Rainy weather recalls some family history

Before the week was out I had started to envy Noah a little bit. Maybe the dude knows what he’s talking about.

I don’t have a great big ark or even a little boat but I was starting to wish for one last week.

After staying more or less dry all growing season the heavens opened as harvest was under way and rain was only useful for rangeland. But that’s the way it goes with rain in these parts — feast or famine.

If you’ve lived in eastern New Mexico you know where water stands after a big rain and where it runs.

You figure these things out sometimes by lashing together inner tubes and floating down your street to the water slide at 18th Street then on out the drainage canal past Deadman’s Bridge to the sewer plant.

There are places on the Eastern Plains where water can boil across the road with enough force to untrack a vehicle. Those spots also move enough sand around to stick even the best four-wheel-drive.

Learn where those low crossings are and avoid them and you’ll be OK.

It seems like even though we know where those bad crossings are we’re going to test them out. I have one between me and work so naturally I go around the sign that says “closed to through traffic,” whatever that means.

They never used to put those signs out at that crossing and I don’t recall ever drowning out my vehicle there, at least not since the days of electronic ignition. But judging from the number of vehicles idled in the church parking lot nearby, there’s a pretty good reason for trying to keep folks out.

Even my grandparents back in 1933 experienced flooding in the flatlands and wound up spending their wedding night stranded in a car in a low-water crossing. Here in my grandmother’s words is the experience of returning home to Arch with her new husband, his sister and her boyfriend in that boyfriend’s car:

“My people never went out on 18th Street cause it had always been low. I don’t know whether this boy’s people did or not.

“Anyway he drove out on 18th Street to go east to go to Arch, and I’ll tell you the water was deep! In fact we got out about the middle of a puddle, which was probably an eighth of a mile long, and that thing drowned out and somebody started to open a car door to look out and the water ran in.

“So there wasn’t anything to do but shut those car doors and stay steady, for it was already dark and there wasn’t any way in the world to get out.

“Got to noticing and there were other cars in there too. Finally when the sun got up Sunday morning there were five cars of us that had spent the night in there.

“The next morning, Bob and this boy rolled up their pant legs that they had worn to the wedding and waded out of the water to a man’s place close by that Bob knew that had a team and a wagon. The man brought his team and wagon and pulled all five of us that had spent the night in the mud hole out.”

What a rain. What a memorable wedding night.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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