When Jack Mayhew left Los Angeles for his grand adventure of Illinois and airwaves, he thought that he would be standing on solid ground, topographically and figuratively. He was wrong on both counts.
They were only two months into their relationship when, at Quincy Oktoberfest, Julia told him of the 1813 area earthquake and the river running backwards, that it was the biggest shake in the history of the continental United States, Did he know they were currently standing at Ground Zero and the Big One was way overdue? Jack didn’t, and was so shocked by this revelation that he drained his plastic cup and made a beeline to the nearest ticket booth to buy six more bierkarten.
Since Angie’s death, it seemed to the deejay that his life was being lived inside a washing machine, but now in 2008, after fifteen years, the ten thousand goddamn stages of grief seemed to be set on a little lower spin-cycle. It had helped, mercifully, that father-in-law passed away in his sleep back in January, 2006; mother-in-law, in the Carthage hospital from a stroke a year later, because they themselves had become Louis Burgs--waiting at the front door every weekday at 3:00 to welcome their granddaughter home from school.
Julia had to cook for them (which they picked around on, uninterested in any food that wasn’t sugary, like kids), shop for them (we told you to never get paper towels with printed borders on them!) and clean for them (missed a spot!). Physically, they had taken their one-way excursion to Burnside; spiritually, maybe they were united with the rest of the family reposing in the cemetery—living in another dimension, in heaven, or on Kolob.
Life was, tolerable, like holidays, now.
2
Hernando de Soto, explorer and conquistador who led Spanish expeditions through Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula, and who helped Pizzarro conquer the Inca in Peru, was the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River. On March 18, 1543, he and his men were stranded at the confluence of the Mississippi River and Arkansas River because of an ensuing flood that lasted over a month. Twenty-five major Mississippi River floods have occurred since.
Nearly 500 years after de Soto’s experience, above average rainfall and below average temperatures beginning in the summer of 1992 resulted in above-normal soil moisture and reservoir levels in the Upper Mississippi River basin. This weather pattern persisted throughout autumn, and during the winter of 1992-93, the region experienced heavy snowfall. Storms, persistent and repetitive in nature during the late spring and summer, drenched the Upper Midwest with voluminous rainfall between April 1 and August 31, 1993. Water, water everywhere.
The ensuing flooding occurred along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries from April to October 1993. It was among the most costly and devastating floods to ever occur in the United States, with $15 billion in damages. The hydrographic basin affected over 745 miles in length and 435 miles in width, totaling about 320,000 square miles. Within this zone, the flooded area totaled around 30,000 square miles and was the worst such U.S. disaster since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 as measured by duration, area inundated, persons displaced, crop and property damage, and number of record river levels.
On October 7, 103 days after its banks began to overflow, the Mississippi River at St. Louis finally dropped below flood stage. In the aftermath, approximately 100,000 homes were destroyed, 15 million acres of farmland inundated, and the entire towns of Valmeyer, Illinois, and Rhineland, Missouri, were relocated to higher ground. The floods cost 32 lives officially, however, a more likely target is suspected to be around 50 people. Even after the water was gone, large amounts of silt still covered the farmlands and homes.
This was supposed to have been a rare “500-year flood,” the area safe from liquid devastation again until the year 2493.
Not quite. For the second time in 15 years, the Mississippi River massively burst its banks in the spring of 2008, causing many more billions of dollars’ worth of destruction. The inundation of 2-5 million acres of farmland pushed corn and soybean prices to (then) record levels in the wake of drowned crops. On April 22, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) measured the largest water volume on the lower Mississippi River since 1973, with a flow of 1.8 million cubic feet per second, or enough water to fill more than 120 Olympic-size swimming pools per minute. It was the second largest flood ever recorded on the Upper Mississippi.
The next-door county to Hancock is Henderson—a levee here failed, sending a tsunami of water across 10,000 acres of prime farmland. The break prompted further evacuations of area residents and forced the closure of the Great River Bridge that connects Gulfport to Burlington, Iowa via U.S. Highway 34. The governor of Illinois activated 1,100 Illinois National Guard troops to help threatened communities and Illinois prison inmates were assisting with sandbagging, too. Many of the homes along the poor pool in Dallas City were underwater again and the Fort Madison swing bridge was closed for a time.
In 1852, an engineer named Charles Ellet Jr. wrote a report for the federal government in which he warned that confining the Mississippi River to narrow channels would cause the water to rise higher and flow faster. Regardless of his and other 19th century warnings, levees quickly became the go-to solution for controlling the river.
After the great flood of 1927, Congress required the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the massive system of levees and dams up and down the river. A study published in 2018 attempted to quantify the effect of those levees and dams on flooding. The authors examined river-adjacent sediment and tree rings going back 500 years and found that floods have become significantly more severe and frequent in the last 150 years. Increased precipitation from climate change, combined with the effects of levees and dams, have elevated the current flood hazard to levels that are unprecedented within the past five centuries.
3
Now it was back inside the Magtag. Fatboy’s Quincy audiologist was giving him an earful. “I’m guessing you failed to heed my recommendation three years ago,” he said tartly, examining the audiogram that now zig-zagged downward in the lower frequencies.
“Kind of,” Jack hem-hawed, loudly (an early sign of hearing loss is “bullhorning”, so talkers can hear themselves). He shrugged. “I showed your volume recommendations to Z. He crumpled up the paper, tossed it in the trash and called me a rock-and-roll fucking pussy, pardon my español. But, in his benevolence, has allowed the studio monitors to be pegged at decibels akin to a jackhammer, rather than Spinal Tap’s 11 for the six hours I’m around.” He showed Dr. Hanson the popcorn ball-looking note he had fished from the wastebasket.
“Well, the good news is that your Meniere’s seems to have abated. Are you still experiencing vertigo?”
“Thank god, no, not once in the past couple of years. But, Dr. Hanson, it’s weird. I seem to get confused figuring out what direction sounds are coming from. I have to literally crane my head 180°. I feel like a rubber-necked chicken, having to look around like I’m lost and stupid. It’s embarrassing. And music. Everything coming through my headphones sounds...mono. I thought it was just my cans, but I had the same problem when I tried on another pair.”
“Actually, Jack, it’s not weird at all. You need a hearing aid. That’s why sounds seem to be unidimensional.”
Dr. Hanson might as well have told him he needed a lobotomy.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” he blurted. “My ears shot craps that fast? Oh! My! God!....” It took another few minutes to soak in. “So this hearing aid will be for my right ear, right?”
Dr. Hanson had another shock to dole out. “No. To preserve your hearing in your left. Your right ear has mostly ceased functioning.”
The silence that followed seemed appropriate with the news, especially from Jack’s dearly-departed dead hearing organ when he asked, “So, what do I do now?”
“You need to preserve the rest of your hearing. Did you ever think of changing careers? Retire the big guy?”
“And do what?” Jack’s growing frustration was evident. “The country’s in the middle of a recession bordering on economic collapse, Dr. Hanson. Companies are shedding jobs like we shed clothes come summer. Local unemployment stands at 12%. Hell, advertisers are dropping like flies because nobody has any money--or a job--to buy stuff with. Where the hell would I find a gig in this environment? And who in the hell would hire somebody who’s half-deaf?”
Ka-boom! There it was!—the D-word that Dr. Hanson did not actually come out and mention by name: half-deaf. For some goddamn reason, Jack thought of Cyclops with glaucoma; Captain Ahab attempting one-legged jumping-jacks on the Pequod’s poop-deck. Half--less than whole. Damaged goods. “Fuck!”
And then, to add an encore, there was the cost of the doctor visits and the device itself— costly, because insurance doesn’t pay for hearing aids. Jack had to suffer muffled hearing for another six months until they saved the money for one; his mother, the wealthy farmer’s widow who was getting government subsidies not to farm, told him simply that he better start saving up his pennies.
Jack’s left ear finally got amplified; he sucked up the ordeal like he had during other times of thin, thinner, and gruel, and was the pro, hiding his hearing device underneath his graying hair and headphones. “Fuck Z, too!”
4
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline observed in national economies globally that occurred between 2007 and 2009. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
The causes include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005-2012. When prices fell and homeowners began to abandon their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed securities held by investment banks declined in 2007-2008, causing several to collapse or be bailed out in September 2008. This 2007-2008 phase created a subprime mortgage crisis.
The global recession that followed resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. To tourniquet the money flow loss, the U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 in October. This law included $700 billion in funding for the “Troubled Assets Relief Program” (TARP). Following a model initiated by the United Kingdom bank rescue package, $205 billion was used in the Capital Purchase Program to lend funds to banks in exchange for dividend-paying preferred stock.
On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an $787 billion stimulus package with a broad spectrum of spending and tax cuts. Over $75 billion of the package was specifically allocated to programs which help struggling homeowners. This program was referred to as the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.
The Great Recession had a significant economic and political impact on the United States. While the recession technically lasted from December 2007-June 2009, many important economic variables did not regain pre-recession levels until 2011-2016. For example, real GDP fell $650 billion (4.3%) and did not recover its $15 trillion pre-recession level until Q3 2011.
Household net worth, which reflects the value of both stock markets and housing prices, fell $11.5 trillion (17.3%) and did not regain its pre-recession level of $66.4 trillion until Q3 2012. The number of persons with jobs (total non-farm payrolls) fell 8.6 million (6.2%) and did not regain the pre-recession level of 138.3 million until May 2014 The unemployment rate peaked at 10.0% in October 2009 and did not return to its pre-recession level of 4.7% until May 2016.
The distribution of household incomes in the United States became more unequal during the post-2008 economic recovery. Income inequality in the United States grew from 2005 to 2012 in more than two-thirds of metropolitan areas. Median household wealth fell 35% in the US, from $106,591 to $68,839 between 2005 and 2011.
For the first time in American economic history, a lower standard-of-living from the previous generation was being realized. The working and middle classes were feeling the squeeze and manifesting one’s destiny was becoming much more difficult. Nothing had trickled down as Reagan had promised.
Conservative talk-show nuts and loudmouth politicians seized on this decline, caused partly by Republican lawmaker’s interference and negligence, and began to gaslight Saint Ronnie’s pessimistic remark in his 1981 Inaugural Address that “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem”--especially after America elected its first black president on November 4, 2008.
5
The Mayhews enjoyed a quiet ham and yam (with a heaping side-dish of guilt) Thanksgiving dinner, thankful for Julia’s job (Jack’s, not so much), for each other, and for Barack Obama being elected president three weeks before.
They had met the Obamas back when he was campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat back in 2004. It was a sterling summer afternoon in Oquawka’s town park and Jack wanted to get autographed copies of the electrifying 17-minute speech that he had made at the Democratic National Convention just a month earlier that made him famous. With no heirs, he wasn’t doing it for history, but for eBay some day.
After Jack and Julia got the copies, and collected various campaign memorabilia (and more potential eBay gold some day), they headed towards the parking lot, but stopped. Off to the left standing under a shade tree they noticed a statuesque and bored-looking woman watching her husband campaigning with a cool detachment. “Let’s go ask,” Julia whispered.
They approached her with a pen and an Obama for US Senate bumper sticker, and asked if she please might sign it so they would have the autograph of the first Black First Lady in American history. Michelle Obama looked at them quizzically for a beat or two, then threw back her head in a gale of laughter.
“Nobody ever asks for my autograph,” she told them, truly seeming surprised by the request. The Mayhews shared a moment of levity with her and, as they chit-chatted, noticed that she was walking with them to their car! They had been yakking away as if they were life-long friends!
Now, in a commercial break during another Lions’ loss, Jack took a wistful look over at Betz’ empty house, remembering their friend and the last Thanksgiving meal they had sent over many years before, and saw activity across the way.
The late November sun, a weakling unable to put up a decent fight with the clouds all day, was beating an early retreat into the night as he watched an older model pickup, banged-up and cratered like the moon, pull up to the back door, heaped with furniture. A younger-looking couple carrying two bundles of joy jumped out of the literal rustbucket and walked into the house. The kitchen light came on. It looked like new neighbors. Great! Something else to be thankful for.
6
Methankswiwi
The following, copied verbatim and in its entirety, was prepared by the Manataka American Indian Council Introduction for Teachers:
1637 Pequot Massacre: The Real Story of the Annual U.S. Thanksgiving
Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And perhaps that did happen—once.
The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.
But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boatload. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.
In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared “A Day Of Thanksgiving” because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.
Cheered by their “victory,” the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with as many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.
Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of “thanksgiving” to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts where it remained on display for 24 years.
The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.
This story doesn’t have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won’t ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They also took time out to say “thank you” to the Creator for all their blessings.
7
Thanksgiving Day, ironically enough, was the only holiday in which Denna Webber shut the kitchen down and entertained no guests. This had always been her and her husband’s holiday to spend alone, and give God thanks for everything good and gracious, especially for the heavy-yielding crops Ben fielded this year. With both sets of parents deceased and no kids, and worse, no grandkids, they had their ritual: a quiet brunch, noonish, then her up to Iowa City for the Black Friday frenzy at Coralville Mall.
Part of the ritual they developed early on was that Deena would get a room at the Ramada for the weekend, alone. It gave her time to get all her Christmas shopping done at once, and give her a chance to recharge and refresh for the Keep’s busiest time of year.
Ben, bored as hell the first year at the mall—doubly bored the second—decided the third year to stay home, and volunteer, very gladly, to put up the outside Christmas decoration according to his wife’s very specific and detailed notes and drawings.
It was good with her that he stayed home, as he slowed her down anyway when she was threading through the crowd fighting to get to the next big discounted crumb before the rest of the ants got to it. It was the one and only weekend since second grade that they were not together. And it was okay--they were good for another year. They would not cancel their traditions just because they were now proprietors of the Captain’s Keep Bed & Breakfast.
Deena packed all her stuff for efficient speed-shopping and grabbed her Coach wallet and her suitcase; Ben grabbed the ladder, tool belt, and a kiss and a hug. “Be good, honey,” he admonished with a wink and a smile, playfully. “Drive carefully and stay safe. And please… go easy on the credit cards this year,” a directive he did not expect her to follow in the least. “Methihkwiwi. Love you, Scarlet.”
“What’s that you say, Ben?”
“I said, I’ll miss you this weekend. Love you, Scarlet.”
“You too, Ben.”
8
Besides the long-term events Mother Nature can throw at us---500-year floods every twenty years and earthquakes, let’s say--she can also be a fickle bitch in the short term. Midwesterners especially know this.
Deena had a grand Black Friday, shopping in shirtsleeve weather of 62°. By the time she got back to her room, though, it was just a couple degrees above freezing and sleeting. Even the clownish mid-market weatherman underestimated the snowstorm that was raging from Cedar Rapids south to the Missouri border. Overnight, the area received nine inches, impeding traffic, but not her Christmas shopping. By Sunday morning, the roads were clear, the car packed like Santa’s sleigh, and Deena headed home.
She knew something was off when she turned into the long, unplowed, driveway. Odd, she thought to herself, he usually clears it before the snow even stops. The grader must have broke down, I’m sure Ben’s working on it.
She came in driving slowly; the rows of naked oaks made her apprehensive, as if their long, frozen branches were fingers pointing down at her, Grim Reaper-style. She parked and saw that the sidewalks weren’t even shoveled. Now she was getting a little more edgy. “It’s not like him to slack off like this.” Dee opened the door and kicked off her wet boots in the foyer. “Ben? Hello? You home?” No answer.
A hunt in each room turned up no husband. She called his cellphone, but got routed to voicemail. Now Deena was becoming more worrisome. She slipped her coat and boots back on and checked the outbuildings; pointless, she began to realize, because he would have heard the car pull in and would have helped her unpack the car.
His Cat Paw boot prints were imprinted in the snow nowhere, nor were there any other signs of any outdoor activity—until Deena turned the corner of the Keep’s backyard and noticed the half string of lights dangling from the roof, and their very tall ladder leaning backwards against a shattered atrium panel.
Deena’s perception of reality was beginning to shift, like a psychedelic just entering the bloodstream. The expanse of white was no longer a blanket of snow, but was becoming an empty void of nothingness that matched the sheet of sky, bleached of blue. Deena was numb to the cold, numb to the realization that something was very, very wrong as she slogged closer towards the courtyard they had built.
Then she saw Ben—or what she presumed to be Ben—a 6-foot, 4-inch human-shaped profile buried under all the white stuff, now soaked like a raspberry snow-cone, surrounded by lances and daggers of broken glass and animal tracks. It was apparent to her, even as the full effect of the Salvador Dali reality took hold, that he had fallen back while on the roof putting up the lights.
Dee bent down slowly, dreading to begin exhuming the lump underneath. She started at the feet, her horrific suspicions confirmed by the cat-paw bottomed-boots. Using her designer-gloved hands for a shovel, she moved up to his torso, or what was left of it. Norway rats had burrowed underneath, had chewed through his bloodied, tattered overalls, and left him looking like a turkey carcass after a Thanksgiving dinner, his muscles and meat stripped to bone. She moved up to his face—or what was left of it. Ben’s eyes were empty sockets, his nose, ears, and skin—tasty delicacies—stripped to his Carhardt’s neckline by a pack of starving Norway rats, big old Norway rats the size of dachshunds, his skull chiseled away by their sharp little Norway rat teeth.
ns 18.68.41.175da2
