A River Runs Through Us

Sometime last summer, when the sun was shining and hummingbirds were buzzing around our back-yard feeder, I remember looking at the flawless blue sky and saying, “Man, I wish it would rain.”

Well, I’ve changed my mind.

I am trapped on Island Topanga, you see, and it has been raining--like, man, pouring --steadily for what seems an eternity.

My Little Wizard submersible pump has been pumping its heart out for eight hours in the back yard to keep water out of our house, but it seems that water, like love, will find a way.

Since the rain can’t come in the back way, it is coming through the roof, seeping around skylights that a roofer once assured me would never leak.

He has since moved out of Topanga, so I cannot say to him that every skylight in the house leaks, and we are running out of pans to catch the drips.

But that’s not the half of it.

Outside, a small, normally pleasant stream that babbles through a conduit under our driveway has become a river that is roaring under, over and around the driveway, creating a lagoon and threatening to move our yard downhill.

It caused a small tree to fall across the walkway leading to our front door, but my wife, Cinelli, pushed it out of the way. What a woman.

“Is there anything I can do?” I shouted, from the safety of the doorway.

She peeked out from under the hood of her slicker and said, “Well, you can write a little, but that’s not helping out a hell of a lot at the moment.”

*

I was perfectly content to stay in the house until the storm passed, reaching out a back window occasionally to unclog the Little Wizard, but then something within me stirred.

Once a reporter, they say, always a reporter, and while I work hard to minimize its impact, the instinct is still there. It was time to wade into disaster. I felt like MacArthur returning to the Philippines.

Actually, I didn’t go out on my own volition. My son, his wife and two grandchildren have moved in with us temporarily because their house on Red Rock Road is isolated by a rising creek and a river of mud.

Our grandson, Jeffrey, who is not quite 2, was demanding appa duse for his ba-ba, and we didn’t have any.

“You’ll have to go to the store,” Cinelli said.

“For what?”

“For appa duse for his ba-ba.”

Appa duse is apple juice and his ba-ba is his bottle. I looked through the cabinet and found some vodka, Scotch, gin and Diet Coke, but no appa duse.

When I suggested plain water tinted with vegetable dye, Jeffrey raised one finger and shouted, “Appa duse!” The kid knows his own mind.

So I went slopping out into the storm and down to Fernwood Market, which was crowded with local people buying beer and cat food.

Whenever there is a disaster in Topanga, those are the two biggest sellers. I go in looking for appa duse, and some reconstituted hippie comes out toting two six-packs of Budweiser and three cans of Whiskas.

If Topanga should vanish tomorrow in a disaster of major proportions, only drunks and cats would survive.

*

Once out, I wandered through the canyon, and it was one hell of a mess. Topanga Creek was the color of cafe au lait and threatening to jump its banks at any moment.

The last time it did that was in 1979-80, when it took out a portion of the road. I remember watching a VW Bug going downstream and thinking how picturesque it seemed. The last Bug, gone to eternity.

There is still a possibility of trouble in one spot where there was a slide on the far side of the creek. It’s been sliding for months and everyone’s been asking, when is the county going to do something about it?

Well, thank God, someone finally did do something to alleviate the awesome danger and to prevent a terrible loss of life. They put yellow tape around it.

The tape, put up a few days ago, gleamed in the storm like a streamer of incompetence, and will no doubt remain long after the slide has blocked the creek and destroyed Topanga.

I don’t mean to make light of this, because there are people in serious trouble in houses along the creek bed and elsewhere. But small inconveniences tend to tick me off, and that’s the state I’m in now.

We Topangans, however, are a hardy breed, and we will endure this disaster as we have endured all the others.

The spirit of the community was summed up by a man I saw as I drove home with the appa duse for Jeffrey’s ba-ba. The guy was in scuba gear and was singing loudly as he rode a bicycle down the highway through the storm.

How brave, resourceful and colorful can you get?