People called the years the coasts disappeared the Hundred Year Flood. The Hundred Year Flood didn’t last exactly a hundred years, because no one knew for sure exactly when it began. Unlike a war it had no call to arms, no date by which we could remember its beginning. But it lasted close to a hundred years, a little longer than a person’s lifetime, because my grandfather always said that when his mother was born New Orleans existed and when she died it did not.
