Yes, my brother-in-law is employed by the University of Iowa and lives in North Liberty and he is flooded out of work, but not out of home. I would ask him to be my flood correspondent but I fear the report would have to read beep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep*ing and so forth.

In the last big flood – the one of ’93 – my father-in-law, who lived in Illinois but worked in Keokuk, Iowa could only reach his office by riding a “dug out of mothballs” trolley across the top of the dam, climbing down one ladder to the bottom of the lock and climbing up another to get out on the other side.

Ah, and the summer my husband flew off to report for duty in Guam, his dad had to take him to a little tiny airport to get a tiny plane to take him to an airport with bigger planes. If I remember correctly, we would go down to the water-caressed bridge that crossed from Iowa into Missouri and murmur “ah . . . . oooh”.

I’m at odds with myself today, so guess I’ll see if I can even out.

Here’s a forgotten garage on Sylvan Lake in Rome City. It’s a dammed lake, created as a feeder for a now defunct canal. One year the embankment showed weakness and the water level had to be lowered; it stayed that way for a couple of years.

Say, look, there’s a chimney . . . and maybe a story there. A chimney on a garage?  Maybe it doubled as a getaway.