Here Comes the Water
album: Step by Step (1990), track 4 of 14
author: Chuck Pyle
publisher: Bee 'n' Flower Music BMI
In white man's history there had never been a flood in the Big Thompson Canyon. But on a cool July evening in 1976, eleven inches of rain fell in less than an hour and the water rose over thirty feet, raging down through the canyon destroying everything in its path. That night I chanced to sit near a couple of highway patrolmen drinking coffee in a truck stop and they were discussing a fellow trooper who'd been killed in the flood. It seems Kenneth Purdy'd been told to seek higher ground but instead had turned his car and raced the water down the canyon saving dozens of lives before it finally caught him. They said his last words were, "My car won't move . . .the mud is up to the windows . . . here comes the water." This is to Kenneth Purdy wherever he may be. Just about sundown the wind got strange Coming off the prairie like the tide Spilling down the never Summer Range Old man wind on a nighttime ride Fireballs on the telephone wires Heat lightnin' all over the park Somewhere in the distance there's a fire The rains begin. It gets dark. Three feet of water runnin' the street Picking up speed, picking up power There where the two rivers meet They say it hit fifty miles an hour Nowhere for the water to go but down Down the Big Thompson it did roll Everyone in Estes Park town Listening heard it on the radio Patrolman Purdy, Number 213 Racing the canyon like a dash Warning everybody by the stream Turned in time to see the splash "10-33, my car won't move." Then so everyone could hear "The mud is up to the windows." Then with just a trace of fear He said, "Here comes the water!" "213, what's your 10-20, over) 213, do you read, do you copy, over? Clear all channels we have a Mayday condition. Mayday, what's your location, over. Do you copy, Mayday, come back? Mayday, do you read, come back? Mayday, do you copy, come back? Mayday, come back! Come back, Mayday! Mayday, comeback, Mayday, comeback Mayday, Mayday, comeback Mayday, Mayday, comeback Do you copy, Mayday, over?"
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