CRYSTAL BALLBY MELINDA WICHMAN |
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Nothing to complain about
It was a beautiful Saturday in late June. It was the sort of summer day that sends people flocking to the beach or park or anywhere out-of-doors to enjoy the weather. It was the kind of day June brides dream about.
I spent it hauling sodden, muck-coated equipment out of the 4RK9s kennel club’s training building in downtown Cedar Rapids. I’m not a member of that club but I’ve used their training facility so much over the years that giving up a Saturday to help them clean it out after the Cedar River went berserk seemed like the least I could do.
A bright green sticker on the building’s door proclaimed it safe to enter and inhabit. Houses nearby were not so lucky. Yellow stickers meant you could go inside to get things out but couldn’t move back in. Red stickers meant do not enter. Purple meant condemned. There weren’t many green stickers in the neighborhood.
“Safe to enter” was largely a matter of opinion. It pretty much meant the building wasn’t going to fall on our heads and the gas was turned off so if someone lit a cigarette, other people wouldn’t have to come and pick up the pieces of the people who were there to pick up the pieces.
There had been about four feet of water in the building at the worst of the flood. Given that many homes had eight to 10 feet of water in them, we tried to be optimistic about this. Measuring flood water in a building is something like giving windchill readings in the winter. After a certain point, it doesn’t really matter. Forty below doesn’t feel much different from 20 below. And so it goes with flood water. After the first six inches of water crept into the building, ruining the rubber floor matting, shorting out the refrigerator and contaminating everything it touched, it really didn’t matter three and a half more feet were coming.
A dog training building is, by nature, a cluttered affair. The open floor space of the training rings is sacred, everywhere else is fair game for things to be stored, stacked and piled. In addition to all the obedience and agility training equipment, the building was full of odds and ends left by years of trainers for their own use and to share with others.
The building’s owners promised the club they would make repairs, but first everything had to come out. A power washing station was set up in a nearby parking lot. For one absurd moment, I wondered where that business’ customers would park, then I realized there were not going to be any customers that day or for a long time to come. Two semi tractor-trailers were parked in front of the door and workers were dragging out ruined inventory.
And then there was the smell. Step into any dog training building from coast to coast and you’ll be met with the same familiar aroma of rubber matting, Nature’s Miracle disinfectant, painted agility equipment and clean dogs. Not this time. A miasma of raw sewage (think overflowing port-a-potty in July) was underlaid with the sweetish stink of rot and mold. It stuck in the back of my throat. Hours after I’d left the building, I could still smell it.
We began gingerly poking through the muck and carrying things delicately out to the curb. As the day wore on, we became more cavalier, jerking and swearing at stubborn furnishings. We became as soggy and mud-spattered as the building itself. Disgust mingled with determination.
Trainers could leave dog crates in the building for their convenience (no need to run back out to your vehicle in the parking lot if you brought two dogs for a training session) and these, too, had to be hauled out and power washed, then rinsed in a bleach solution. Many of the plastic Vari-Kennel types still had several inches of water standing in them. A torrent of toxic brown liquid spewed out as we tipped them over to load onto dollies.
The worst job was dragging out the floor matting. Even in a pristine state, mats are awkward and heavy. In their sodden state, coated with a black slime that pulsed with God knows what kinds of bacteria, they were beyond awkward. Most were beyond salvage, too. Finally, someone produced a razor blade and we began cutting them into manageable lengths. A cheer went up as we drug the last length of filthy rubber mat out to the curb. The building was officially empty.
Everywhere I looked, up and down the street, it was the same picture: muddy, waterlogged home and business furnishings piled on the curb. The air rang with the clang of waste being tossed onto trash heaps. People’s lives lined the curbs, from little kids’ tricycles to framed family photos. I thought about my friend Amy, pumping water out of her basement. I thought about my friend Glenda, whose home and business were located near the Time Check neighborhood. I thought about the months of cleaning and rebuilding that lie ahead for everyone in the flood’s destructive path.
I decided I had absolutely nothing to complain about.