A Community Recovers

Note: This post was submitted by William N. Gallagher

I’m an infrequent visitor, now.  But, I was there when the 2008 floodwaters receded.  My parents lost their home, 92 19^th Avenue SW, Czech Village.  I was there with my brother, wife, and daughter trying to rescue what the flood had not destroyed.  We were on the street with the neighbors of that community.  And, we cried, and occasionally made fun of what nature had done.  More was lost than the homes.

I grew-up there alone with my brother.  Our 93-year-old mother was born in the 128-year-old house that had been in her family since 1888.  Five generations celebrated birthdays and holidays in those humble walls.  When I completed undergraduate school at the University of Iowa in 1972, I moved to the Twin Cities where I married and have a family of my own.  When our daughter was young, she would spend several weeks of the summer there with her grandparents.  She knew the house and the neighbors, too.

Some might see these neighbors as just people whose houses were destroyed by the flood, but they were more.  They were a community of caring people.  They understood what caring about the person next-door means. This loss cannot be totaled in dollars and cents.  It was demonstrated during the flood as Doug, across the street, helped to evacuate my aged-parents at 2:00 a.m. on June 11^th.  Doug told my brother, when we were all in the street with the debris, that our house was, “stinking up the neighborhood,” so we could all laugh instead of cry.  Last winter, when my father was in the hospital, they brought food to my parents.  Another neighbor left work, more than once, to take my mother to the hospital to see my father.  The spirit, generosity, and culture did not begin there recently, but was there for decades.

In my young adulthood, when I was discovering who I would become as an adult, my favorite novel was, You Can’t Go Home, Again, by Thomas Wolfe.  It is a novel about a young writer, from the South, attempting to establish himself in New York City.  I discovered you may not return home to live, but it is a part of you.  Much more than my speech is touched by an accent of that bilingual village, although people continue to comment that I am not from Minnesota when they first hear me speak.  They think I am from the East, but it is much more unique than there.

I use to walk the Village from 15^th Avenue SW to 21^st Avenue SW, between A and B Streets delivering my Cedar Rapids Gazette papers.  The paper was 45-cents-a-week then including Sundays.  We had to collect that amount from our customers weekly.  So, I knew my customers who included Ernie’s Tavern on the Avenue. There were names like Svera, Dostal, and Dvorak. I picked up my papers at Brink’s Drug Store, which hasn’t been in business for years.  It had a soda counter where my brother worked at one time.  Going early to wait for my papers, involved having a chocolate Coke or cherry phosphate.  It always meant listening to stories, as it was a gathering place, even if it was just another business owner coming in for a counter Bromo Seltzer.

Going to the Avenue occurred frequently as a child.  There were trips to the Me Too Grocery Store, and to Kosek’s 5-and-10-cents store for toys.  I was known by name at Sekora’s Bakery for the frequent purchase of 23-cent-round- rye that my Czech grandfather ate with soup.  On hot summer nights, we would ride our bikes to the Tastee Freez for an ice cream cone.

Many summer nights at home were spent playing “I Spy,” with my great-aunt, Fannie, who lived next door on C-Street and 19^th Avenue, or play ” Hide-and-Seek,” with our cousins who lived next to her.  Then, there was an empty lot where we played football and baseball.  It wasn’t a big lot so several times we broke windows in Aunt Fannie’s house.  I cut the grass and shoveled snow for a couple of widowed neighbors.  My pay would be a few dollars or my favorite, fresh-baked apple strudel.  The woman, who baked the strudel, in her late 90’s, shared with me her life story, too private to share here.

Another part of my childhood was in Time Check.  We lived there until I was two.  My grandmother, aunt, and cousin lived in that house.  I remember the house, but regrettably not the address.  It was within a block of the River, so it’s destroyed as well.  When I was going to Art School at the University of Iowa, I worked for several summers at Ellis Park.  I well-remember those people and events fondly too.  Once after playing golf at Ellis Park, a high school chum and I stopped at Wally’s A & W on Ellis Boulevard.  He was always playing pranks.  He yelled repeated into the speaker, ” We want Wally.”  As I remember, a large man came to the car and in a stern-voice said, ” I’m Wally, what do you want?”  My friend pointed to me.

Floods were different although threatening.  My mother lived, and the house, through the 1929 flood when there was three-feet of water in the first floor; but not two-three feet in the second floor bedrooms as in this flood.  Where I was a child, we would get water in the street and some in the basement. Dad would take the motor out of the furnace and we would take the water heater upstairs.  He would help the neighbors do the same.  Furniture went up on tables. My grandfather was evacuated to my aunt and uncles were my parents went during this flood.  I remember delivering my paper route in boots and 21^st Avenue being flooded.  People did not leave their homes.

Now that the house sits collapsing in on itself, and my elderly parents are living in Hamburg, Iowa with my brother, I wonder if I will go home, again.  Holidays will be elsewhere. Perhaps, in a year, the neighbors will meet somewhere for a reunion and celebration of what they were to one another.  I feel fortunate to have grown up there.

It is also my fondest hope that the City will dedicate a monument, not only to this historic area, but also to the heroic people who lived there.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cedar Rapids flood site used as template for wildfires approaching Californians
• Flood waters recede in two largest Iowa cities
• Grand Forks Herald editorial for Cedar Rapids: ‘After a flood, hard work gets results’
• FEMA Gets Better Grades in Iowa