Floods and Levees

As a child I grew up in LA, which is a desert and so I did not know what a levy was. Don MacLean's song "Bye Bye Miss America Pie" was popular and played on the radio so much that you had to pick up the words to the song even though whenever it came on you would run to the radio to turn it off.

It's mostly nonsense. But in the song the narrator drives his chevy to the levy, but the levy is dry.

Well I realized two things when the hurricanes hit down South, one is that I am now living in an area where the flood control people in New Orleans don't want to live. Surrounded by LEVEES, I drive into town on the WINDING LEVEE ROAD. There's actually a sign that says "Winding Levee Road." The other thing is I realised is that the song doesn't rhyme. You can take your CHEVY to the LEVEE but it doesn't rhyme the same way taking your CHEVY to the LEVY does. And you can't take a chevy to a levy, because there is no such thing as a levy.

So over the new year we had some rains, and the flood control people had to let out tons of water from the dams and they opened weirs and such. Our local park flooded, apparently it's part of the flood control system, so here's a picture of the park, flooded. The levee wall is to the left. It looks rather like a river, except that the American River is 500 yards south of this and this is usually a little dry arroyo.