Through a Glass Darkly for March 27, 2008

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Mar 27, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:55 a.m.

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Upon arriving home from vacation a week ago, I felt a sense of relief when my headlights reassured me that my house appeared OK.

There’s truth to the idea that the more people own the more they have to worry about; but I don’t worry about my house when I’m on a trip. As I drive home, however, a sense of concern sprouts as my driveway comes into view.

I know that in these days of cell phones that a dozen people would have called me if a meteor had plummeted through the roof, fire had razed my house or a tornado had transported it to Kansas.

Still it was good to drive up and find no broken windows, no tree gouging the shingles and no alarm blaring.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I breathed it too soon.

I only made it as far as the kitchen before I heard an ominous sound. Water was running somewhere.

When I opened the door to the cellar — yes, I live in Louisiana and have a cellar — I found 5 feet of water shining up at me. Ice chests, life vests and everything else that could float swirled slowly.

I made it just far enough down the stairs to crouch and see water spewing from a broken pipe.

Oddly enough, my first thought wasn’t for the stuff that was ruined or the hassle that I knew was going to last several days. My first dark thought was that I wasn’t going to get the hot shower I’d been thinking about in airports, planes and cars all day.

For a moment I was tempted to pretend I hadn’t seen the devastation, run upstairs and stand in my tub while warm spray washed the miles off my body. Of course, the saner side of my brain took hold.

I flipped off electrical breakers, including, with great reluctance, the one to the hot water heater. Why had I decided the cellar was an ideal place to put the hot water heater? Better yet, why had I built a cellar on my Acadian-style home?

Outside I dug out the long unused valve that turns off the water line. I came away muddy, which wasn’t what I wanted when I had just turned off the hope of a shower.