Floods

Speaking of floods, Pennsylvania has had a couple of memorable ones. The Johnstown Flood, up until recent events, was maybe the worst flood disaster in U.S. history, and a kind of strange tale. The rich folks in the hills built a dam, thus making a nice lake for their resort town. The dam broke, and the water flooded down into Johnstown, a working class steel town in western Pennsylvania. The account of that flood is too familiar to stuff on the news today. There's a video documentary of it if you're into that sort of thing.

And then of course there was Agnus. Agnus hit in 1972, and unpredictably just sat over the northeastern states in a holding pattern, dumping something like 12 inches of water all over Pennyslvania in a 24 hour period. My hometown was flooded, everything around the Susquehanna River were flooded, camping grounds in the mountains were flooded. Agnus was "the big one" in Pennsylvania.

Anyway, I was just thinking about this flood stuff while I was eating dinner.

When the Levee Breaks
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.
....
All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
Thinkin’ ’bout me baby and my happy home.