Destruction, hope, wedding, Nirvana

I got a call about 6 months ago from a friend of mine who was getting married. He asked if I would be his best man, I said sure. There wasn't even a doubt that I'd miss the wedding, but with such an honor I would definitely be there. My next question was "Do I need to send the RSVP back?"

I don't know, I've been in 7 weddings in my adult life, and I didn't remember having to send an RSVP to them before, but the others had always been near where I lived. This one was out in Cedar Rapids Iowa. About 3 weeks before the wedding, the major flooding hit the city of Cedar Rapids, 1300 square blocks ended up under water. 9.something square miles, all of the homes, businesses, churches, all of it underwater. My friend took me downtown to see some of the damage and run errands for the wedding. There were single story houses which didn't look too bad, and when I said that my friend pointed out the water line. You couldn't see the water line on the single story homes but you could on the 2 story homes. The water was above the roof peaks of the single story homes. That put a little dent into my reality, being born and raised on the left coast all I had seen was the devastation caused by mud slides of the early 80's, the earthquakes and the fires. All of these except the fires happen in an instant, you don't see them coming. I couldn't fathom the thought of watching your house being slowly devoured over 3 days by the local river.

As we drove on I started noticing the large red X's on the doors of the houses. Like any inquisitive kid, I asked, what's the X's for. That means that the houses are condemned. We drove through block after block of red X's, and in front of the houses with the red X's were piles of stuff. People's stuff, people's lives, everything that they had, everything that they collected, passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, everything that their kids made for them at school, all of it put out onto the street side, as so much as refuse... That really puts things into perspective, if you only had 15 minutes to get out, what would you grab? Would you grab the jewelry and leave the cats? Would you grab the pictures and leave the jewelry?

Driving farther down the street, we came to the "downtown" area, it was eerie, quiet, no hustle and bustle. Buildings were boarded up, glass was broken, inventory was out on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up and junked. Then I saw it, a sign spray painted on the plywood covering some windows:

"Bent but not broken"
"We Survive"

Then I started seeing the people who I had been missing before, they were all banding together, working to put their community back the way it was, or better.

I asked my friend, what about looters? Thinking of the 2005 tragedy with Katrina. Not one instance of looting, not one case of vandalism, and one of the local home improvement stores, Menard's, sold the shipment of generators that they just got in for cost. $500 instead of the $2500 that they usually go for. How is it that catastrophic failure, or natural disaster brings out the best in people?

Well, after all of that, the wedding was moved twice, the first place was a park which was destroyed next to the river. The other place had become the make shift shelter for people displaced, and the final place became the garden of Eden because so many people came together to help them pull the wedding together that the hall transformed almost effortlessly. The wedding was beautiful, the bride was blushing and the groom made sure that she knew that he wasn't going any where, she was afraid that he was going to bolt before the wedding.

Oh yeah, Nirvana, I like Kurt Cobain... to a point, my friend is a true fan of Nirvana, to the point where he had the last Rolling Stone cover of Kurt Cobain tattooed to his back and the dvd choices? You could watch Nirvana, or Nirvana, or Nirvana unplugged 1 or 2, then there was the other Nirvana dvd. And if it wasn't Nirvana you ask? Then it was a game of the Hobbit on the Playstation 2... I love my friends, but I had to come home early... and of course I get yelled at when I come through the bedroom door. I guess the damn cats were playing kitty-pult against the bedroom door to force it open so that they could sneak in. I caught it from Mie, but then she figured out that I wasn't a figment and fell back to bed.. :)