Friend found during flood

Say hello to my little friend.
It was a flooded Tuesday morning, one of those mornings we’ve seen way too often this summer.
I was splashing around in downtown Portland a little after 7 a.m., carrying my camera and looking for pictures. My boots were wet, and my socks were soggy because my boots weren’t high enough.
Then I saw something.
It was smack-dab in the middle of the intersection of Meridian and Walnut streets, right by The Ritz movie theatre. Something was floating or bobbing in the water.
It looked like an animal of some sort. A fish from the river? I splashed my way over.
And then I saw it clearly: A plastic model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the kind every kid wants when he’s seven years old and into dinosaurs. The sight of it — completely incongruous but somehow appropriate for a morning that felt like the Land of the Lost — provoked a chuckle and brought a smile to my face.
For reasons I can’t explain, I picked it up and took it with me.
I was still carrying it by its tail when I ran into Sandy Schwieterman and Sandy Bubp, who were standing in a parking lot on higher ground and were commiserating about the flood.
Like me, they cracked up at the sight of the dinosaur.
“I think he needs a name,” I said as I wandered off in search of more photos.
This isn’t the first T-Rex in my life. By my count, it’s probably the third.
I found the first when our twins were about seven and were in the dinosaur phase. Passing through the G.C. Murphy store — this was about 30 years ago, folks — I spotted an inflatable, six-foot-tall, dinosaur, a T-Rex in fact.
Though my wife would later roll her eyes, I bought it immediately and brought it home. Inflated, it filled a corner of the twins’ bedroom. It was simultaneously funny and cool.
Maybe I mentioned my purchase at work, but my recollection is that my friend and colleague, the late great Tom Casey had somehow signaled approval.
About a week later, I noticed that the same six-foot-tall, inflatable T-Rex was on sale. I snapped it up, got it back to the newspaper, waited until Tom was out of the building, then blew it up and put it in his office.
As expected, he got a kick out of it.
But Tom being Tom, he left it there. And, Tom being Tom, when the T-Rex started to deflate and shrink, it remained in its original spot.
That’s where it was about six months later when some politician made an unannounced and unscheduled visit to the newsroom. The reporter on hand, caught by surprise, looked around for a place to conduct a quick interview.
The only spot available: Tom’s office, half-inflated T-Rex and all.
One wonders what the politician thought, but he didn’t ask about the dinosaur and the reporter didn’t volunteer any information. It just sat there as a sort of Jurassic-era witness to the interview.
And now there’s the little guy I picked up out of the floodwaters.
I’ve decided on a name for him, by the way.
I’m calling him “Noah.”