A vehicle makes it way through high water on West Vienna Street in Anna last Saturday evening. At the time, rain was falling out of the sky in proverbial buckets. Buckets would play a critical role in how your writer spent part of Saturday evening with his bride. By the way, if you think the picture is a little blurry and fuzzy, that's because conditions were a whole lot blurry and fuzzy at the time.

It was a dark and stormy night...really, it was

Please read this. . .

It was a dark and stormy night. Really. It was. And a dark and stormy afternoon. And a dark and stormy evening. 

Unless you happened to be hibernating, you probably saw that it rained a little bit last weekend in Union County. While the deluge wasn't quite of Biblical proportions, it sure was impressive.

The Other Half and yours truly ventured out into the downpour last Saturday afternoon to attend a wedding. A couple of the many rounds of torrential rains which fell on our neck of the woods happened to fall on the venue where the wedding was celebrated. During the course of the ceremony, I think the rain was coming down so hard that we could hear it on the roof over our heads.

The young couple who exchanged their vows no doubt will have some very special memories of a very wet wedding day. Little did we know at the time, but the two of us would get to share a bit of a special memory of our own later in the evening.

After the wedding ceremony, the two of us waded through puddles and the water coming from above back to our vehicle. We motored home. She got to stay inside, where it was nice and dry.

Yours truly, on the other hand, had a photo opportunity in metropolitan Anna. Specifically, at Anna-Jonesboro Community High School. The journey from home to Anna was pretty much uneventful. Rain was falling. Little did I know at the time, but soon, the rain would really be falling.

At about the time I arrived at the high school, Mother Nature had unleashed her wet and damp fury. The rain was coming down in sheets. Visibility, at least during this round of the waterfall from above, was pretty much down to zero. The situation was somewhat disconcerting. I think it was just a preview.

After finishing up with the photo opportunity at the school, I decided it would be best to try to get back home ASAP, which, in this case, was an acronym for quickly. 

Turned out that getting anywhere quickly last Saturday evening was not going to be possible. 

First up, part of West Vienna Street in Anna turned out to be Union County's newest river. And West Vienna Creek was just a tributary of the new Old U.S. Route 51 River. 

I'm not sure that I've ever seen so much water on the highway between Anna and Cobden as I experienced last Saturday. In some places, the pavement pretty much vanished. 

And the rain kept on coming.

The water came down in sheets between Anna and Cobden. Motoring through such conditions was, in a word, scary. 

Most of the other folks who had to be on the roads at the time joined your writer in driving slowly. Honestly, we didn't have much of a choice. 

The deluge was still falling by the time I made it to our hometown. That way, I was able to be home when the power went away at about 6 o'clock Saturday evening. 

We try to be prepared for such situations. We've got a new batch of flashlights, which are really bright, and plenty of candles. Thankfully, it wasn't very cold.

Flashlights and candles weren't much help for one special challenge we faced in the midst of the dark and stormy night.

We have a sump pump in the what passes for a basement in our humble, and venerable, abode. The sump pump quietly sits in a hole in our basement, and efficiently goes about its business of removing water when such work is needed. 

The sump pump is a very important part of out lives, because the furnace and the water heater, along with other important stuff, are in our basement. Without the sump pump, this stuff could get wet, which would not be good.

In order to function properly, well in order to function at all, the sump pump requires electricity. The electricity went away Saturday evening while Mother Nature was having fun with her big squirt guns.. Hence, the sump pump went on what amounts to a break.

So, The Other Half and yours truly got to spend part of our Saturday evening removing water from the sump pump hole. One bucket at a time.

The power came back on after an absence of about an hour and a half. By the time the power returned, we pretty well had the sump pump hole emptied. Oh, well.

I couldn't help but think that on our wedding day, I'm pretty sure that we gave no thought about what we would do when, on a dark and stormy night somewhere down the road, in our house in the village that we hadn't even heard of, the power would go out and the sump pump would stop working. Such special memories we make on the journey.

The Gazette-Democrat

112 Lafayette St.
Anna, Illinois 62906
Office Number: (618) 833-2158
Email: news@annanews.com

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