|
A Tale of an Arizona Flash Flood
by Ken Ralston
(www.blueskykitchen.com)
It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in high
school. (And for the wise guys among you there was only one summer
between those years. That's obviously why kids fail grades though, that
way they get more summers. ) Anyway, we decided we were going camping,
our favorite pastime, where Oak Creek meets the Verde River. My cousins
Terry , Gary and Jim ( married to Terry's sister Deanna) were my
comrades on this particular trip. All were older than me. Keep this in
mind as I tell you this hair raising tale of an Arizona flash flood as
all the stupidity associated with said tale should be applied to the
older people involved not me. I was little more than a babe in arms. Jim
on the other hand was in college at NAU and I am sure that he was and
probably still is, IQ wise, a genus. He later went to work for Motorola
semiconductors back when microprocessors were first being developed. I
tell ya the guy was smart....just plain smart. However, as is often the
case with smart people, for all his book learning smarts he had not a
lick of common sense. Now common sense is a rather ambiguous user
defined term generally used to alienate and degrade those who do not
share your opinion. President Clinton, for example, referred to common
sense gun control measures which to me is an oxymoron. I can't see the
common sense in pissing off a bunch of people who own guns. However, if
you have ever wondered what exactly common sense actually is...well
let's just say all you need to do is spend some time with someone who
has none and then you'll understand perfectly. Such was the case with
Jim.
It was a beautiful August day with a few harmless looking puffy white
clouds gracing the skyline as we left Prescott in a ol' ford pickup
truck loaded with all our camping gear, fishing poles, guns etc. . I
don't remember the year of the truck but it was the kind with the
starter pedal on the floor and running boards under the doors to make it
easy to step into the pickup. The truck actually belonged to Terry's dad
H. M. whom I fondly knew as Uncle Em, the hardest working man I ever
met. He owned the Bordens plant in Prescott (or should I say it owned
him) and when you're in the milk delivery business you go to work before
dawn and quit after dusk six days a week minimum. He just had this
vehicle overhauled. As kids we figured this must have cost a few hundred
thousand dollars with all the fuss that was made over this 'new' engine
and all the begging required to get permission to take it. "Now you
kids take it easy on that truck it's got a brand new engine in it and be
careful" we were told. "Oh we will....we'll treat it like a
new born baby." After all what could go wrong anyway? I've since
discovered that teenagers just don't think the same as regular people.
So baby that truck we did, out of Prescott past Granite Dells, the best
swimming hole Arizona ever had, up over Mingus mountain by the lodge at
Potato Patch (it has since burned down) and down that stretch of highway
89A that runs through Jerome to Clarkdale. You could say it gives new
meaning to the term 'winding' and if your riding shotgun ( the window
seat on the passenger side) you could easily 'dip your cookies' just
looking down the sear cliffs that loom only a few feet from your door. (
It's been said that there are spots along that stretch of road where the
cliffs are so steep and the drop is so far that if you did go over you
wouldn't have to worry about dying in the crash at the bottom because
you would have died of old age before you hit. Keep in mind I didn't say
that; after all this is a true story.) So on through Cottonwood to the
right that takes one to Cornville, we headed, till we found a likely
dirt road that might take us to the junction of Oak Creek and the Verde
River. As I remember, we had to try a couple of different roads as none
of us had actually been there before.
But find it we did and the fun began! We swam, we fished, we threw rocks
in the water, we shot the twenty-two's we had about as much fun as four
kids legally can. In my memory that afternoon was one of those rare
precious pure timeless experiences you just wish you could somehow go
back to and stay there forever. I call these experiences 'pure time'.
This particular camping trip and other experiences have since taught me
that 'pure time' is often proceeded by or followed by 'pure disaster';
for as we frolicked gaily in the sun all day our harmless fluffy white
clouds had been consumed by a monstrous black demon cumulonimbus that
loomed ominously to the immediate north. That would be uphill from us.
Now to this point there was but one problem in our thinking - namely we
hadn't done any. Presently, however, not being completely without wits,
we decided to get the hell out of there while we still could. As the sun
was setting we loaded everything back into the pickup, piled in and
began our dash for the main road only a few miles away. Unknown to us
the black monster already had designs on our destiny as he began to
release huge drops that spread out like dollar size pancakes on the
windshield intermixed with little balls of hail. There were two great
realizations at this point. First, a brand new engine has absolutely
nothing to with the efficacy of vacuum type windshield wipers. Those
things were practically useless. It might as well have been pancake
batter on the windshield for all the good those things were. Second, we
had crossed a number of those infamous little 'normally dry' creek beds
during our truck in earlier that day. Now all of us were Arizona boys
and so we knew the potential flash flood danger. That's why we were in
such a hurry to get back to the main road. One after another we crossed
those little 'normally dry' creek beds as luck was with us and they were
indeed still dry until we came to the last one, which was but a stones
throw from the main road. It had a 'little' water flowing in it. By now
it was dark and our lights shown on the chocolate water flowing in this
little 'normally dry' creek. It wasn't raging, in fact, it seemed almost
gentle. Pulled off the road beside us was an intelligent looking couple
sitting there waiting. They looked at us with a look that seemed to say,
"you aren't really stupid enough to try crossing that are
you?"
I don't remember whose idea it actually was to cross, probably Jim's.
(It certainly wasn't the youngest'.) In we went and viola another great
realization. Water can easily be deeper that it looks! The truck died
just as we hit the middle of this little 20 foot wide steam.
Furthermore, the truck formed something of a dam as the water was just
deep enough to come over the running board on the passenger side. As a
result the water instantly rose till it almost came in the window on the
passenger side. Terry, who was the driver and the first to perceive the
implications of our recent action, bailed out on his side, the down
stream side, which was still only knee deep or so. Jim, the genius, who
was next to him slid over and began to try to start the truck. As I felt
the truck slowly begin to slip down stream I said the heck with this and
jumped over Jim out of the truck the way Terry had gone. As I began
hastily making my way toward the back of the truck I notice a little 3
foot high water fall to my right only a few feet away. The truck was
sliding toward it. I barely made it between the bed of the truck and the
bank of the creek as the truck slipped by. To this day I don't know
exactly how Jim and Gary made it out but I suspect they must have jumped
up in the back of the truck in order to overt the creek bank. And from
the bank we watched as the truck went over the little 3 foot water fall
on to it's side, lights still on as it floated away in the darkness. We
turned toward the intelligent people in the waiting car who had kindly
turned their lights on so we could see. They had a look on there faces
that seemed to say "you are, you really are that stupid!"
We decided to wait with them as the water subsided. I doubt that it was
more than an hour till the 'normally dry' creek bed was all but dry
again. It was almost as if the whole incident had been constructed
solely to teach us a little patience. If only we had waited.
The couple gave us a ride to Cottonwood where we called home with the
grim news of the trucks demise not to mention all the camping stuff in
the back. For some strange reason our folks came and got us even though
our stupidity had given them every right to disown us. Oddly they gave
us just a little hell for losing the truck but a lot of love for just
being okay.
We found the truck half buried in sand and silt a mile or two down the
normally dry creek bed the next day. We even found a couple of the guns,
some articles of clothing and various other things but mostly you could
say it was a total loss except for what we learned. In the 37 years
since that summer I have encountered many 'normally dry' creek beds with
gently flowing chocolate water. I've always let the water subside before
crossing.
By Ken Ralston (www.blueskykitchen.com)
|
