For some people, I guess it was like their Vietnam. I mean, here we are, in the middle of nowhere, halfway between the world's largest ball of twine and the world's longest porchswing, about 30 miles from a sign in a cornfield near Hwy. 36 that reads "Geographical center of the United States." It was their Vietnam, but they love to talk about it, love to tell you every detail. When I got out of here at 18, I told people that I was leaving because I couldn't stand to hear one more of those fucking "Great flood o' 1935" stories.
I get it, I do. Here's all these people, out in the middle of nowhere, who've just survived one of the worst droughts in history accompanied by a grasshopper plague. Then one day it starts to rain, and the river rises 6 feet in a half hour. Soon, there was some dry stuff, stuff that had always been dry, under about 20 feet of water and people they knew they watched fade away into the distance on the roof of their house as it washed southeast.
What else was there to suppose but that all that Bible stuff was suddenly taking shape? All we got's a lot of gloating and waving after that.
In 1985, I was much more obsessed with hair height and new techniques for rolling jeans as tightly as possible at the ankle than hearing another damn flood story. I ran and hid from the people who were known to tell them. We all did. In a way, I guess you could say my life was sort of as impacted by the great flood as those who lived through it.
I couldn't have known that 1935 would impact my life more than 1985. Roosevelt christened Hoover Dam that year. While everyone around here was walking around all slouch shouldered talking about the flood and the grasshoppers, how the waters at least washed away some of the grasshoppers, some of the nation's leading black sheep were building a mountain of concrete with rudimentary tools, and finding out what it was like for the first time to have a little tiny bit of expendable cash for wasting.
That's how my Las Vegas was born, and how I was led to the enlightened ones.