REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
By John Tredrea
Lot of rain this July.
One day about midway through the month, there were at least three intense rainstorms. Maybe you remember that day. It came down so hard that you could just about see the spaces between the drops. Actually, they looked more like sheets than drops.
At any rate, during the tail end of the last of that day’s downpours, my wife and I had an errand to run. It took us onto West Delaware Avenue in Pennington, heading toward Route 31.
We came over the blind hill at the center of the bridge over the CSX railroad line. This point is perhaps 100 yards east of the West Delaware Avenue’s intersection with Route 31. The intersection was flooded, deeper than I’ve ever seen it. It does flood from time to time. Three of the four roads that run into it do so on a downgrade.
It was flooded so deeply that several teenagers were swimming it, and to all appearances enjoying themselves hugely. Yes, it was dumb. They shouldn’t have done it. Why not? Because people were driving through the water, for one thing. I didn’t see anyone stall, which seemed fairly amazing, considering the depth of the water.
At least the children who were swimming stayed toward the sidewalks. One was literally doing the Australian crawl through the water. Behind him, vehicles drove through the short-lived flood, the water reaching part way up the doors in some cases. We turned into a parking lot and circumvented the flood.
"I’m glad I got to see that," I said. "They shouldn’t be doing it, but I’m still glad I got to see it."