Up a flooded creek without a paddle

At 45 degrees, the water began to tighten the muscles in his chest as he struggled weakly at his modified dog paddle. The term flash flood is used to alert residents to the potential for low-lying areas to be overcome with rain water that falls to quickly to be absorbed by the ground causing rising levels of flood waters.

Bert Erinson lived in a town in Arizona called Quartzsite between Phoenix and the California border. The chance of a flash flood was not taken seriously in this desert-land town. Even forecasts of rain were considered similar to bigfoot sightings. News reports had come in from Prescott that Chino Valley and Prescott Valley had experienced unusual weather patterns in the past few days, but so is the life of a valley town in some mountain ranges in the west. It was not unheard of for a valley town to have days of 80 degree sun baking weather to be hit in the middle of the night by snow fall from winds coming off the mountains.

Bert had moved back to Arizona after things back in the neighborhood in western Indiana near Terre Haute. He had lived there with his wife Erin for twelve years before Jonathan moved in and began buying up property. He and Erin had shopped feverishly when they were first married for what would be their first house together before deciding to buy into the Mayfair Meadows land development deal. They purchased a model home with two bathrooms and four bedrooms including a 2 car garage and a 1000 square foot kitchen with a built-in breakfast bar. It was a good sized home for a first home and they got such a deal, they never thought twice about the deal. They couldn't pass it up even if they did not own the land they lived on just like the rest of their neighbors.

After two years of marriage and multiple decor changes, Jonathan Kine from GEB Investments suddenly knocks on the door and offers the couple a half million dollars for their home. His firm was investing in building a large shopping complex south of Terre Haute and not far from the populous in the Rea Park Golf Course area with the majority of the money. He gives them 30 days to decide or be evicted since his investment company owns the actual plot of land under the house. The offer of money is being given to all of the home owners in the development as a sign of good faith and to keep angry headlines from dulling the shine on the potential money making venture.

Erin was set against selling and was prepared to retain a lawyer when Bert pushed her to reconsider. With the amount of money being offered, they could buy a larger home in one of the other suburbs, Bert argues.

"Emotions aside, a first home is a starter home," Bert said. "We've come to appreciate what it's like to live together and the small quarrels we have while trying to keep up payments on our mortgage. Isn't it time to 'move on up to the east side' as it were? We could live near the golf course and our finances could go towards only the extravagances we want instead of concerning ourselves with paying the bills. We could be free to live carefree the we we've always wanted. Just you and me hanging out by a nice pool. We could play some golf and take vacations whenever we want to."

"Or we could stay here and have a home that we earned for ourselves over years of school and career moves to bring us to where we are today. I don't want those carefree days as you call them. They were empty times. I want to move on. I want to grow up. I want to pay bills and work hard to support children. Plan for our future. If we have time to golf on occasion, we can do that, but I like my life of responsibility."

"That's a bit selfish. We have a unique opportunity and I'm going to take it. I don't want to pull rank on this call, but I am the primary on our mortgage since you were still finishing up school and had no income to support the mortgage. Start looking into a set of clubs, because we are going to accept that man's offer."

"That doesn't sound like the man I want to spend my life with or raise a family with. What happened to the guy that just wanted to finish his degree, start a life with me and enjoy the simple things. Why does the offer of money have to change all of that?"

"That guy in college was on a scholarship. He didn't have loans to worry about after school and didn't realize how slow promotions come in business around here. He thought he would have it easier than we do. Right now, you are the only part of this family I want to worry about."

"What do you mean by that?" Erin grasped for the stairway railing behind her dramatically. Bert thought she was being over-dramatic to guilt him into giving in to her. Her tone had begun to waver a bit like it did when she was getting angry with him. A tone he had grown to recognize far to often in their struggle to make ends meet in far too many months over the past few years.

"I mean that this is not the time to consider children. If we can't discuss this house sale business rationally, how can I consider having a child with you. In fact, I'm not that crazy about the idea of adding diapers and clothes they will outgrow in a matter of months to our already fleeting cash flow. So forget children." His relationship had blossomed on a different set of three words. These three would throw the rest of them away.

Erin walked out of the house slamming the door behind her. She would not return until late that night. That would be the last night they slept in the same bed much less the same bedroom. Erin did eventually retain that lawyer but in the arena of divorce. She was against the idea of the sale, but was entitled to half of the outcome after Bert had forced her from a home she had grown to love for money.

A few months after the divorce was finalized, Bert gave up his studio apartment in Terre Haute, as he was transferred to the Phoenix office. Due to the amount of travel now required between his office in Phoenix and a major client site in Palm Springs, Bert bought a small house in Quartzsite roughly half way between each city. His one bedroom one bathroom ranch style home was enough for what it was to him. A storage space for a bed and clothing. He ate on the road every meal now. His refrigerator had become a cold box for storing rancid milk and bad lunch meats.

Erin contacted him a year ago today about her new life. She still lived in Spring Hill and had even bought a house from Jonathan Kine in a new development he called the Lincoln Estates. After 8 years as a divorcee, Bert was now acutely aware that the business world in Indiana had caused him stress in his marriage and forced him to try and accept a money laden deal that ended up being pointless for the developer and investment firm. A couple days after he and Erin each moved to their respective home after the divorce, she called him to let him know they were tearing down the house on Wednesday and wanted to know if he would come with her to watch it happen. She hoped it would be cathartic, but they ended up arguing the entire time.

The shopping mall plans that had forced them from their home had never come to fruition. The zoning fell through and GEB ended up scrapping those plans and redeveloping the area into multiple small streets ending in cul de sacs formed like the spokes of a wheel with a large community building joining each of the street ends to join the home owners into one large community. His plan would double the number of people living in Spring Hill and maybe even bring better schools into the area for her future children. This was how she told him she had remarried and was pregnant.

Erin had begun dating her divorce attorney after Bert moved away and, as it turns out, the lawyer had also worked with Jonathan Kine on his zoning troubles. Thanks to his efforts, Eric Shine, had acquired one of the new homes in the new development for cheap and asked Erin to marry him when he brought her to see his new home.

They had been married a year when Erin called Bert and were now pregnant. She was on leave from her job at the university while she prepared for the birth of a son. She said it had all happened so fast and things were going so well for both of them now. She had let go of her resentment for how she and Bert had parted and wanted to wish him the best in his life. It was unfortunate the Bert's life was not going well, but he wasn't about to let her know how miserable he was. She may have let go of the resentment, but he had not.

He was prepared to explain how his life was now everything he had always wanted it to be hoping to end his sentences with things like "now that I don't have to support you" or "now that I don't have your negative attitude keeping me down", but was interrupted by a knock at Erin's door by another pregnant neighbor. She let him go and asked him to call her back sometime and to keep in touch. he would do neither before the news reports began coming in of the earthquakes in Mexico that sheared the peninsula including Cancun, where they had honeymooned, into the gulf. They estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people died and many were pulled under when the land mass sunk by a vortex effect by the suddenness of the sinking.

Two months later, electric generators in London exploded across the country leaving a million people without power. one month later, the power was still not repaired when the markets in Hong Kong shut down abruptly due to a sudden explosion somewhere underground that caused an aeration effect sinking much of Hong Kong's marketplace under a 1000 feet of dirt and soot.

Bert ran through some of these well known stories now as he struggled to keep his chin above water with his toes perched cautiously on the roof of his now submerged home in Quartzsite.