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This isn’t his usual office, but Andrew Krantz knows right where to look. He pulls a couple of envelopes from the desk drawer, checks through a few folded papers, and there it is.

He unfolds a copy of a Rudyard Kipling poem, “When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted,” and you get the feeling he has done this many times before. “And only the Master shall praise us,” Kipling writes of the end of history. “And only the Master shall blame;/And no one will work for money, and no one will work for fame …”

Mr. Krantz is one floor above his usual office because his usual office received six feet of water in June. Remember the near-flooding of downtown, and how fortunate we were that the levees did their job so well?

Things were a little different at Eagle Iron Works, 129 E. Holcomb Ave., and “back to normal” is still a dream, not a description.

All of this, he didn’t need. Mr. Krantz has a wife who needs his care, a legal matter that we will politely set aside and people trying to buy his business. A messy, expensive flood was like absorbing one more punch just when you thought the round was over.

He has gone through this before, back in 1993. But then he’s gone through just about everything before. Mr. Krantz is 94 years old.

Forty years past the point that so many people now think of as a nice retirement age, Mr. Krantz still shows up for work every day. “I enjoy keeping busy, I enjoy challenges,” he said. “It’s stimulating. It keeps me young.”

Andrew Krantz came here from Chicago some 40 years ago to operate Eagle Iron. That was after working as the president of a steel company and quite a while after the most intense sort of training for success. “I had no parents when I was 16,” he said, and he’s supremely proud that he, his four brothers and his three sisters stayed together and went on to admirable careers.

“God blessed me in so many ways,” he said. “People gave me good advice and tutored me. What would a boy of 16 have without that? Nothing.”

After you’ve been initiated into adulthood like that, well, water comes and goes.

When the Des Moines River levee broke in the Birdland area, it meant untold damage to the old Eagle Iron buildings and lots of expensive machinery. Insurance isn’t covering much.

But at least it’s not like 1993, when he seriously hurt himself while helping to rescue neighbors from the floodwaters.

“I don’t remember too much” about that time, he says. “I’m glad to put it out of my memory. Don’t look behind; look forward.”

Eagle Iron has been in business since 1872. It manufactures big equipment used by sand and gravel excavators all over the world. The bright side of this flood is that the company is replacing some of the ruined machines with better, more efficient ones. “That’s the time to do it,” Mr. Krantz said. “If it’s all wrong, make it all right.”

The not-so-sunny side is that out of Eagle Iron’s 155 employees, only about 55 are working now. It might be another month before full production resumes.

It would have been nice if somebody from the city or the state had dropped by to offer a helping hand. But they brought nothing, he says, not a single sandbag.

Oh well. Mr. Krantz reaches into the drawer again and extracts another small piece of paper from an envelope. This is a poem given to him by a boss long ago – an old man who was facing surgery. It’s called “Evening Prayer.” “If I can make somebody’s day/Even a little shade less gray … Why then I’ve earned the right to live.”

Then it’s time to go. Mr. Krantz doesn’t want to be impolite, but he has things to do. “I’m 30 minutes behind today,” he says, and gets back to work.