Swimming in Parking Lots (Revised)
July is the hottest month. Maybe not for any averages in the record books, but to me it is. I will forever equate July with scorching temperatures, sweat-soaked shirts, bone-dry infields and yellow outfields, peeling red-hot skin and rubber-green basketball courts waving in the heat currents. I’ll also remember it for oil-slick colored skies and waist-high muddy water.
It was the year 1997. It was the end of July, the 28th to be exact. It was a day like any other day. Nothing about its beginning was noteworthy. I awoke at my leisure. I was 14 and I had yet to get a job. I didn’t have an alarm clock either and had no pressing engagements scheduled that day. I rolled out of bed, my hair matted damply to the pillow; the result of the sun streaming directly onto my face through open blinds. I walked out of my room down the hallway and heard a male voice. It was not my brother’s and it was not my mother’s (ha-ha). Whose was it? I continued down the hallway to the kitchen and noticed various tools lying about. All of them caked with dirt, the tell-tale sign of heavy usage. Someone had gotten their moneys worth. I walked into the living-room and noticed a gigantic roll of carpet leaning heavily against the north wall, near the dark-brown china cabinet. Oh yeah, we were getting carpet installed. I would be outside all day.
The afternoon came quickly and the familiar rain clouds were forming above the mountains like a prairie dog peeking for bullets. I didn’t think anything of it, other than it might cool down the area for awhile, and continued playing basketball on the south side of the court, where the net was still intact. I kept my eyes on the clouds for a bit and noticed that they were forming rather fast. I had never seen clouds form so fast before and I knew something novel was going to happen. Maybe not right then at that exact moment, but looking back on it, I think I knew instinctually, ya know?
The clouds were now directly overhead and for the first and only time in my life, I saw clouds come to a complete stop. Something else caught my eye. Upon closer examination, I noticed they were laced with colors I had never associated with clouds before. Various hues of pink, green, cobalt-blue and orange, flowed through the sky like an overturned bucket of crude oil. Then the first rain droplet fell. I was standing at the bottom of the hill that was our front yard. Little did I know I would end up standing at the top, thanking the universe we lived on top of that hill.
More raindrops fell, and more…and more, and more continued. Lightning and thunder stepped into the ring, partnered together, ready to unleash their fury. At this point, it was a standard rainstorm; one that I thought would surely pass within thirty minutes, like most Colorado afternoon thunderstorms do. But those colors! I knew something was different, I knew this was no average afternoon thunderstorm. This would be alive and kicking for a long time.
The next thing that became readily apparent was the sheets of rain that began to descend upon us. There were no singular drops anymore. There were singular sheets of rain. Like millions of tiny droplets, all holding hands, avalanching down from on high. The wind started picking up as well, allowing the sheets an even bigger spotlight. You could literally look up into the sky and locate a sheet of rain and watch it fall all the way to the ground.
Less than twenty minutes from the start of the storm, the gutters began to show signs of failure. The clouds: they hadn’t moved, not at all. There were no colors anymore, just an ominous dark grey that permeated overhead. The streetlights had turned on now, basking everything in an eerie, artificial orange glow. My brother Tim and I were now watching this unfold from inside the garage located at the top of the hill. The slant of the driveway led down to the street, where the water slowly began inundating the sidewalk. The gutters were quickly becoming rivers. At infrequent intervals, a piece of debris would float by; a stick, a piece of trash, a lost dog.
While watching the water levels slowly inch there way up and over the sidewalk, the water began to take on a browner, muddier appearance. And the rain began to fall even faster, stronger and thicker. It was like fog, but it was water. The speed of the water was also increasing as the minutes ticked by. And the debris got larger. This time: a tent and accompanying fold-up chairs, a large piece of wood, a mud-stained, yellow Simpsons’ charcoal grill.
My brother and I decided to venture forth into the fast-flowing brown river that was now our street. Completely ignoring our mother’s yelling and pleading, we waded out into it. It was moving fast and was up to our knees and was freezing cold. We were walking upstream, against the flow. My brother’s face was split wide by a toothy grin, I’m sure I had one too. We continued walking west and noticed that the water-level was rising ever quicker.
We arrived at the crossroads where the street we lived on and the street that led west to Overland, one of the main streets that run north and south, met. At the crossroads was the neighborhood mailbox, and the water flowed just below it. The water rushed passed us, just below our waists and walking became incredibly difficult, along with balance. Our clothes matted to our bodies, didn’t help with the balance much either. The entertainment of the ordeal quickly wore off and we began wondering if we should be heading back. The sound of the rushing water was increased in volume, like a thousand foot waterfall, falling sideways. We had to yell at the top of our lungs in order to hear each other.
“Hey-hey, do you think we should be heading back yet? I can’t see the sidewalk anymore,” my brother said in confused euphoria.
“No, dude, come on, the mailbox, let’s try to get to it, make it our destination,” I replied.”
“I don’t think we can make it.”
“We can, it’s not that much further ahead.”
“It’s coming too fast.”
“We’re closer to the mailbox than we are to the house, come on, move forward!” I yelled.
I grabbed my brother’s arm and pulled him forward. I had made the mailbox our destination point and we were going to reach it. By this time the water was rushing past us at waist level and fright was creeping up into my spine. The little voice in my head began yelling for us to turn back, to go home where we could get up the hill to higher ground, to safety.
At the time, my brother was shorter than me. So the water really wasn’t at waist level for him. It was a bit higher and his eyes’ were large and white surrounded both irises. It was time to turn back. All of a sudden, my brother slipped on something underneath the water, or the water pushed at him too hard or something grabbed him, whatever it was, he went down. The whole world froze to a standstill (but no ice formed) and I saw my brother a nanosecond short of his head going below the water level. And then the world began speeding-up–like stomping the accelerator but in slow-motion–and I grabbed his shoulder and pulled back with all the strength I had left. His head never fully submerged. No words were said, we couldn’t have heard each other anyway. It really was time to go back.
We made our way to the house and with the help of going with moving current, we ended up at our place rather quickly. The rain had stopped by this point but the mesa colored water still roared down the street like liquid chariots and ran into the park that happened to be directly across the street from our house. Since the entire park is situated on level ground, the river died out in movement as it spread throughout the park. About half a mile into the park was a lake that overflowed as well. From far away, the park looked like one humongous reservoir. We decided to make a detour and waded to the parking lot. The rapids finally stopped as we entered the first lane of the parking lot. I dipped down into it and immediately began swimming around like a fish uncomfortable in new surroundings. My brother copied me and we swam around in the parking lot until we heard our mom’s cries and we knew she meant it this time and we swam back home. Two big notches of experience in the belt of life.
The heat returned the next day, creating an awful humidity that I had never experienced before. The news that day was abuzz with heroic stories of survival and rescue. Five people died when their mobile home park was flooded. The levels rose to a height of fifteen feet, easily washing away their homes. It didn’t wash away ours though and our neighborhood was bone-dry again in a week, thanks to the July heat.