Wen Grandma Was A Little Girl - #12

Story #12 - The rapids – rain, storms and flashfloods!

About 5 miles out of town where we lived was a canyon area that had a stream running through it and some low waterfalls. In the summer it would get around 100 degrees and it got hot! A lot of people, like us, would go to the falls to swim, cool off and have fun. We would pack a picnic lunch and spend several hours there. It was the most fun! We really looked forward to going there. Usually you would see some of your friends with their families up there.

The mountains were probably about 20 miles away. When there were clouds rolling in and once in awhile you could hear thunder and feel the breeze down in the valley where we lived, you could smell the rain on the wind. Usually that meant the mountains got the rain and we got the dust! But that first breeze with the rain smell in the air was so wonderful! When you have arroyos (smaller and lower than a canyon) and canyons, you have to be careful. It may be dry down in the valley and the gulches and arroyos and small canyons, but not for long when it rained in the mountains. So you usually went to those when the mountains didn’t have rain.

One afternoon we were at the falls and enjoying ourselves. I was probably about 12 years old. We noticed that clouds had formed in the mountains so my folks were anxious that we all get out of the water and get our stuff and head out of there. I was the last one to cross over the water. I was still on the wrong side where the falls were, away from my family. We heard this ‘roaring’ sound thundering down the canyon. My parents yelled, ‘Diana get across now!’ Just as I was hiking up the side and out there came the muddy water and it crashed down! I was almost caught in a ‘flashflood’ of muddy water and sticks and debris.

When a flashflood came it took everything in its path with it. The rains would come down and the rivers would fill and come rushing down the mountainside down to the valley below. That scared me! I could have got caught in it and that would have been the end of me! I would have drowned and been carried a few miles down the creek to the gulch below. We looked up the stream and we saw muddy water and debris rushing by. We got in the car quick and made a run for it to the road. Where the road was you went a few miles and then had to cross through a gulch and up out onto the road again. By the time we got to the gulch it had less than a foot of water. So we hurried across. I remember saying a prayer to myself being so ‘thankful’ we all made it out of there.

One time in the paper we read about a car carried downstream and after one of the big rains came and whoever was in that car was driving through the gulch and they made it out of the car but the car went on down the creek bed.

About 15 miles above our town the highway had big ‘dips’ in it. It was above a town called Carrizozo. They had signs along the side of the road just before you got to the dips. They would say, ‘Dip’ and some would say ‘Dangerous -watch for flood waters.’ It was not a joke. When the rains came and it flowed down into the valley and washed across those ‘dips’, you stayed out of there. Those dips were 6-feet deep and would fill with water and a car wouldn’t make it through.