Tim Chitwood: Do not duck into the flooded river

Regurgitating water under the bridge, 2003 was when last I recall warning people not to venture into the flooded Chattahoochee River.

I remember 2003 because we had a Red Cross fundraising rubber duck race on the river, and soon as they loosed the ducks, it was like NASCAR with a pileup on the first turn, and the stretch, and the next turn, and so on.

Some rubber ducks ain't been seen since.

Some longtime river runners might think a certain skill level qualifies them to ride this high a flood.

That reminds me of a Ron White joke about a guy in the Florida Keys so fit he felt he could tie himself to a tree to prove he could withstand the wind of a hurricane.

Quoth Ron White:

"It isn't THAT the wind is blowing. It's WHAT the wind is blowing. If you get hit with a Volvo, it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you did that morning."

Having often been dunked in rivers -- once when the canoe hit a downed tree -- I think:

"It ain't that a flood is flowing, it's what that flow is towing. If you get snagged in an uprooted sycamore on its way to Omaha, whether you're an Olympic swimmer in an inflatable suit doesn't matter."

Back in the old days, we didn't call them floods. We called them freshets, and we named them for prominent figures of the time.

The Dillingham Street bridge was washed away in a flood in March 1841 called "the Harrison freshet" after president William Henry Harrison.

Watching the river flood apparently was a spectator sport back then, too, as folks came to watch the bridge float away.

"Never was there a more majestic sight seen, than the departure of that noble bridge, on its remarkable voyage," reported the newspaper, "Its course was uninterrupted as we learn, until it reached Col. Woolfolk's plantation, eight miles below, where it took up new moorings, in the centre of a large cotton field."

Before the Harrison Freshet, we had two floods named for Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, in 1919 and 1922, each coinciding with the general's visiting Fort Benning.

The worst flood, so far, was March 16, 1929. The river nearly reached the tops of the Dillingham Bridge arches. Water covered the South Commons, Bay Avenue and Front Avenue. People used boats to reach the Eagle & Phoenix Mill.

Unfortunately, that flood had no fancy freshet name.

Coinciding with the new "Star Wars" movie, this flood could be the Harrison Ford Freshet of 2015.

Doesn't "freshet" sound better than "flood"? We definitely should start calling our floods that.

It could be part of a tourism pitch: "Come see our freshet!" Or "Come for the freshet, stay until we replace the bridge."

We could even break into two words for a slogan: "Fresh it!" Columbus is changing its slogan, you know, so that could be a contender.

It sounds like a Sprite ad, instead of a flush.

Tim Chitwood, tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com, 706-571-8508.

This story was originally published December 27, 2015 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Tim Chitwood: Do not duck into the flooded river."