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First edition, 2004
Size of electronic edition: 212 Kb
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Source(s):
Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Bernice Cavenaugh and
Betsy Easter, December 8, 1999. Interview K-0279. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (#4007)
Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0279)
Author: Charles Thompson
Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Bernice Cavenaugh and
Betsy Easter, December 8, 1999. Interview K-0279. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (#4007)
Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0279)
Author: Bernice Cavenaugh and Betsy Easter
Description: 172 Mb
Description: 56 p.
Note:
Interview conducted on December 8, 1999, by Charles
Thompson; recorded in Duplin County, North Carolina.
Note:
Transcribed by Unknown.
Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series K. Southern Communities, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
Editorial practices An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition. The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines. Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " All em dashes are encoded as —
Interview with Bernice Cavenaugh and Betsy Easter, December 8, 1999.
Interview K-0279. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
BERNICE
CAVENAUGH, interviewee
BETSY
EASTER, interviewee
CHARLES
THOMPSON, interviewer
ROB AMBERG,
interviewer
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER
CHRIS,
Betsy's client
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER
[TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Page 1
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Let me just say again I represent the oral history program at UNC in
Chapel Hill. And these tapes that we're recording will go into the
Southern Historical Collection, which is a library, basically, where
there are tapes that people can listen and learn from for educational
purposes.
And say there's someone who wants to do a research paper or write an
article about what happened with the flood, or even a book, or a video
or whatever, they can go and hear the stories of the people who
experienced the flood through this. And, anyway, that's one of the
purposes. And we hope somehow the community might be able to use this
information, too. And, so, if you have ideas about that let us know.
And so, it's—just to start the tape—it's December 7th 1999 and we're in
the community of Northeast and we're sitting in a FEMA trailer in the
backyard of Ms. Cavenaugh. And you'll have to tell me your whole name. I
don't remember your first name.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I'm Bernice.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Bernice Cavenaugh. And this area was completely underwater right where
this trailer was sitting right at one time. But, you—if I could I'd like
to get you to tell me something about the way you came here first. Were
you born in this community
Page 2
and when that was and
maybe something about how it was to grow up here if you did. Were you
from Northeast always?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. My husband was from Northeast. But I lived about five miles down the
road.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you—and when were you born? What year were you born?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Twenty-seven.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What date?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
December 23rd.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Almost on Christmas
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Almost Christmas [laughter].
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I like that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So Chris if you'll do me a favor and try not to comment during the
recording. That'd be nice. Okay? But, yeah, I'm glad you're listening.
The—so you were—. What was the name of that little community five miles
down the road?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I don't know if it had any.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And did you grow up on a farm?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And what kind of farm was that?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Just a regular farm. Dad grew mostly tobacco. Tobacco was the main crop.
And corn and beans like they do now. And he had a lot of produce. Always
said he grew that to keep us all busy. [Laughter].
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Did you sell the produce, too?
Page 3
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes. He sold it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
He was a truck farmer. And how was it? Was it hard growing up on the
farm? Did you enjoy it as a child?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, I didn't like to work on the farm because back then it was not
like it is now. You know the grass was so terrible they couldn't—. Now
they don't even chop it, you know, with a hoe anymore. It was so hard to
chop. And they didn't have things to cut up corn. And we had to pick up
the corn stalks and things like that. And we—. But during the school
season we didn't have much to do because my dad was real interested in
us having an education. And so he didn't—. The boys maybe worked a lot.
But we didn't, the girls didn't. So he wanted us to do good in
school.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. And where did you go to school?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Chinqua-Penn.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. That was the name of it, Chinqua-Penn School. And it was all the
grades together?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
All the grades together.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
First through twelve?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, they really—. I was the last class that went eleven years. The
next year we didn't have a graduating classes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You went all of your eleven years in that school?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is that school still there?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Still there but they discontinued that school about maybe five years
ago.
Page 4
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is that all? It stood there and was used as a school until—. That was an
old school.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. It could have been longer than that. But I think five years.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so after you finished school what did you do? After you finished the
eleventh grade?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Got married.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right after school was out?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
After school. That was during the war and my husband was in service. And
my teacher had written to Greensboro for a scholarship because I was—I
made real good grades. And she was getting this scholarship from college
and I really wanted to go. And you know back then those soldiers could
really persuade you to get married. So I got married.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. This is right after he got back from World War II?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. We got married before he—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Before he left.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Before he left. Well he was already in service. But we got married when
he knew he was going to be shipped overseas.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And he—what year was that when he was shipped overseas and when you got
married?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Forty-five.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It was '45 the very last year of the war. Well while he was gone what
did you do? Did you live at home with your parents?
Page 5
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I lived with my parents and his parents both. And I worked down at a
drugstore in Wallace.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so that was just for a couple of years, one year he was gone
and—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
He was gone two years.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And then after he came back is that when you decided to farm? Or had he
already—?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, he had already—. I think that was already on his mind. But then
we—I had saved all the money he had sent home and we bought a farm in
Oakley Bowden. That's near Warsaw.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. Northern Duplin County?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh. We bought a big farm up there. But—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Are you expecting someone? Am I right?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. I just saw—I think it's Betsy.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. I was expecting her.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Hi. Here's Betsy coming in.
BETSY EASTER:
Into the cubby hole. That's all right. Just keep it in the middle and
I'll sit on the edge here.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There's probably plenty of room. That's unlike some microphones won't
tip over. That's the nice thing about it. Good for group conversations.
So we were just talking about the first farm that they bought up in
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Bowden.
Page 6
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Bowden in the northern Duplin County. It was a big farm. So how many
acres was that? How many—when you talk about big—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I don't remember.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Hundreds of acres, [kitty meows] that big?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No, not. [Kitty meows.] I don't know. It might have been between a hundred and two
hundred. Something like that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so you stayed there how long?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Two or three years.
BETSY EASTER:
Was I born? I was down ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well while we're on that, how many children are there in all?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Three.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Three in all. And they were born mostly on that—let's see.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. Just Betsy was born—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Betsy was born on that one. And then did you decide to move here to
Northeast?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
We decided to move, yes. And, well, the reason we did was because he had
relatives there. And they all were selling their farm. That's the reason
he went there. And then when they sold the farm and they left. So he
didn't want to stay any longer. So we sold the farm and came back down
here.
BETSY EASTER:
( )
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's a good reason to come back. Well what did you think when you were
gone? Did you miss this area? Did you miss Highway 41 and these two
communities where you were from?
Page 7
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
We missed it, yes. We missed it a lot.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And what was it about it that was different?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
About this area?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
About this community that's different from up there.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I guess where we were it was kind of isolated. There were no people
around much where we were. And we were young and so it—we just didn't
like being like that with no one around. And then when his relatives—his
granddad and all sold their farm—he just didn't—we didn't want to stay
there any longer. You know if we'd been older and had more wisdom we
probably would have.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so who all lived here that you came back to at this point? We're
talking about a five mile area. How many different family members lived
here?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
His parents and my parents and all of my brothers and sisters and all
his brothers and sisters.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
All around here?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Most of our relatives.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's a lot of—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Plus everybody was Cavenaughs up and down this road. If it wasn't
immediate family you still had all of your distant relatives.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. And did y'all get together regularly so that you saw one
another.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You all went to the same church.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, uh-huh.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And is this the church right up here?
Page 8
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm, Northeast.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Northeast Freewill—.
BETSY EASTER:
Penecostal Freewill Baptist.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Penecostal Freewill Baptist. And the Cavenaughs as far as you remember
all went to that church? They even helped build it. Is that right?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
The majority did.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And what year was that built? You said earlier. I forget—.
BETSY EASTER:
Well it was established in what 18 what 50 so or 60 so.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( ). I don't know.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
No. We didn't get into the history of the church.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Oh we didn't.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
We got off on other—. That's one of the problems, you know, you ( ).
BETSY EASTER:
But then I also told him we went ( ) the church. No. I probably told Rob
that.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. You told Rob.
BETSY EASTER:
They originally built it. It was a wooden church and built the brick
church. And then the brick church burned. When? In the sixties. And then
rebuilt in what?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, yes, it started it was just a little old church with a little wood
heater. But I don't really remember the year. I have a history of it
somewhere. But—
BETSY EASTER:
But it was—way back when it was like the hub of the community, I think.
Not necessarily so now.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Boys and girls all gathered and—.
Page 9
BETSY EASTER:
Dated, courted then.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So what is the history of the community? How far back can y'all go? How
did people talk about this being settled the first time? For instance,
is there any—?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I'm sure some of the older ones know. But I don't really know.
BETSY EASTER:
Well I doubt even the older ones know that much that are left. You know,
maybe if it were our great-grandparents or something. But—and you know,
somebody like grandmother or granddaddy may have known.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I know Russell English has a lot of the history and Doris—.
BETSY EASTER:
Russell is a person that you'll be seeing and he knows a great deal.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. He has some of the facts like that. But as the main thing that
we're talking about is how you knew there was this sense of community
here and the Cavenaughs lived here and you came back to that. And there
was this feeling of belonging that you had that you didn't have up in
Bowden. This supper club—have you been part of that?
BETSY EASTER:
The supper house?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The supper house.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. I belong to the auxiliary, the one that established it, you know,
together—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Fifty years ago they started—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( ) but I was not active in the cooking and serving.
BETSY EASTER:
Kathleen wanted to know where we were last night. She said only ten
people showed up.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Last night? Was that the—.
Page 10
BETSY EASTER:
They had a—I guess their first meeting with the ladies auxiliary up at
Mrs. Mack's house that you met earlier.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
To talk about renewing the custom. Because of the flood it was
discontinued. But now they're starting again. That's what I understand.
Okay. So you started—you bought land here. Is that what happened? Or did
you move back in with the family members?
BETSY EASTER:
You moved to the Kelley house?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
We just rented when we first came back.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Sold that farm up there and then rented here?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Rented, yes. And then we later moved in a house that belonged to his dad
( ). No, down at the ( ).
BETSY EASTER:
Not the Duke house?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah.
BETSY EASTER:
You went to the Duke house after you left this house up here.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
That's what I said.
BETSY EASTER:
And then across the road.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. So you lived in three different older houses before building up
here.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh, in '60.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In '60, this house we're right behind. Okay. So by then you had all
three of your children by 1960. And all of the family moved up here to
this brick house? Okay. How many acres do you have here?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I think it was about forty.
Page 11
BETSY EASTER:
There's a hundred all together. Eighty here, right, and twenty over
there?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( )
[Laughter]
BETSY EASTER:
A hundred acres?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( )
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe it hasn't been surveyed.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
You're including all the woods and the ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Oh, what you're saying probably is how many acres there are in fields.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Because you know the agricultural amount. And then Betsy is saying the
total amount of swamp and everything. So when you first started farming
this forty acres of open land you were growing corn and beans. Did you
have tobacco?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. We had tobacco but my husband sold the acreage. He worked out at
Steve ( ) and farmed too and then later bought the turkey houses. So he
didn't care about tobacco, working with tobacco so he sold that tobacco
lot.
BETSY EASTER:
But actually when y'all—when he was working at J. P. Stevens, he didn't
have these—he didn't have the turkeys. He didn't have that land back
there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. So he worked in a textile mill?
BETSY EASTER:
Right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Where, in Wallace?
BETSY EASTER:
Um-hmm, J. P. Stevens.
Page 12
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And that—he worked in there and got his retirement there and everything?
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
But, in the meantime he bought the turkey houses and more land back
there from his cousin, and then he started farming.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Right. And he farmed and he worked J. P. Stevens.
BETSY EASTER:
Did both.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And then you got the turkeys and started growing for Ramsey Poultry.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Nash Johnson.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Nash Johnson.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
And I was a hairdresser.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. And so where did you have your salon?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I started across the road. But then when we built the house I had a room
built for that.
BETSY EASTER:
My granddaddy had the old store, country store, across the road where
the fire building is. And the supper house originally was in that along
with the country store. And right in between it was a little room
sandwiched between the two. That's where she had the beauty shop. So
then my aunt took the supper—. No. The ladies' auxiliary built the
community building over there. That's where they started having the
suppers. And my aunt took over the supper house that was here and
decided to just make it a restaurant and do it five days, six days a
week, whereas, the supper house only did it one day a week. So, and
then, when they built the house here she moved over here. And forty
years almost, I guess, in this house, no thirty.
Page 13
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
In here?
BETSY EASTER:
Um-hmm.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Forty. It was built in '60.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In 1960. So it'd be thirty-nine. Soon to be forty, wouldn't it?
BETSY EASTER:
And she's been out of it for about four years now.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Out of the business? Oh, okay.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
My husband, when he got sick I had to stop and take care of him. So I—.
And then later went in and started taking care of turkeys. And I'd never
taken care of them in my life.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How many years did he have the turkeys?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I think it was '72 we bought the turkey farm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. And what was his name?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Norwood.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Norwood, right. I should remember that.
UNKNOWN VOICE [Chris]:
Grandpa, Grandpa. He's my grandpa. He's my grandpa.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. And that's Chris, his voice we hear on the tape. The main thing
that we're talking about and want to talk about is your memories and
experiences of the flood and the recovery and how that has gone. And I
wanted to talk a little bit about what was here before we get into what
was destroyed. So maybe now would be a good time to talk about your
memories of what happened. And, I know Betsy has been active in a lot of
this, too. So, you want to start going through the story of how you knew
there was
Page 14
going to be a flood and what you were
hearing on the news and so forth, and how you began to realize that you
had to evacuate and so on?
BETSY EASTER:
We didn't know it was going to be a flood. It certainly wasn't on the
news.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well that hurricane, you know, came on Wednesday night.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And tell me the date.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Fifteenth of September. On the fifteenth of September. Well the
sixteenth—.
BETSY EASTER:
Was a beautiful day.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Was a beautiful day.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Y'all had high winds on the fifteenth?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Fifteenth. It did a lot of—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It blew over some trees but you still had your houses. They were in good
shape. Nothing damaged really.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Sixteenth was a beautiful day. The water wasn't even up at that
point.
BETSY EASTER:
Well water was—. It had rained so much that the water was standing and
it was gushing in lots of places. Like going down my driveway it was
probably that deep.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I think—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Person is here?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( ) go tell her I can't go out.
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
Page 15
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. I paused it during that. So it was a beautiful day on the
sixteenth. The water was gushing through the ditches basically but
not—and standing a little bit in puddles but not so much that it caused
anybody to worry. What did you think when you came outside? Did you
think, "Well we got through this one okay?" Can you remember saying
that?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Oh yes. I—well I was concerned about my turkey houses, you know. The
water from there was behind one of the houses. But I kept looking at it
and watching it on down. It was fine. So we went to bed that night and
not thinking about anything like a flood.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That was okay. All day Wednesday no word about the flood.
BETSY EASTER:
Thursday.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Thursday. Did you have any electricity and news at that point? Were
you—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No. We didn't have any electricity at that point. Hurricane—we didn't
have any electricity after the fifteenth. It went off sometime during
the night, I think, of the fifteenth. But anyway on—. We went to bed.
Betsy was at my house because of the electricity being off and just
staying with me. And so about three o'clock my daughter- in-law from
back here called and told Betsy to go look out of the window. And
she—her dogs had awakened her because—and so she got up to see what they
were barking at. And it was water.
BETSY EASTER:
Good gracious alive.
Page 16
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
So she called and—. So Betsy looked down and it was coming under the
carport. So then about four o'clock a fireman knocked at the door and
told me to be ready—told me to—that I had to get out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
This is Thursday still?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
That's Thursday night. That's Friday morning.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Four o'clock in the morning.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Four o'clock in the morning.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
A fireman, a volunteer fireman from the community?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. From like the firehouse right up here.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
And said that we had to get out. He said that a truck would be up here
after you if you want to go on the truck. But if you don't go now you'll
have to go on a boat. That's how fast it was coming up. So I just
grabbed the clothes I'd been wearing that day and ran in the bedroom and
got my purse. And so we just left like that on the truck. And he took us
to his house. It was one of the firemen. He had a big truck. And he took
us to his house that's just about a half a mile down the road. The water
hadn't come up there. But while we were there the water came up there.
It was coming up so fast that we had to leave there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Were the roads still passable at that point in the community?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
They could—some of these big trucks were going down. But mostly then
they were using boats to pick up the people. Because when we were up at
their house Betsy slipped down and came back to her house and came back
to her house and got some more things.
Page 17
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So as I understand it you didn't have time to put any of your valuables
away—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Nothing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In a place where you thought they'd be safe.
BETSY EASTER:
Not one thing. And, you know, that's the thing that really got us both
or a lot of us, because some people had enough warning had enough sense
to know that they still had some time like our neighbors to get some
things moved up. Now as far as mother and I were concerned, you know,
you just never really felt like water would come in.
But I remember I had taken a box of old pictures from my house that were
taken back—they're black and whites from my youth. And I had brought
them over here during the hurricane so my daughter could look at them
with me. And I remembered they were on the floor. And when they were
telling us we had to leave and I'm saying, "I can't go right now. I've
got to think through this." Because you know there are some things that
need to be taken care of before you walk out of that house. But they
kept saying, "No. This is the last ride out and you've got to go." I
remember picking up that box of pictures off the floor and putting it on
the stereo. And just—. But never thinking really it would come in there.
And the thing of it is—what astounded me is how many people really did
get furniture up. But then some of us left and never touched a
thing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
When you left when the volunteer firemen came in, did he really know at
that point that this was a disaster in the making? Did you have that
sense when he was telling you? Or was it that they were saying for
precautionary reasons we better go to
Page 18
higher
ground in case there is a flood. Or how did you feel about it? Or did he
say, there's a flood definitely coming.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well it was rising so high until, I think, not only we but the firemen
were overwhelmed. And they had never experienced anything like that
before. And they were not really prepared. So they didn't know, you
know, really they did the best they knew how trying to get us out. But I
don't think that they really thought it was going to be like it was.
BETSY EASTER:
See what I had been told was starting at around—Skipper Fields had been
going up and down this road and Gary Cantrell. And they had been
monitoring the water rising. And see I didn't know this until today. At
six o'clock in the evening Thursday evening the water was already up in
Matt and Earl's building. And they left that night. They had to get out
that night. Well, Thursday night.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, see the Duffs over here did too.
BETSY EASTER:
They were out on Wednesday because by Thursday you remember we were
picking up pecans and they were all over at the supper—at the fire
department. And saying that water was coming up in their house and their
yard and they had to leave. And we're going, "Well, poor things."
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
And you know there were a lot of people that went into the church for
safety when the hurricane—for the hurricane safety. And while they were
there—they were in the fellowship hall in the back of the church. And
the water started coming in there on Wednesday night. And they had to go
upstairs. And then they brought them here to the fire department. And
they brought two of the elderly ladies over here to stay
Page 19
with me over at my house. The next morning they had to get
them out and move them to another. And then they had to move them to
another one.
BETSY EASTER:
Oh I know, they were like elderly. And they had to be moved about four
times.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's got to be confusing to them.
BETSY EASTER:
Bless their hearts while they were sleeping on mother's bed the bed
broke down. And I went in there to get them off but because of the
flood. You know, the firemen were there to get them. And I walked in and
turned the light on, and I said, "You ladies need to get up. We've got a
flood on our hands and we need to get you out of here." And one of the
ladies said, "Well, Betsy, this bed broke last night. We didn't do
anything. It just fell."
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They didn't do anything but stayed in it.
BETSY EASTER:
It just ( ) and her head was way down on the floor. But as far as the
firemen they—what I understood was they had these that were monitoring
the water coming up. Some of them were in the fire department. So they
started letting all the fellows know. But with the emergency management
they would not give them an okay to move people out until they started
right at about, what, three-thirty four o'clock. They started getting
out Mack and Imerana down here next to my house. And then, you know,
different ones.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
A. M., right?
BETSY EASTER:
Uh-huh, A.M. And then by four-thirty I think they came and got the
elderly ladies that were staying with mother. And then they came back
for us about five or five thirty.
Page 20
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And then where did you go after that? You got in the fire truck am I
right about that or another kind of truck.
BETSY EASTER:
Well, actually a neighbor's.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Just a big truck. He took us to his house. It was one of these
houses—one of these trucks that you saw next door, the electricians'
trucks. He took us to his house. And then when we got there we went to
my sister-in-law's in Wallace. And so we didn't- -what was it, two
weeks, before we got back out here?
BETSY EASTER:
We walked back in, or I did, Saturday morning after we left Friday (
).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Eight days then.
BETSY EASTER:
Saturday morning was enough. I finally came down here to the feed mill
and I was going to beg somebody to please carry me in. But at that
point—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
A boat at that point or was it—?
BETSY EASTER:
No, no, because I was surprised when I got there you didn't—couldn't use
a boat, but it would take a high truck to get in.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay, so standing water.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. But—. Has he seen any pictures?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's coming in the truck now.
BETSY EASTER:
Have you seen any pictures of the flood?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I haven't seen them.
BETSY EASTER:
You haven't?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Your pictures or—no, no one's in the community.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Gracious. When I looked down I didn't know it was like that until I
looked at the pictures. Delores had good ones. She had some where
my—Betsy had
Page 21
moved my truck and car over across
the road at the fire department. And you can just see the top of
them.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What else do you remember that struck you so much about the pictures
when you looked at them for the first time?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I just couldn't believe it when I would see that just the top of the
houses. You know, the water had come up and all you could see was the
top of the house.
BETSY EASTER:
This—well, when Rob and I were riding around I showed him and told him a
lot of things that you missed out on. But one of them was down here at
the store that was flooded and across the road there are those big
trucks. I saw pictures where actually you could see—. I mean they were
in the boat on top of the water and you could see the tops of the
cars.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's wild.
BETSY EASTER:
And what struck me a lot [clattering noise] was the beauty—.
ROB AMBERG:
I'm sorry to interrupt. Do you remember which direction that one
cemetery that we spotted with the American flag in it?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The one that's ( ) the American flag in front on it.
ROB AMBERG:
Across on the opposite side of the road and there's an American flag on
it. It would have been set back off the highway just a little bit.
BETSY EASTER:
Was it that little road that—? Was it the little road that we went down
that the church was on?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
I don't think so, no. It's on 41.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I think it was down that way, Rob. I think it was down toward—.
Page 22
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
We're not far from the—. Well, here's the fire department. Where is the
restaurant? Is that down this way?
BETSY EASTER:
Uh-huh. It's on the other side of the fire department.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
So it's right here though.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe we saw it while we were in the back on the car because we—.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
No. We were in a truck.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( )got a new truck.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
No. He was—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
After we got in the truck ( ) that way.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
Okay. I'll be right back though.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. [Mixture of voices. Unable to discern. Recorder is turned off and
then back on.]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
On the tape and just say—because some other people would be transcribing
this. So I want to say that Betsy's mother has now gone out of the room.
But Betsy Easter is now going to continue on with the story that we
started. But, also, tell some of her own history about growing up in the
community and leaving and then coming back. Now how long it's been that
she's been here, what her job is, and then get more into the story of
the flood.
BETSY EASTER:
Okay. I came back in '90 after being gone for about twenty-five years.
[Coughs] Excuse me. I really did not want to come back into this
community. But I chose to do that to go back to school. And once school
was over with I found myself kind of established and wanted—. I love
country life anyway. And I had my own place so I decided I'd just stick
it out until I could get to a point I could afford to move.
Page 23
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You went to school where?
BETSY EASTER:
At UNCW.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's right. Okay. And you worked in social work or what was your
field?
BETSY EASTER:
Right. Well my degree was in psychology and, you know, I primarily
worked either in social work or with developmentally disabled
population.
CHRIS (Betsy's client):
I'd like to say something if I could. She works for SS Incorporated in
Wilmington, North Carolina. ( ) for SS Incorporated.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. Thank you, Chris.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
All right. Let me finish so we can go home and take Chris home. And what
has happened is in all of this time I have not really gotten back
involved in the community purposefully. You know, I'm—when you've got
this many relatives living up and down this road and there has been a
lot of bickering.
And I'm just not that kind of person. I'd rather be in the woods
somewhere. Bound to a garden or whatever than I had to get involved in
that. So I have not been, but I think the people know that I'm a very
caring person. And, you know, I'm out in the community working with
other people, you know, that are more handicapped and so forth. It's
been kind of strange to find myself in this predicament with this
flooded area and how I have reestablished a lot of the relationships
with the people that I didn't have before then.
Page 24
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So you were living here but you really didn't talk as much to people?
How about going to Cavenaughs and that sort of thing? You just didn't
have the same social circle.
BETSY EASTER:
No. I'd go down to the supper house and get something to eat and bring
it—well, I'd get it and bring it back home. I'd go to Lib's once in a
while, the woman next door, very rarely, but once in a while. I did not
go to the church. I might go to a shower occasionally if I was invited
to a baby shower, wedding shower from old friends growing up. But the
most part I really didn't want to be associated with. I just planted my
trees and tried to stay behind them.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But you had—the house you live in is one of the Cavenaugh houses. But it
wasn't your parents' house.
BETSY EASTER:
Right. No it was my great uncle. See my granddaddy lived across the
road. I have two uncles lived one across from the supper house—or this
supper house here. There were two supper houses.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
All right one community one and one privately owned one. I'm getting the
picture. And they're both called supper houses.
BETSY EASTER:
Supper houses. That's right. And then another great uncle that was right
on the other side of the supper house. And then the great uncle here and
the great uncle that lived in that house. So all the brothers—my
granddaddy's brothers—lived right around here. And my dad ended up
buying that land, the turkey houses and the old house from my cousin, my
great uncle's son.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The turkey houses were already on it?
Page 25
BETSY EASTER:
Yes, they were. Those turkey houses are very old. And I've just
basically maintained a very private lifestyle until this flood. Now I
think evidently in cases of disasters—not necessarily that people are
thrown together and come together anymore so. But there's something
about it that does bring people together. You can't help it. I mean,
you're thrown in together. Everywhere you went after the flood you saw
your neighbors. And it was like you know, you'd just grab hold of them
and say, "How are you?" You know, "What are you doing?" Because you
didn't know what happened to—how many people did they say? Six hundred
people up and down this road. You didn't know what happened to them.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Six hundred.
BETSY EASTER:
Well, actually, there was between eight hundred and nine hundred
throughout Duplin County. But see, there were a few flooded places in
Wallace. A few flooded places—. Well there was Chinqua-Penn and, I
think, a few flooded places in Beaulahville. But this was the main nine
mile stretch that got flooded. And they're—like I said earlier today,
there's about five miles of that that's Northeast community.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The other four miles, does it have a name?
BETSY EASTER:
Chinqua-Penn.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Chinqua-Penn, okay. And how do you describe—? Okay. A lot of them are
Cavenaughs. What kind of people are those eight or nine hundred? Can
you—?
BETSY EASTER:
No. Eight or nine hundred in Duplin. And then there was about six
hundred of them—five or six hundred along this stretch here, say five or
six miles.
Page 26
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. Those five or six miles then, let's talk about them. Were they—
how would you describe them if you were to tell people who'd never been
here before what kind of people they are?
BETSY EASTER:
Well we wouldn't want to put that on paper.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
[Laughs]
BETSY EASTER:
A community that knew each other businesses too well.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
[Laughs]
BETSY EASTER:
That kind of thing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's why you chose to be private. Now that—. Okay. That tells me
something about their close-knittedness. Then what kind of—how did they
make a living and what sort of skills did they have? I mean, what kind
of lifestyle did they lead?
BETSY EASTER:
The majority of the men are either farmers or some type of self-
employment. There are very few men along this road that work out at a
public job.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Your father was an exception then working at J. P. Stevens.
BETSY EASTER:
Yes, but, even then he, you know, he still had his farming. That was
really what he cared more about than he did at J. P. Stevens.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What sort of skills does that mean that these people have?
BETSY EASTER:
Well they're not—a lot—a lot of the—I'd say a lot of the men
particularly are not high school graduates. I'd say probably most of the
women graduated from high school. Most of the women in the past—and
still a great many of them are—I don't like to call them housewives.
But, you know, basically on that order. A lot raise turkeys and raise
hogs. The ones that don't are electricians or construction workers. You
know, have
Page 27
their own business in construction
work. A lot of heavy equipment workers. It is just really hard to find
many who work outside the community.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So they rely on their hands a lot for making a living and they—. Are
they hunters? A lot of hunters in the community?
BETSY EASTER:
A lot of—quite a few. But I don't think so much now as there used to
be.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is there a lot of open area? I mean you say you like to go out in the
woods. Is this a community that knows woods skills? Can they—would you
put them in a category of people who could survive without electricity
better than some people?
BETSY EASTER:
No, not really because you've got a Wal-Mart and that mentality. You
know, I don't know if that says a lot to you. But to me it does in that
everybody likes— wants to be comfortable. And they are comfortable. They
don't make a lot of money. You know, this is definitely not—. We've got
three or four people in the community who are fairly successful. But for
the most part they're happy with building onto their homes, you know,
make it a little more comfortable. Go to Wal-Mart and buy all the latest
little gadgets and fill their homes with it. And they have a new car
and, you know, everybody's kind of happy. They're content—content and
complacent with their lives just, you know—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
As they are.
BETSY EASTER:
But they are not a very friendly community for the most part. Most
people stay to themselves. They really do except the church people. And
those are the ones that you really have to watch out for.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Are they evangelical? In that sense you mean watch out for them and that
they're—.
Page 28
BETSY EASTER:
No. How they use their tongue.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. And I probably wouldn't say as much about this if my mother was
here because she thinks I'm very critical of the community. And I love
the people because I grew up with them and because I love humanity and I
know everybody for the— basically are pretty good people. You know, they
just never really learned how to make things better amongst their
neighbors. And they're not very giving outside of the community.
They're—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They care for their own. If there's a funeral—we've talked about that.
If there's a sickness in the family, what do they do?
BETSY EASTER:
If there's a terrible sickness people will come by. If there's a death
people will come visit and go to the funeral, send food. That's about
it, you know, except for what few people work at the supper houses and
that kind of thing. But just people really stay to themselves. Although
I find much of America getting like that because, you know, ( )—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Absolutely.
BETSY EASTER:
( )
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe worse, I think. Okay. So you said when the hurricane came people
began to pull together because they had to.
BETSY EASTER:
It seemed they were pulling together. It really did because neighbors
hated neighbors a lot it seemed. And then all of a sudden you were
seeing these neighbors sitting across from each other and
conversing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
At a—.
Page 29
BETSY EASTER:
At—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
A shelter or—.
BETSY EASTER:
Yes, at different places and particularly the church that we ate for so
long.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. How about the church? I mean the church tends to be part of the
problem. But they also are part of the solution in this case.
BETSY EASTER:
Right. Well this was a different church. This was out in Wallace.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
And what it has led—.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You doing all right?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. He's doing really good today. I'm proud of him. He's—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You're learning a lot today probably.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
Yes, I have.
BETSY EASTER:
( )
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. So we're at the Posten Baptist. Why do you think they got involved
or what's going on?
BETSY EASTER:
That was one of the first places that they started taking people who
didn't have anywhere to go.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
To live?
Page 30
BETSY EASTER:
To stay once they were evacuated. See like in our case, we moved down
the road in with a relative or friend for a few hours. And then the
water started rising up behind their house. So we went to my aunt's
house in Wallace. But many people up and down the road, all of their
families live right here. They really—many people did not have a place
to just drive right off to, to go to. So they were—.
It was like an emergency shelter. They set it up. They were feeding them.
They were getting cots out. And it became a center, actually. So I guess
that place probably stayed open for two weeks—two or three weeks. But in
the meantime they opened up the elementary school, which was right close
by as well. And what we were seeing was a lot of blacks and Hispanics
went in that direction to the elementary school.
But we found that the majority of Northeast, the native residents [door opening] and the people who came to church out here were the ones that
basically ended up ( ). But then, I think, I don't know if it was the
state or the local emergency management closed it down saying that it
was not a state run emergency shelter. So they transported everybody
over to the elementary school. But I think by that point most people had
started finding places to go. So you didn't have but really just a
handful that ( ) at Posten.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They actually had cots there set up and—.
BETSY EASTER:
Yes. They had cots and food. And Matt and Earl said today—. See their
rest home is right across from that church. So some of the volunteers
would go and clean up over there. I don't know about residents. I mean
the people who were actually staying there that were without homes. But
what happened though during that time they started serving food at
nighttime, lunchtime and nighttime for everyone. And then once
Page 31
all the people in that shelter had moved over to
the elementary school, it really became where they were cooking meals
primarily for these folks. And it just became a regular thing. Every
lunch and every dinner they did it. I don't know if they did it on
Saturdays and Sundays. Do you know? Did they ever do it on Saturday and
Sunday?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
Oh, that's right. They did on Saturday. I don't know about Sunday. But
they did that for close to ten or—ten weeks or so. So that was a real
central place for people to come together—for the neighbors here to come
together.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Even though it wasn't here. It was somewhere else. And how far—how many
miles away?
BETSY EASTER:
It's four, four or five probably from here. And it's like if you're
going back in town where the big Food Lion was on the right. It's right
behind there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
It's a nice size church but—.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
Well just a minute.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
That's the only place we could see one.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So that's an interesting event where everybody's getting together. But
you're getting together somewhere else. It's like you're all visitors
somewhere else. And you see one and all homeless.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
All homeless.
BETSY EASTER:
But it was a way that you could get information. You could find out what
your neighbors were doing. You could find out what FEMA was doing or
wasn't doing
Page 32
for them. What SBA was or wasn't
doing for them. And, you know, where you could cry some and did a lot a
laughing. And for a while there they had clothes. They had food. They
had water. They had cleaning supplies. So, you know, it was really a
central point for anything including food for the soul.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Can we use that as an outline to talk about what you were learning, what
you have learned? You said, where people went—that's where you learned
where people went. Can you say some of the places you know where they've
gone? We're talking about hundreds of people.
BETSY EASTER:
After—?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Can you give some examples of where they went, where they are now, where
they're staying? They're not in their homes, but some of the strategies
they used— staying with relatives for example.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
As far as Mount Olive—. Do you know where Mount Olive is?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yes, I do.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Some of them were living even in Mount Olive. Some were at Kingsville,
Beaulahville, Rose Hill, Wallace, Lyman. They were just scattered. Went
with relatives and anywhere they could find an empty house that was
furnished. Betsy she had friends in Hickory and Boone that brought her
down furniture and furnished her house.
BETSY EASTER:
The house was furnished ( ) by a friend free to start with.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I had some friends that let me have a little—a travel trailer. It was
not as large as this to stay in until I could get this one.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But those people even who were staying as far away as Mount Olive might
come back sometimes to the church?
Page 33
BETSY EASTER:
Oh, yeah. Well they would come—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
Well they—. See they'd have to come back out here everyday just about
to—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Tend to their jobs, you know.
BETSY EASTER:
Or their jobs or to work on their houses or to empty their houses. To
try to figure what you were going to do.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So when people came back to their houses they were still working mostly
alone as a family. Like when you wanted to clean out your house
neighbors all didn't gather around.
BETSY EASTER:
No, no, no, no. Because nobody—. I mean everybody's so inundated with
all that they have to do. And then most of them had to worry about their
families, family members. You know, whether it was children or their
parents or their grandparents' homes. They had to—. Basically what
you're seeing is family helping family. Now if you don't have much
family then you don't get a lot of help. But within that second week, or
actually that first week that we could come back to our houses, there
were volunteers from everywhere. So many volunteers you didn't know what
to do with them. The Marines came. And that isn't a time when
everybody's emotions were to the highest point.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Positive.
BETSY EASTER:
No. Just like very emotional.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Negative. Very emotional.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
We were very confused.
Page 34
BETSY EASTER:
Confused, emotional. You know, you felt like you were really in a fog or
in a dream and things are just kind of going on.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. Things are just kind of going on—yeah. All these things are going
on around you. You just really were not totally conscious of. You were
in there doing it but you just weren't there.
And what happened with me and what happened with a lot of people is these
volunteers came in and God bless every one of them. But because we were
all so confused—many of us—and just overwhelmed to say the least. We
were being told by the state and the local health authorities that
everything was so contaminated you couldn't save anything. Throw
everything. Don't touch anything. Wear boots, wear gloves, special
gloves, da-da-da-da. So, you know, here are these volunteers.
Well actually what happened with myself on Tuesday, my mother and I and
my sister came over here for the first two or three days and would pick
at things. You know, try to pick through it and try to figure out "what
in the world you're going to do" because it was so nasty and gross. Then
I remember on Tuesday my daughter from Wilmington came down. And a
friend of hers and my youngest daughter and we started cleaning out and
pulling out. But, I mean, we worked two or three hours and it was a
killer because everything's so wet and nasty. Then the next day my
fifteen-year old daughter and I came over and started working.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You have two daughters? Is that right?
BETSY EASTER:
I do. And we—a couple of hours of working and you just couldn't carry
but a small load at a time because it was so heavy. And everything in
the house is so
Page 35
swollen and so thick and gooey and
grimy and nasty. So we were exhausted. Well about that time at two
o'clock I remember I told her I said—I don't think emotionally and
physically I just couldn't take anymore. And I said, "Abbie, let's go
home."
CHARLES THOMPSON:
This is a week or so after? Is that when you first went back.
BETSY EASTER:
Right. It was on—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That Saturday you were talking about going back.
BETSY EASTER:
That was a Saturday and the Tuesday following that, the Wednesday
following that. And about that time though I saw five Marines walking up
in the driveway. So that's when I started letting people carry things
about because I knew that it would take me forever and forever. And
emotionally I didn't think I could do it.
For that next week that's what happened in both our houses I guess,
wasn't it? As a matter of fact, she and I had people come in our houses
the same day. So she had to be here and I had to be there. I couldn't
see what they were carrying out of her house. I couldn't even see what
they were carrying out of mine. And we lost a lot of stuff because, you
know, you just—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You're just awed.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
They threw out all of our furniture and—.
BETSY EASTER:
Well, a lot of the furniture may not have been salvageable though. But
there were some things that were that were senseless to throw away. But,
you know, we couldn't figure out why anybody would throw a sewing
machine away that had not been underwater. We couldn't figure out why
they would—. There's lots of things, you know, that—. But you just
didn't know what to do.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Mostly Marines would have no idea about—.
Page 36
BETSY EASTER:
Well there were church groups coming in by the end of the week, weren't
there?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well there was that group ( )—.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. My oldest daughter—. Yeah. That was probably a disaster. The
demolition group—the people that I was telling you about. And before
they could start pulling everything out they helped us throw things out.
And they just came in and. I mean they had that house wiped out in no
time. It was gone. And then they started tearing everything out saying
that it needed to come out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I saw one woman out next to the road going through a pile out in front
of a house. It may have been the owner of the house. Did y'all think
about doing that?
BETSY EASTER:
Is that recently?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Just today. Going through the pile—.
BETSY EASTER:
I saw a woman. Was it down here maybe?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yeah.
BETSY EASTER:
I saw that and it's Miss Laura's old building. And they have started
finally emptying stuff out of there. And I think it was somebody from
the trailer park probably going through it because there was a lot of
that. People, I mean, some lady stopped and asked us if they could have
the couch out of the pile. And I said—well, it insulted me. It was like,
"No. If I can't have it, you can't have it." I said, "Besides that, it's
contaminated. You don't want this couch." But the next morning it was
gone. So they must have gone back. They took my couch out of my
pile.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
When they threw—in my house they threw the clothes in a pile and some of
the things, the higher up things—. And my daughter was packing the
things that were—
Page 37
they had brought that hadn't
been in the water. And I was going through clothes and here comes this
Wilmington Star reporter. And there I was
looking—.
BETSY EASTER:
Looked like a farm girl.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Looking terrible and sorting out those clothes. So he wrote a story and
put my picture of the way I looked then on the front page. [Laughs]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What was the story about?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Just about everything. But one thing that he highlighted was the
insurance. He said that I said that I had paid the insurance for, what,
fifty-five years and I spit—and I didn't say that. [Laughs] But you know the insurance company was here Monday morning.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Oh is that right?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You did have flood insurance though?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No, but we had storm—the turkey houses had storm. The hurricaine ruined
my curtains.
BETSY EASTER:
But they went around and found things that the storm damaged that was (
) and then gave her insurance money for that. But I was complaining
because our insurance—. And early on, you know, I was feeling like the
insurance company's out to come in and bail us out, which was a laugh,
of course. But, at the same time, I was bellowing everywhere I went, you
know, "Our insurance company is going to take care of this." And then
she or I once said something about she had paid insurance for all those
many years and had never used it much. You know, just very little. (
)
CHARLES THOMPSON:
This was to ( ).
Page 38
BETSY EASTER:
Uh-huh.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. All right well that—. We got a lot about where people went and so
forth. What about SBA? You found out stories from people about that. And
you also found out—you mentioned FEMA. And that fits with the insurance
companies' neglect. But when did you start thinking that, "Okay, the
church groups are giving food and they're giving help that may not have
been so helpful at times because they didn't know— ." They didn't have
experience with this, it sounds. They just didn't—they threw out
everything.
BETSY EASTER:
Well, they were—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
FEMA is supposed to have it—. Excuse me. What were you going to say?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
They were just like—they were like we were because the state health and
local health departments, you know, had so frightened everyone because
they said that, you know, it was so contaminated everything.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Do you think that was wrong? Do you think that it wasn't really that
contaminated. You could have cleaned it up with Clorox and it would have
been fine? BE and
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Umm-hmm.
BETSY EASTER:
As much as we could we saved things like that. You know, they were
saying, you know, "Don't save any plastics." Well I didn't, I guess,
because I think mine got thrown away. But there were a lot of things I
remember looking at going in that trash pile and saying, "Why does that
have to be thrown away? It looks to me like we could clean it down."
Your roller chairs that go to your computer table, just nothing wrong
with them. And I remember standing there looking at them and just going,
"How can I replace these?"
Page 39
But I don't know if everybody was like this. But in my mind because we
had heard—this was in the first week after the waters had gone down. We
had heard enough by that time to know—. Matter of fact we—most everybody
had registered with FEMA because immediately—. We were evacuated Friday
morning and by Friday afternoon we were at my aunt's house. And by
Saturday night, Saturday we had called, hadn't we?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Who had you called?
BETSY EASTER:
FEMA. Because the word was already coming in—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Call this eight hundred number.
BETSY EASTER:
Yes. Call FEMA. FEMA is your federal emergency management agency.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In Raleigh. Did you call an office in Raleigh or was it somewhere
farther away?
BETSY EASTER:
It was the eight hundred number that was given out everywhere.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You don't know where it went.
BETSY EASTER:
I don't know if it was in Raleigh or D. C. or where.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
But my thought was when I'm looking at these chairs and I'm looking at
everything else, "Well they tell us to throw it away. They tell us that
FEMA's going to take care of us." So—. If I had—see some people waited
before they went in and started to throw things out. Not a lot, do you
think? Most people pull things out immediately because what was
happening was the mold was growing.
I mean by the time I walked in my house on Saturday after it flooded on
Friday— and say the flood waters you can tell were here—the mold was all
the way up the walls. It
Page 40
was where the water had
come, you know, so deep on my clothes hanging in the closet it had
already climbed up. A [Telephone rings] leather jacket was totally covered in mud. [Telephone rings]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yeah we haven't talked at all about your turkeys yet. You were talking
about FEMA and so on. We'll hopefully get to do that after she finishes.
[BE heard carrying on telephone conversation. Recorder is turned off
and then back on.]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Are all those citizens from the flood area or are some of them
separate?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well they're from their church and some are from our church.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. So we've got everybody back in the room now. And we'll start—. We
were talking about the FEMA promise. That's where we left off that you
had taken out all of the goods out of your houses reluctantly. You let
these other volunteer groups do that. Throwing things away that were
plastic and sewing machines and everything, even things that weren't
damaged because you had hoped that all this would be replaced. And you
had been led to believe that all of this would be replaced by FEMA. And
that's where I think we stopped the tape.
BETSY EASTER:
What did you start to say?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you wanted to—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well we had never—. I mean it was through ignorance. People didn't know
anything about FEMA in this area because we never had to deal with it.
So it was not—. No one had ever been informed. I guess it was just some
outsider maybe that said, you know, they will help you build back your
house or something.
BETSY EASTER:
You remember Aunt Sue who was talking about somebody over in ( )—.
Page 41
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, but she didn't know.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It's just rumor at this point that y'all are—that somebody's coming by
saying FEMA'll take care of you. There wasn't any government official
who was giving you a paper or—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
They hadn't really promised that.
BETSY EASTER:
No. They hadn't promised anything. It's just they're saying, "FEMA will
take care of things." And there's some literature ( ) and I'm sure I've
got it at the house where it says—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you got that at these shelters, the literature?
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. You know in different places they were passing out. But, you know,
it would say that FEMA will come in and take care of things.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
What they do is mostly take of the immediate needs and that's [microphone is moved]—that's mostly what they're—. And that's what the Red Cross does,
too, is take care of your immediate needs.
BETSY EASTER:
But see what really got me about FEMA though was that for weeks and
weeks you're going down to the recovery center. You're calling the help
line. And you're hearing that they will help you out. But you don't know
how they will help you out.
And then when they finally do your applications and they send you back a
copy of the application they've taken over the phone. And it shows on
there that, okay, you're eligible for disaster housing assistance.
You're eligible for Small Business Administration loan. You're eligible
for this. You're eligible for that. Several different eligibilities, but
what happens is—. And see none of us realized this. The only thing that
Page 42
FEMA—when it comes right down to it will do is
to help you with housing, rental assistance and the small business
loans.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And that's the ten thousand?
BETSY EASTER:
No. The small business is whatever they determine you can pay back
according to your value.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. And that's—farms aren't eligible for that. Am I right about
that?
BETSY EASTER:
No. Farms are not eligible for it. They have to go through the Farm
Service Agency ( ) County.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
And then they won't let you have money at the low interest rate if you
can borrow it from the bank.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You have to prove that you can't get the loan otherwise for them to give
you a loan. Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
That's right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You were telling me earlier before we talked on tape about the FEMA deal
that you can take ten thousand or you can take rental assistance but you
can't take both. Can you say more about that?
BETSY EASTER:
Well, it started out—. That was not the way from the beginning. Early on
it was just you applied for FEMA and FEMA's going to come in and help
you out. And then you find out that the help that they can do is small
business loan.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And the loan ( )—.
BETSY EASTER:
And they will give you up to $10,000 if your house can be repaired for
under $10,000. They will give you that $10,000. You know now that I
think about—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
But not if you're having the housing. Not if you get the housing.
Page 43
BETSY EASTER:
Not if—. Well now early on I think that's the money that Bradley and
Billy and all of them were getting was that ten thousand towards their
houses. See it's been—it hasn't been real level because some people have
gotten big amounts and gotten small business loans. Other people have
gotten big amounts and not gotten small business loan. Other people get
little amounts or no amounts and get a small business loan or maybe not
a small business loan. I mean, everybody's treated different.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The SBA loans can be to individual homeowners who don't even have a
business?
BETSY EASTER:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It doesn't have anything to do with businesses.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
But you have to sign over everything you own.
BETSY EASTER:
But many people didn't even qualify for the small business loans. And,
yes, you do, if you get money from them you hand over your deed, which
is not very pleasant. You know, to think you're handing it over to Uncle
Sam because, you know, if you go missing payments then, you know, your
U. S. government has your turkey farm or your property over here. But a
lot of it I feel like little by little you keep calling and say— you
felt there was a mystery behind calling FEMA.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is this still this 800 number—
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That you call. And at this point you still don't know where you're
calling.
BETSY EASTER:
And you get different answers from every different person that you talk
to just about. You know, to people at the other end at the help line.
And one will tell you one week that you're referred to this program. The
next week they'll say, "No ma'am,
Page 44
you haven't been
referred." Then the next week they'll say, "You've been referred to this
program." It's like you're told something different every week. But
then—and then they would—.
Macintyre and Charlie Albertson brought some of the FEMA people and SBA
and over to the firehouse. And there were a few community people out
there. And they told them what FEMA was all about. And I said, "But we
know all that. We want to know where the money is." [Laughs]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And this was when?
BETSY EASTER:
And they never told you anything. Huh?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
This was when—when the—over here—.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. Mike Macintyre and Charlie Albertson are representatives in—.
What's Macintyre, state senate?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
State senate, okay. And this was when? This is recent?
BETSY EASTER:
No. This is, gee, it's been at least six or eight weeks ago, eight weeks
ago probably.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But it was just an informational meeting and you wanted to know when are
we going to get this money.
BETSY EASTER:
Right. Because we keep hearing—we kept hearing those same stories. So
that's not what we really wanted to hear. But then another time they had
a—called a community meeting over here and brought in the FEMA and SBA
people. And I guess that's when we all finally realized that there was
nothing to FEMA except housing assistance.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Trailers like the one we're sitting in. What else besides that?
Page 45
BETSY EASTER:
They would offer a mobile home for up to eighteen months. They would
offer the FEMA trailer for up to eighteen months or they would pay
rental assistance. But after some people started receiving big checks
all of a sudden we started—the rest of us started receiving letters. And
it stated that, you know, they—there had been a change because of this
situation was so unique and so many people did not have housing. That
what they did they were offering—. And this was what mother was talking
about. They offered you rental assistance. And they would pay for your
rent to up to eighteen months. They would give you a mobile home. Not a
FEMA trailer but a mobile home for up to eighteen months. Or they would
give you ten thousand dollars. You pay for your own rent out of that.
And then if you have some left over you can apply it towards a grant or
a loan. You cannot spend it just any way you want to. It has to be
applied towards your loan or your grant. So personally I would go for
the ten thousand because there would be a few dollars left over after
paying the rent. In mother's case she doesn't have to pay rent. She's
got the trailer here. So she can apply this to her house. And which is
what a lot of people can do if they don't have to pay rent is apply it.
See, like with me, I can't apply it to my house. So I'm forced to do SBA
loan. ( ) You know, for the fact that you can see that you cannot just
go in and with all these homes just start replacing them and building
back unless—. Now it sounds like mother might be getting the Mennonites,
did you say?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I don't know. They go around and look at different places ( ).
BETSY EASTER:
Oh really? To see whose needs are greater?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I guess. They just did four houses in Duplin County.
Page 46
BETSY EASTER:
Well I would think the elderly have the greatest needs, wouldn't
you?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well I think so. But then I don't know how they do it.
BETSY EASTER:
So it's basically saying that there is no money except what little—.
Even ten thousand dollars will not build these homes back up.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Of course.
BETSY EASTER:
People like my mother who is elderly and does not have the resources.
And I guess they all feel that it's nobody's responsibility but ours.
The way I look at it it's our tough luck. We just have to deal with it
the best way we can. If you build back, okay. And if you don't. What I
always called "tough titties."
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well the governor has talked about three hundred and eighty million
dollars and so forth. What do you think when you hear these figures
again? Is it just more promises? Or do you feel there is something maybe
in the future that's coming? What do you think?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I don't know. They've turned it over to the social services what they
send to our county. And then they distribute it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
To all the flood victims. So we've gotten what six hundred, seven
hundred?
BETSY EASTER:
Right at seven hundred.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Seven hundred dollars.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Per household.
BETSY EASTER:
Seems like probably more like seven—between seven fifty and eight.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
From the governor.
Page 47
BETSY EASTER:
From the governor's relief fund.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
The first time was three hundred and thirty-nine. The next time was one
hundred and fifty-eight. And the next time was three hundred and
something like that. That's what everybody got. The same amounts. So—and
what it is—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Everybody who'd lost their home?
BETSY EASTER:
That first amount was one point six. No. It was six million. It was six
million divided between sixty–six counties.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
Okay. And by the time it came down to Duplin County, Duplin County got
two hundred and thirty thousand of that money. And by the time every
resident who had signed up for—that had been flooded got three hundred
and some dollars. Now the thing about this other money, it really is
not—. I think it said in the paper this week that it was two hundred and
some odd million of that money you're speaking of would go towards
housing. Now I don't know in what way it goes to housing. But, you know,
when you divide the money up between all of North Carolina that were
flooded, it really—. It's probably not going to be a whole lot ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
When I hear sixty-six counties and I look at the map of the flood I
think, isn't that too many counties to give the money to and—?
BETSY EASTER:
Well it seems like it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There's only a hundred counties in the state. That's two-thirds exactly
of the state, which reaches to Charlotte. So if each county gets an
equal amount—.
BETSY EASTER:
Isn't that the number that you heard?
Page 48
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe that's ( ).
BETSY EASTER:
Well it's sixty-six counties that were affected by the hurricane.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
Okay. Now maybe this is just going to be flood. There are forty-some
counties, I think, that were affected by the flood.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
BETSY EASTER:
And then, of course, some of those counties more so.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( )
ROB AMBERG:
Martin County is northeast corner.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Towards Washington.
ROB AMBERG:
Well, it's north of Williamston, Oak City or—. It's not too far from
Tarboro.
BETSY EASTER:
Oh really. ( )
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
It's further east and a little bit north to Tarboro.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
( )
BETSY EASTER:
In the chicken houses?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well speaking of farms—I know we've got to come to a close now. But is
there any aid—and have you received any aid whatsoever for the farm? And
can you tell me what happened just real briefly to the turkeys? We
haven't talked about that. What happened to them and then what—?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
They were down closer to the river than we were. So the water came real
high in the turkey houses.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And how many turkeys are we talking about?
Page 49
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I had about twelve thousand but that was—. It was a lot to me but then a
lot of growers, you know, around here have about sixty thousand ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And if you have twelve thousand turkeys and they grow out well and they
weigh what they're supposed to weigh, is there a pretty good sized check
that you expect to get from that?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well, it's—. I don't have much left over when I have to pay somebody to
help me.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. And all the electric bills—.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
It's—you have enough to pay your bills.
BETSY EASTER:
Well like in her case, she pays herself rent or lease rent every month
as her part of the budget ( ). So that's what she lives on besides the
social security. And in this case, that whole check was wiped out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. So I'm trying to get a sense of how much—.
BETSY EASTER:
So there's nothing to give her—there's no money there for her to pay
herself.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
No rent money for how many months now?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
It will be about nine because it's been since September.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Nine weeks.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
It will be probably six—probably be ten weeks—.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
It will be at least six months before I could get any—could get some
money because—.
BETSY EASTER:
Probably be more than that because by the time you get them in it'll
be—.
Page 50
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
We've got at least a month before I get any.
BETSY EASTER:
Then it's about four months before they're ready to go out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There's a man who works for you in the meantime who's—where's he getting
his money?
BETSY EASTER:
Oh he has a full-time.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
He has another job.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yeah.
BETSY EASTER:
He just ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So what happened? You got a call from your sister saying that
there's—
BETSY EASTER:
Well we called back and forth.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Water down there.
BETSY EASTER:
Um-hmm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Then what happened?
BETSY EASTER:
My sister-in-law—. Are you talking about that Saturday night?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That sister-in-law.
BETSY EASTER:
I mean that Thursday night.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That Thursday night.
BETSY EASTER:
She called in the early morning, Friday morning. She just called and
said there was water—the water was up in the backyard. I take mother's
truck and start right down here and realize the water is up to the
lights. Back out and we were gone [microphone jostled] by, what, the next two or three hours. So my sister that lives
in the house—not the mobile home but the house. She's the one that
stayed there. And we kept calling back and forth to—because the phones
were still operating at the time—to find out,
Page 51
you
know, how fast it was rising. And that's when, what, about three or four
o'clock in the afternoon. Of course I didn't tell her. I was talking to
my sister and she said, "You know, they were just keeping awake ( ).
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I was trying to get him to go feed my turkeys.
BETSY EASTER:
I know.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Had a generator down there. I was trying to get my son-in-law to do it.
But I didn't feed my turkeys. I didn't realize the wind was ( ).
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah. That was over and over and over. She even called the service men
and wanted to know if they could go and get her turkeys out. He said,
"Nope."
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I get attached to them. They're like babies.
BETSY EASTER:
And they hadn't been fed and they didn't have water and she was just so
concerned. And then my sister, I talked to her, and she says, it's
deathly quiet. So I didn't even tell her.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And this was on Friday?
BETSY EASTER:
Saturday. They came out Saturday, didn't they?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well it was Thursday night that I was trying to get Tim to go feed
them.
BETSY EASTER:
And we left. So was it Friday afternoon that the—. I guess it was Friday
or Saturday. They were gone.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Late when you got back and you went to the turkey houses, what did you
see?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I didn't even go look.
BETSY EASTER:
I didn't either. You didn't want to see those rotten turkeys in the
midst of all that turkey litter. No. I mean—.
Page 52
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Who did see them? Somebody.
BETSY EASTER:
The people who hauled them out. Yeah. We'd drive by down there. But
you—. The doors had been left closed and I guess they were still closed.
Yeah. They were still closed because one of the things that somebody
else on up the road had open the doors and let them float. And that was
a no-no. As a matter of fact had even suggested at one point that we do
that because she, I guess she thought maybe the turkeys could be saved
or whatever. I don't know. But they were stilled closed. So we didn't
have to actually see them even if we rode down there. But at one time I
didn't notice—. I did at one point later on go down and look at—. They
kind of like mingled in with the litter. It was just—. Because what
happened, all that water and all that wet swelled that litter up. And it
was just real thick in there. And the turkeys were not just like lying
on top of it. It was all mangled and stuff ( ) together. So I guess by
the time they had drowned the water was up. And when it started coming
down both the litter and the turkeys came down together.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And then there was some help, right? You got Poultry Growers'
Association, PGA. Is that how it is?
BETSY EASTER:
Larry Holder had contacted mother. I don't know how that ever happened,
do you?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
No, I don't, but he did. He kept calling several times.
BETSY EASTER:
He was a past president of Poultry Growers' Association. So he had
contacted mother. And he came—he and someone else came down and had a
meeting at the firehouse. And I think that was the day that Mike
Mcintyre came. It was. And he for—ever how that happened—he came over
here to see mother. And she knew he was
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coming.
She knew he was coming so she had to be here for that entourage. So she
asked me if I'd go to the turkey growers', or poultry growers' meeting.
And over there they offered—. There were several of us over there that
were turkey growers and several of them. And that's where they said they
would get up. There were all these people waiting to be called on to
come down here. And they did. They came. But they only got one farmer
and then they started mother's. And then the state came in, they started
doing it. And they had the trucks. And they had to hire the company, an
engineering company, I think ( ) haul everything else. So they spent, it
was right at ten days here.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
About two weeks.
BETSY EASTER:
Took them to get it out.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well and before that they had these trucks to come in and take off the
dead ones.
BETSY EASTER:
Yeah, which were really the top layer.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now these were—. Were these intended for Thanksgiving turkeys? You think
that's the schedule they were on?
BETSY EASTER:
It probably would have been, wouldn't it?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
It probably would have been.
BETSY EASTER:
They were ten weeks old?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Eleven weeks old and they probably would have gotten about twenty
weeks.
BETSY EASTER:
So see that was two more months there.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
And just about—.
Page 54
BETSY EASTER:
Thanksgiving or Christmas one. Instead it was our Christmas presents,
right?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So is there any—? That was one of the last questions, I guess,
we'll—I'll ask. And then we can maybe talk another time if we need to.
Is there any help for farmers? We said the SBA loans will not go for
helping farmers and the FHA. Is there any company help? Is there any
other way to have any assistance other than getting the houses cleaned
out you're just on your own now or—?
BETSY EASTER:
Well, let's see. You had help from the state to remove the litter.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Well now they will pay seventy-five percent of your clay, to get the
clay in.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The clay base?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That doesn't include the shavings, the litter?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Oh they bring the shavings.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And who pays seventy-five percent?
BETSY EASTER:
The state.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Pays seventy-five percent for the clay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I really at some point am hoping that people can say any recommendations
that they have for anybody else who's ever in this predicament. Do you
have anything you'd like that to say right before we close? I was going
to see if it's—maybe we have a few minutes on tape left. Any things that
after thinking about these things so vividly—.
BETSY EASTER:
To do in the next flood? Is that what you're asking?
Page 55
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. What would you tell the state to do? What would you tell people
who might be flood victims in another part of the state or something?
What would you tell them?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
I think I read in the paper about all these things, places they're going
to have meetings to prepare—be better prepared the next time, you know,
for the fire department and the officials and all. And so—. And I know
that unless it's a lot of years ahead—. I know if it started raining
again like it did with Hurricane Floyd you know I would begin to,
myself, I would begin to get things put up. And at least your papers and
things that you needed to keep, you know. And all your pictures and
things. I would do a little something because this time there was no
warning. And you didn't really believe it in your—that it would happen,
you know. So there was no preparation. But a lot of people probably
wouldn't want to live here anymore. There's some, you know, the
government's going to buy them out so they can go in another place if
they want to.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But you've decided you're going to stay?
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Yes. I'm going to stay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
This is where you've always been.
BETSY EASTER:
It's like Max.
BERNICE CAVENAUGH:
Most people are going to stay.
BETSY EASTER:
Max said she's been there fifty-five years. She's not going to leave
now.
One thing I would do especially if it happened at night. I would not move
my feet out of that house until daytime. They can take you out by boat
then, I mean, unless it's rising so fast. But this was like early
morning just before daybreak. I would work with everything I had to get
everything off the floor.
Page 56
The next thing I would not allow anybody to come in my house and remove
anything. If it took me a year to empty it out I would ( ). I think one
of the things we didn't realize it that how things dry out that—.
I mean even books. When they're covered with that slime you think there
is nothing in the world you can ever do to save your books. And I lost a
lot of books. But some that I did try to hold out, I've realized just
letting them lay around in that house in the open air—. They don't smell
real good. And I wouldn't even want to have them in a room with anything
else. But, you know, they're still okay. And, you know, once they've
dried out you can flip the pages and get the mud and glue for the most
part. And a lot of things like that. Once it dried out, it was not that
bad. It was dirty. And you want everything clean. You don't want to just
bring it back in not clean. But for the most part it can be cleaned.