There was a flood and I didn't even know it rained.

We were living in an apartment in a place called Black Bottom in Logan, West Virginia. It was called Black Bottom because the area frequently flooded and everything would be covered with thick, black, river mud.

We had my stepdaughter's for the weekend. We slept in and had a nice breakfast and my husband left with the girls to take them home. They came back in a couple of minutes to tell me they couldn't go anywhere because there was a flood. The property our apartment was on was not flooded but all around it was - we were on an island.

I didn't even know it had rained the night before, I thought they were making the whole thing up. That is, until I went outside to observe a man riding a rowboat down the middle of the street. There was no denying there was a flood after that.

So, Bobby called the ex and told her the girls would have to stay another night. She freaked as usual. She called him a liar and told him he better get the girls home. I couldn't really blame her for not believing him because I didn't know it had rained myself. Later that day she called. She had him walk the girls out on the railroad tracks. They met on the boulevard and she took them on home.

The next day I went to work at P.R.I.D.E., a community action agency. We were taking applications for emergency flood relief. A very, old bum came in and told us the story of how he was rescued from the flood. He was in a second floor apartment down the road from me. The only way he could get out was for them to pull a boat up to his window. He told us an absolutely hilarious story about how hard it was for him to get into the boat because it was getting pulled away by the current and how he was spread eagle between the window sill and the boat trying not to fall into the water. He was laughing, we were laughing too. We all laughed so hard that I thought my side was going to split. But he lived in a place that if he had fallen in the water there was no way he could have fought that current and he would have surely been carried away and drowned. So, it was a good thing he got saved.