5
Jamaican Rum that I’ve only been able to find
for sale in that store, although it turned out it
was out of stock at the time.
By the time we made our purchases and
walked outside, the rain was just outrageous.
We noticed from the shelter of the awning at
VINO that the roads intersecting with Main
Street were now shallow rivers with each
emptying right onto Main Street. Looking
down the hill toward the river, we saw waiters
dressed in their white shirts, black pants and
ties maneuvering sand bags around the doors
of the French restaurant below us, no more
than 100 yards on the east side of the road.
Water was accumulating just below them and
more water; hundreds of gallons a second,
if I had to guess, were coming down the hill
with no signs of letting up. It was clear that
whatever brave effort they put forth would
be woefully inadequate; a fact confirmed in
the aftermath, when we learned that both
the basement and the lower five feet of the
first story of that building was completely
inundated.
We watched a slender, barefoot young
woman walk up the hill and go around the
corner of the building to our right. We guessed
from her clothes that she was a restaurant
worker from down the hill, going to her car
in the lot where most people working Main
Street and I had also parked my Honda. My
son Thomas noticed she had reversed her
course and walked back around the building
rather quickly and back down the hill. It
seemed odd to Thomas that she walked back
down to where it was obviously flooding by
this time, so he walked around the building
the same direction as she had without either
my son Aaron or I noticing he was gone.
Suddenly, Thomas burst around the corner,
entered under the awning and said rather
loudly “We’ve got to get out of here and right
now!” We didn’t ask him why, but followed him
back around the building and past an historical
stone structure at the edge of the parking lot
and saw that the water was streaming over
an earthen bank and onto this lot which sat
down in a natural depression with only one
way out up a steep hill. The edge of a widening
pool of water was around 15 feet behind the
rear bumper of my Civic. We ran through the
now fast moving muddy water and got to
the car which by now had a water level just
around a half inch below the left rocker panel
and halfway up the front tires. I yanked the
keys out of my shorts, started the engine and
backed up as fast as I could dare and turned
left to go out of the lot.
As we moved forward the water was
deepening and coming over the entrance
ramp around 40 feet ahead of us. It became
quite an effort to move through the water
which was now heading straight into the
grill and I felt sure we would stall, but I kept
a steady pace without much acceleration, in
the face of Thomas yelling “Go! Go!” Having no
real experience driving through floodwater
thank God, I thought it best to drive like you
would on black ice; i.e., no sharp acceleration
or hard braking. We trudged on through, all
the while just waiting for either the force of
the water or its depth to float us off into the
newly-formed lake below us; but we got to the
10 or 12% grade climb up the entrance and
slowly moved out of the lot.
The force of the water by that time was
so great that an airborne “waterfall” formed
where the stream flew off the road surface
before it started over and down the entrance
ramp; with the result that the water was now
coming straight down on my car’s hood. One
last steady press on the pedal and we dipped
over the edge of the ramp and onto the main
road leading to Ellicott City’s Main Street and
turned right to head for U.S. 40 as quickly and
safely as we could.
As I glanced back at the lot, there were a
few dozen cars and a utility van still parked,
some with their hoods now covered with
muddy water; however, there wasn’t a single
person in those vehicles or on foot in view.
On that night the local news reported that