Cedar Rapids buckled, but it wasn't toppled

Write a column about your thoughts and remembrances of the flood of 2008, they told me.

I don't need 500 words. Two will suffice.

It sucked.

Obviously, that isn't a very elegant way of stating it. Sorry. But maybe getting in the mud is the most-fitting way to describe what it was like for my city to, well, get in the mud.

I had to cut up wet and smelly carpet and carry it from the basement of my Cedar Rapids house during that miserable time for the city in June 2008. It wasn't because I lived in the flood zone. I live on a hill, actually, a mile-and-a-half from the Cedar River. It isn't the best location during ice storms, but it's a mighty safe harbor during a flood.

However, I foolishly hadn't made sure my sump pump was working back then, and a lot of rain fell on that June Thursday when the Cedar got completely out of control in my town. A neighbor generously loaned us a backup pump that night to prevent further damage. It was one of thousands of acts of kindness in the city and region during that time.

I knew I had no right to utter a peep of complaint about my inconvenience. Of course, it was easy to keep perspective then. People who lived in the flooded areas - including good friends of ours - were enduring real losses. Huge losses. Devastating losses.

I've lived in three of Cedar Rapids' four quadrants and on the edge of the other. I'd never felt any pull to move to the northwest side, but that's where my wife and I bought our first and current house in 2001, and that's remained our home. Neighborhoods I'd only occasionally passed through over the years quickly became familiar and fond to me. That includes the Time Check and Ellis Park areas.

First Street NW, which hugs the river, is a street I use every day when I go to and from work. It's nondescript. It has businesses and houses, though not nearly as many houses as it did before the flood. It's never been where the city's elite meet, which probably is why I kind of like it.

There was a man who sat outside his small house on that narrow street seemingly every night in the summer (and spring and fall) with a small fire going, just taking in the evening as the moon began to hang over the Cedar. Many is the time I wish I would have pulled over and struck up a conversation with him, learned his story. I hope that little fire is burning somewhere else.

On the other hand, it has truly been amazing to see how quickly and determinedly some people came back to flooded areas to salvage homes and businesses, be they in downtown or in the many other areas of Cedar Rapids pounded by the disaster.

Not everything came back quickly or even at all, of course. There were those who didn't have the funding or energy to rebuild what the flood stole. They can't be faulted if they read this special section and just sigh.

But the grimness of the first couple years after the flood seems to have yielded to those who wanted something better and helped make it happen. Cedar Rapids buckled, but it wasn't toppled.

I'll never forget that awful Thursday in 2008 when I saw people slowly and carefully carrying possessions across a flooded portion of O Avenue NW to vehicles on passable streets. I wrote this later that day:

Someone in a boat on O Avenue had a cat with him and was hollering to inquire if anyone was looking for it. A shirtless man hollered back excitedly. The cat was reunited with the man and his two dogs. This may sound ridiculous, but all four creatures seemed happy to see each other.

That was about as lighthearted as it got back then. Things have brightened since.

I thought Ellis Boulevard might become a ghost street in a ghost neighborhood. Which just goes to show you should believe in people, not ghosts.