When I was 40 I bought my first house and found the pump. It was my third piece of residential real estate in fact, but the others were acquired with spouses; that creekside cottage was mine-all-mine.

The house was built in 1912. It nestles in a ninety degree turn of Codornices Creek, exactly where The Alameda becomes MLK in Berkeley. The house and creek bend are below the sidewalk, so the water runs year-round along the south side of the cottage and then parallel to the rear wall and through the back yard.

The seller disclosed that the basement flooded in heavy rain. When I spotted the pump in it of course I assumed it was for getting water out of the place.

Not so! It turned out the pump was around for (illegal) acquisition of irrigation water in drought years. Apparently someone had used it to deliver creek water to the yard. It wasn’t necessary after a flood.

When the rain falls for a quarter hour or more so hard that you can’t see across the street, Codornices Creek will crest its banks. It courses under so much asphalt that it just can’t take all the run-off. It races cappuccino-colored, debris-pocked, and strong; it tears out chain link and floats yard bridges without a pause.

The water didn’t pour into the basement when that happened. Rather, the creek widened to include half the house foundation. I wasn’t down there to see it but I’m sure the flood came from below. Because that’s how it left, through below.

Right after an event there’d be a foot or so of water in the west side of the basement. But the muddy stuff subsided inside at the same rate that it sank back into the ground outside.

The water came in and the water retreated. The frame was hundred year old redwood, so hard it was almost petrified, able to easily withstand the incursion.

I sold the house four years ago and began my experience in one-room dwellings. I offered to explain the basement to the buyers but they never took me up on that. They spent extraordinary sums replacing the foundation and even raising the house to make the basement usable. I lived there 17 years. I’m sure that didn’t work.