I’m Fixing to Put on a Life Jacket
I’m fixing to put on a life jacket.
Everybody could possibly be in need of some kind of life preserver if the constant, daily precipitation persists. Already this year we have been blessed with more rainfall in inches than we received for the entire year last year.
At least the rain has been spread out day-to-day with breaks in between. Even though it rains every day, it doesn’t rain all day and all night for five days without stopping like it did one time in 1994, when a weather front blew up from the Gulf of Mexico, settled on top of us and decided it liked us and wanted to stay for awhile, and it did, like an unwelcome relative who didn’t know when to leave.
Yes sirree, on that occasion it began to rain and it didn’t stop. It rained 24 hours a day, day and night, for five days. The streams never got an opportunity to empty themselves and swelled up like dog ticks. The ground never got a chance to dry out and got so it couldn’t soak up any more water.
Boats, cars and cows washed over the Jackson Lake Dam, were swept down the Ocmulgee River and ended hung up in the tops of big oak trees all the way down in Macon.
How high’s the water, Papa?
Two feet high and rising.
The bridge over the Ocmulgee River below the dam on Hwy. 16 washed out and the water crept right up to the front door of the Sac O’ Suds. It was over a year before the new bridge was complete, sealing the fate of the famous little store. With there being no two-way traffic during this time, the bait and beer business, which had flourished for many years suffered mightily.
How high’s the water, Papa?
Four feet high and rising.
The little store, made famous for the scene in the movie My Cousin Vinny, where the two boys stole a can of tuna fish and got arrested for murder, never recovered. It reopened, but floundered and finally closed for good while thieves and pickers made off with the different signs on it. I admit I was tempted myself to heist one of them.
How high’s water, Papa?
Six feet high and rising.
Life is full of floods as well as droughts, and there are always the in-between times.
The floods and droughts are to remind us of Who is in charge, and of the power that is beyond mortal control—the same Power that suspends the earth in the mist of nothing.
The in-between times, when we face no threats or danger and all is well, are to remind us that life is full of floods and droughts, and to give us time to recover or prepare for them.
How high’s the water, Papa?
High enough to be fixing to wash us away.