closed, the road leading down blocked off by a city vehicle with yellow lights muted in the dark, dreary day.

I turned on the radio as I passed by a worker in a yellow slicker directing traffic away. I tried to look down the road and saw only rain. The news announcer said the bridge had been shut down not ten minutes ago for fear of safety. The water level was continuing to rise.

We drove on, like a convoy. There was a secondary road winding its way through the valley that connected the two sides, as well as the highway coming in from Calgary. Both were closed, more workers waving people away. Go home they seemed to say.

The convoy did just that, turning and heading back the way it had come. So much for safety in numbers. I was amazed they would give up so easily. I went on by myself, planning to drive north to Shaughnessy, swing around east, through Picture Butte, then round about south to Coaldale, finally back west towards Lethbridge. It was the long route. The whole trip would take about an hour and that was assuming none of those roads had been closed.

* * *

I drove between flooded fields splashing up giant puddles. Maybe Sarah was right, this was fun. Fact was I liked driving in the rain. Night driving was the best. I remembered the long drives I used to take with my parents during summer vacation; no air conditioning, starting out at dusk to beat the summer heat, dad driving, me in back, coasting down the dusty, curveless road, touched by headlights of oncoming cars every so often, but mostly in the dark, feeling as though we were the only ones in existence. I don’t do much night time driving on the highway. Sarah doesn’t like it and Amy was too young to know what she was missing. We have air conditioning now.

Today I took it as a challenge, man versus nature and all that, nature may have had the upper hand for thousands of years, now we had paved roads and four wheel drive. Honestly speaking, once you got past all the fear and myth, nature wasn’t nearly the force it used to be.

That was when the windshield wipers stopped working, stuck half way down. In less than five seconds the front window was sheeted. My immediate instinct was to hit the brakes but if I hit them too hard I was liable to lose control of the vehicle. I knew I was on a straight away but with the visual cues only a blur that was like knowing which way was up in space. I eased off the accelerator and powered down the side window, sticking my head out to see where I was going, like a dog along for the ride. I squinted my eyes to the pouring rain and slowly eased the car onto the shoulder.

I wiped my hand across my face and took a breath. It felt kind of creepy, alone on the highway, grey, filtered light, sound of the pattering rain. I looked through the window, the sky a bare lighter shade of grey, no way I could just wait this one out. And yet I could imagine the response if I had to call Sarah and tell her I was stranded out on the highway. What the hell was I doing on the highway? What could I tell her? Why do men climb Mount Everest? Why do we hunt lions in Africa? Because we’re stupid, she would say.

I pulled out my cell phone, deciding I had little other choice. So that was it, my big battle with nature over before it began and I was the sore loser. I smacked my hand on the dashboard; that was when the windshield wipers started working again, brushing the rain away, the road becoming clear ahead. I sat for a few minutes waiting and watching the wipers, holding my breath each time. I had them timed down to every three seconds. Still they kept working. I let out a small laugh as I stuck my cell phone back into my pocket. Nature hadn’t won yet.

Now I was in an even greater quandary of what to do. Go back to Lethbridge, or keep going until I ended up in Lethbridge. I thought maybe I should turn back. I got