The rain here in Hoosierville is just unbelievable. It will be scorching hot and suddenly we’ll have torrential downpours and flash floods and inches of rain. Seriously, there’s been some damaging flooding in a few areas. What a mess.

We don’t have much of a place to park, and so I park my car in the drain area next to our driveway (I let my wife park hers in the driveway). We’re at the bottom of the hill. During one of these recent little floods my car interior was moistened by the rising floodwaters!!

This made me grievous. On Monday I rolled the windows down, hoping that the scorching noonday sun and stout breeze would reduce the sodden environment inside my car.

Which is all fine and good, except that I forgot about it that night and went to bed without rolling the windows up.

And was awakened around 2 in the morning by some exceedingly loud thunder and retina-searing flashes of lightning right in the backyard.

And I mean right in the backyard. Man it was loud. And if you’re oblivious to hints and foreshadowing, by this time it was raining buckets. My heart sank.

I like my car. It is an amazing machine. It is a Ford. It deserves to be treated better than I have been treating it.

I strode purposefully out into the deluge to see if I could rescue my car. The lightning lit up the neighborhood, revealing a forlorn Taurus poking up like a maroon island in the middle of a swirling sea. An island with windows, windows that were lowered all the way down. The water was not only backed up in the drain area, it was clear out on the road, covering most of the corner we live on.

I took off my shoes and waded out into the roiling tide. I opened the door and sat in the soaked driver’s seat. The entire interior was wet, the whole dash, every seat, the whole kit and kaboodle. I inserted the ignition key and started the powerful racing engine. I had to wait a few seconds before the transmission would engage into reverse (it’s part of my car’s personality), then when it finally took hold I eased it out of the lake into the river, then up onto the driveway behind my wife’s car.

Just for anyhow, I rolled up the windows.

I couldn’t go back to sleep after that, I was too emotionally disquieted. I tried reading for awhile, but my book was too exciting (Clancy’s Teeth of the Tiger). I finally put it down, still couldn’t go to sleep. At 5 a.m. I gave up, got up, and started working.

It’s a good thing I’m self unemployed.

Later in the morning I went out to inspect the damage. There was a lot of water in there.

I took a bucket and bailed and bailed. I sopped and mopped and water kept seeping and oozing. I finally went to the farm shop and used the wet/dry vac (I was interested in the “wet” mode obviously), that seemed to do the trick. So now I need to keep the car in the hot sun with the windows down for the next few days.

This being about 9 in the evening, however, you’ll need to excuse me. I have to go roll up the windows in my car for the night before I forget and Hoosierville hammers me with another monsoon.