My fear factor was raised to a new level with the flooding that’s been taking place in and around Mason City. I have to give the City workers credit for being pro-active by thinking forward with what’s been taking place. There’s been big pumps installed in areas to get the water away from housing developments as well as sandbagging weak spots along the Winnebago River. After the water does go down, I’m sure we’ll be seeing some dead fish that were trapped in pools of receding water. I was shocked today by seeing how East Park was almost completely submerged in water. Now if it stayed until the hard freeze, we’d have a bigger than Olympic size skating rink. It’s amazing how our normally small and lazy Willow Creek could turn into a raging river reaching high over its banks. I’m just hoping there’s no one who had raw sewage coming back up their basement drains. The flood of 2008 was even more damaging due to the number of homes that suffered from sewer backups. Someone mentioned today about water they were getting in their basement and the first thing I asked was, “Are you getting sewer water backing up.” The guiless owner laughed and said, “Nope. We haven’t seen any soggy cigars floating around.” I guess it’s good to find things to laugh about when faced with unfortunate happenings.
I had to go over to the courthouse and do some research today on a property and when I walked into the Auditor’s office where all the big transfer books are to be found, I stepped back in surprise to find they were gone. I went and asked one of the clerks where they were, and she said they were moved to the basement. I asked why, and she told me everything is on the computer now and one of the other clerks cold help me. Being a bit stubborn about the way I normally do research I said, “But I want to go through those books myself.” She then said, “Ok, I’ll take you down there and you can get the information you need.” Without hesitation she grabbed her key and walked me down. I thanked her immensely as she walked away leaving me there alone in that windowless room. I found the shelves of books I needed and spent about a half hour doing my research, closed the books, and placed them back on their respective shelves. I went back up to tell her I was finished and thanked her again for allowing me to find the information I needed in what now appears to be in an old-fashioned way. Whether we like it or not, the world is becoming more and more digitalized and I continue to hope many of the older crowd don’t feel left behind. And yes, I could have found what I needed on the computer, but what computers still haven’t been able to do is cross-reference in my fashion so to make the time spent looking for something all the shorter. After having done my share of land records research over these long years, I’ve developed a bit of a method that’s been tried and true.
I’ve certainly been getting a number of calls these past two days for rental housing. It looks like there’s going to be some new faces from out of State coming to work here. The ones I’ve spoken with on the phone sound like they’ll be great assets to our community. I sometimes want to go outside and holler out to the Universe, “Keep Em Coming!” I want to see Mason City’s population up over 30,000 and climbing.
