Yeah, and picture yourself walking that levee with the Mississippi or the Yazoo or any other river running a 30 mph current on one side. Picture that levee shakin' like a bowl of jello as you walk on it, the sun just comin' up over a grove of trees and you see a boil on the dirtside side!

A boil! Water boiling up at the base of the levee! You wonder, is it a spring that the pressure of the river has brought into life or has the river found an old groundhog hole and this levee is gonna die? So you sit and watch, and if it starts runnin' clear you wipe the cold sweat off and keep walkin'. If it don't, and dirty water keeps boiling out, you get some help and some sandbags and start sandbaggin' around it. When it overflows the first circle of sandbags you start another one farther out, and all the time the boil's getting bigger and bigger.

Finally, one of the sandbaggers trips and a sandbag lands right in the middle of the boil hole! It's quiet for minute, and then all hell breaks loose.

The sandbag shoots fifty feet into the air and the water spout looks like Old Facefull geyser. And you've lost to the river, so you run away, 'cause that levee is startin' to crumble. Big clods of dirt from the levee itself are being swept away, and finally the top sinks in, just a little bit, and a trickle of water starts to eat away at the top.

By then, if you're lucky, you're either on high ground or better yet, watching it on TV with a beer in your hand. If you're not, you're runnin' like hell to someplace safe -- and that ain't a boat!

You'd be surprised how fast you can run when the levee is crumblin' behind you and a whole damned river is on your heels. Of course, you're sharing the raceway with the folks who were helping you sandbag, water moccasins, deer, foxes, rattlesnakes, and who knows what else. Don't bother about the fauna, 'cause they want to get out just as much as you do. Drownin' ain't their bag, either.

Finally, when you're halfway up Mt. Everest and you look back you can see the top of the levee snakin' through a brand-new lake. Barns and houses and cars and tractors and trucks can be seen, surrounded by water up to their roofs. Maybe some dead cows, horses, chickens, dogs and cats, too.

And you're just damned glad you're were you are and not where you might have been.

Been there, Tweed. Done that. REALLY don't particularily want to do it again.