“…I was 12 years old in 1936…my grandfather was living with us at the time…he was 87…and my brother’s wife was pregnant…and we knew the flood was coming. So we went up the hill to one of my aunts on El Paso street. My brother was going to stay with us the night of the flood, but his wife delivered the baby. It was a baby boy, born during the 1936 flood. We lived on Main Street, between Cumberland and Marriot…we lived in the duplex…Our house was on an incline, just a little bit…but the Black’s in the corner there had water to the top of the first floor…our house had it 13” from the floor…and the water went all the way up to Dwight Street. We needed clothes, so my brother…who was 10 years older than I…got in a boat, and he said the water was like a river, but it was filled with towels, gates, and rats…floating in the water. When we had gotten back to the house, after the flood had receded, the ground was all white…probably from all the lime used to disinfect everything. Then the lights went back on.

And then two years later…we have a hurricane. They had kinda said something was coming for that…My sister was going to the store, and her umbrella went inside-out…so we knew something was coming…I don’t know if we had heard it on the radio or something…so we looked out the window and saw the wind come and blow…and then…we had this big tree in front of our house…about 3 feet in diameter…boom…it was picked up, right by the roots…put down right across the street…then another tree came down. And when it was all over…my sister and I went for a walk…We walked from main street over to Dwight Street…and cars couldn’t go by if there were any…across the road, trees all down all across eachother…I got scared seeing that tree get picked up in front of my house.

The cleanup didn’t bother me…I was young…I never paid attention to that…With trees across the road…nothing could get by…They must have just started on one end, just to work their way across…I never seen anything again. I feel bad for those others stuck in the floods in the Midwest this Summer…I hope it doesn’t get bad here .. but it probably will eventually.

My grandfather was a drummer-boy for the civil war when he was 13. Kind of odd to know that I had direct conversations with someone who was in the Civil War…but you kind of always remember the little things.