Bob Collins
There is no high drama to tell you about on Riverview Circle today. People are sitting in garages with “hot dish” and BBQ and coffee and beer — as the Johnsons were doing at lunchtime, or standing in driveways at the Brummer household, or in the backyard kicking ice and shooting the breeze at the Morse home.
The Brummer’s railing on the stairs down to what once was — and will soon be again — their backyard, has reappeared.
An Excelsior firefighter, walking the dike, stopped to chat with Todd Morse and I awhile ago. He’s been here since Friday, staying at the high school, but mostly has been out in these neighborhoods. About three dozen firefighters from Carver County are here and most are going back tonight. Why? He has to go back to work tomorrow.
That’s the thing with the sacrifices many of the out-of-town volunteers; they’ve got real jobs to get back to on Monday. For this guy, it’ll be a long drive back, and a short night’s sleep.
I’m hearing more of that from residents now — talk of work and real life resuming.
Today, from what I hear, a resident from up the road took a kayak down the river. Three Coast Guard Sea Fury helicopters made sure he got the message.
Meanwhile, the furniture has been taken off the counters at Todd and Donna Morse’s house. It’s true that anything can still go wrong, but the reality is that the amount of pressure the water has exerted on this sandbag wall is markedly reduced.
The face of the neighborhood doesn’t tell the story of this week as well as the hands of the neighborhood. John’s are raw from 8 days of near-steady work.
Others have rings of Band Aids, the wounds of a battle nearly won. My hands are embarrassingly healthy.
I won’t be the one to jinx things by saying the ‘flood is over,’ because it certainly isn’t. But barring unforeseen events overnight, by tomorrow evening, I’ll probably be making the trip home, too.
Somewhere in the Morse house, there’s a bottle of champagne that will get opened when the water drops below 37 feet. The latest river projection suggests that will be sometime between 1 and 2 o’clock next Saturday afternoon.
