[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It's December 8, 1999 and we are in the northeast community of Duplin County. And this is Charlie Thompson with the Southern Oral History Program. And I'm here in the living room of Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh. It's twelve noon, a little bit after. And we're sitting here where they had flood damage in the house. And we're sitting on some chairs that she put together. But most of the house is unfurnished right now.

So your story is unique because you are small business people and turkey farmers in the community and lost a lot in really three ways: your house, your business and your flock of turkeys. So maybe you want to just tell about what happened, something about—maybe something about your business. Tell first of all how you got into antiques or how you got into farming. How long you've been here.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We got into the antiques because the love of the antiques by Aaron. He was the one that started the business. And we started about six years ago. We had six thousand square feet. And we would go to Pennsylvania and New York, mainly, and get our antiques and bring them back. And the turkeys we've been in since 19-thirty years.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Thirty years, yeah. We—the way we started, we tore down old buildings and brought them home and put them back up. That was on the old farm. Then later on we built the new buildings and kept right on growing turkeys.

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We've had some losses before but never none like this. It's—this is something nobody, I don't think, was expecting and never seen either.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Describe it the way you were describing it when we were at the river. How the water rose and how that was different.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Okay. We—yeah—we were going to stay at the river house the night of the flood. And we went to the—we got all our things down there during the day: our clothes, our changes, or whatever we needed to do and put them in the river house. And then when we got our generators cut off and everything, we—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You had the generators going because the electricity was gone.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Right. The electricity was gone. There was no way of getting water without the electricity or feed. So we left these on and we were going to keep these checked during the night. And when we came up—or came down going to the river house with the tractor, it flooded out. So Jenny got worried about us and she had two men to come get us. And we waded out of the water, probably chest deep from that incident. The next day we came back and all the turkeys were drowned. It came up probably five foot during the night.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We had babies in two houses that were one week old. And we had four houses of birds that we almost ready to go to market. [Laughter—"Go ahead."] When Aaron came out from the river house he was rescued. Some boys went down and got him with a boat. And he came home and went to bed. It was about ten o'clock on Thursday night.

But he had no idea, and neither did we, that the water would ever come to our house. Not even thinking it would go in the barn because we've seen the water rise on

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the river before but we've always watched it day by day. We put a stick out and we'd watch it hour—. It might rise an inch an hour. And if you—if there was ever anything you wanted to move you had time to move it because the water never came up that fast. And it never came to our house. So he—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And you've lived here how long?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We've been here—. Well in this community we've been here all my life. But here, we've probably been here twenty-two years.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Right on Highway 41.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yes.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And on Highway 41 we've been here thirty-three years just not right in this house. We lived further down toward the river until twenty-two—the last twenty-two we've lived in this house. But in '62—I wasn't here but the flood came. But it only came up how high?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It came probably a foot in the old house we used to live in.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

It didn't even come on this piece of property.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

No, huh-uh. It was just—this was high ground here.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Every other flood it's always been the high ground.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You could go here and be safe.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And '62's the only real big flood that you've had.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Right. Now Fran brought in a little water but nothing out here on 41, no.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No. It did go in our river house. But it didn't go in our turkey houses at all.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

No, no.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

At that time we watched it. We put a stick out and we watched it and I went down and I got all the things out of the river house. Because he was on the farm at that time and we had hogs and turkeys and so he was on the farm. But—. Even got a tractor-trailer, backed it up to the back of our antique shop and took all the antiques out. But it didn't go in the barn after doing all that. It didn't go in but never here. We are not located in a flood zone. So where we are we never expected the water not even that morning at three o'clock.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How far is it to the river from right here?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Three miles approximately.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That much?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

( )

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Across 41—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Across ( )—. I'd say at least two miles maybe three. I'm not sure.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And then we—the water came into our house—it came from both directions. It came from the river and it came from this back. And that's where our mailman was evacuated from with his family on Thursday morning. It was around their house. And there's a creek and it runs into the Northeast River. That's the Island Creek creek. Is that it? But the Island Creek water and the Northeast River water met and came in our house because he was here when it came in. So he knew, you know, from which direction it came.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You were telling me something about how you saw the water first across 41 and how you were pretty much saying, "No. It couldn't happen here." You want to go through that some.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. It came up that night—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Thursday night.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Thursday night we—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's September—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Sixteenth I think it was. And the water was just trickling across the road. And I said, "Well, it's about to peak out. This don't come this high." And we came on home and went to bed. The next morning I had to go check the farm, the turkeys, which they were all dead when I got there. And the water probably had come up at least five foot during the night, drowned all the turkeys, flooded the antiques. It was just more than we expected. We didn't just—disbelief. We didn't believe that but it did happen.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Explain what the river house is. You've mentioned that a couple of times. How you decided to build that and how you built it. It was a good story.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well we started with the first little part of the river house when we needed somewhere to clean up and wash and maybe get us a sandwich during the day and a bathroom—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

While you're working at the turkey barns.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

While we're on the turkey farms. And then we got a chance to get the logs. The logger had left them in the woods. You know, they almost gave them to us. So we took them, and dressed them up and kindly sized them out to see what size they

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were and how far they would go, or how long they were. We kindly figured that out in our minds how we could build a building.

So we got all that together, and we just started out a foundation and come up with it. And log by log we had to scan them. And some days we'd work several hours. Some weeks we'd work two or three days a week just whenever we could fit our time into it to build it. And we probably—it probably took us a year and a half to build it working part-time and getting it all figured out.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And then that was the place you decided to go first when you left here to go take care of the turkeys, right?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That's exactly right.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

You were going to stay there because you could get to the generators and he could actually hear if the tractor gave out of fuel he could—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Tractors run the generator.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Uh-huh. And if it gave out of fuel he could hear it from the river house and he could just get up, go down, refuel and go back to bed.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Now I've heard you say about getting off the tractor. Why were you moving the tractor? I'm not sure—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well, we used it—one of the tractors to go to the river house because of the water. We didn't want to wade through the water.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It has—it's pretty high up off the ground.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Or at least it was.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We thought it was but it drowned out.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And there weren't any lights on that tractor either so he didn't know how deep the water was. He was expecting it to be a foot.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Right. So you were going along this road where you knew it was and you thought maybe it was a foot deep. Tractor cuts off, it's drowned out, spark plugs, you get down off the tractor.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It's chest deep.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Chest deep.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

And by that time the guys that Jenny had called to go get me they were there looking for me. So we came on out with them, didn't go back to the farm until the next day.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Came home and went to bed. It was about ten o'clock Thursday night and we went to bed.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Even after you'd lost all your turkeys.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No. We had not lost—. It wasn't even in the turkey house at that time.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. It wasn't in it, okay.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

During the night the water came up, that night. But if we'd have been smart we would've stayed down there and got all our feeders up, motors. Who knew?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He didn't have any idea. He thought that it had done what it was going to do.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Now the electricity was off.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yep.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Was there any news whatsoever from outside the community, any news stations saying, "Prepare yourselves. This could be a flood."

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

There's water falling up stream.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We didn't hear anything.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

No one heard any of that.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Our daughter heard on the scanner at three o'clock Friday morning that they were going to close 41. Her husband's a fireman. And Tina called and she said, "Mama, they're going to evacuate 41." I said, "Tina, how do you know that?" And she said, "Mama, I heard it on the scanner." But we didn't have the scanner going because we had—Aaron's not a fireman and we didn't have but one generator. And so necessities were all we had on that generator going.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So no one knew and no one was warned ahead of time. Do you think that there was any way that somebody could have warned you about what was going to happen?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well I've thought about that. And I've wondered that if in for future preparations, what could be done because I don't know. And I don't know at what point our fire department—. I think they did an excellent job of getting people out. They worked around the clock, you know, until they got everybody out.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you know who made the decision to tell them to get everybody?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I don't know. I have no idea. And I don't know if they like woke the fire chief up in his own home and said, "This is what we need to do." Or if maybe a resident called and said, "Do you—are you all aware that the water's coming up?" I don't know. And there's been no time. We've worked so hard. We've not had time to talk to our neighbors to find out really what happened with each one. I think it would be so

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interesting to know what went on in that house and that house and with us because we've not had any time. We have worked around the clock.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Maybe you would like to, at some point, as a community have a community story telling—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That would be good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Event—where having some of the older people and some of the younger people tell—. Some people might want to videotape it. Just an idea that came to me.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Right. That's a good idea.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It is.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I know there's a video that somebody made going through here in a boat with the water in our houses, you know. I would love to see that but I haven't. I've heard of it, but I haven't.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you know who made it?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No. I have no idea. I don't know.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Now we got some aerial photos.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Aerial photos, yes, that somebody gave us.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Frankie English, I believe.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But you really—. Yeah. But you really have to sort of know what you're doing. That video would be excellent because it would be right at eye level, you know. I think it would be real nice. And I've also wondered what else—.

You know they're saying that we should prepare for the next one. I don't know exactly what we should do to prepare because we didn't think it was going to come here. And I still stay that somebody let a dam open somewhere because it came too fast.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did you know it was coming too fast? I mean what were the signs?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well as a rule if the river rises we can tell it by putting a stick out. And we'll say—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That means you put the stick in the ground?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

( )

AARON CAVENAUGH:

—water come up to and then you can measure from the stick to how far it come up. Say an inch an hour's average. Well it just depends really. A lot of times, it's three inches an hour. And then later it was five, six, seven inches an hour.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But this was like back with Fran or a big rain. And people would measure the water that way. And, you know, you just talk about it sometimes, "Well, the water's coming up an inch an hour." But with this it was probably rising a foot an hour.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well not that much but it was—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. How much?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Going fast—six inches, probably, an hour.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

There was—the mailman would have gone out at one point to check on things.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He lives on the supply road behind us. And he was evacuated—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What was his name?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Nathan.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Nathan?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Nathan and Vicky Cavenaugh.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Nathan and Vicky. Okay.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He was evacuated that morning from his house. It never went in their house. But their house was surrounded with water. So the fire department, the Northeast Fire Department, went and got them on Thursday morning. And then they came here. But by Thursday afternoon, the water had gone down around these houses. But between us and his house, on the highway there was a lot of water. So he couldn't go back in. They said, "We've evacuated you." So they wouldn't go back in.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So at one point you were scared that the water was coming up. But then it went down and you stopped thinking it was coming this way.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well, okay, as a rule when it went in Nathan and Vicky's house, if it ever went, rose up at the creek at their house, we could look for the river to rise two days later where we were. At the barn and at the house down there, two days later we could look for the river to start rising. We had two days so when Aaron came out on Wednesday, Thursday night, he was still thinking, "The river was at Nathan's this morning. It's going to be two more days before it gets here." Because that's what it always took until that night. And it just rose so fast, too fast.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

He went out at one point—Nathan—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Yes.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Over to the fire department. How did he know—I can't remember—he knew to go over there and check.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. Tina called at three o'clock Friday morning.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's your daughter?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm. And she said they were going to evacuate. And Nathan and Aaron decided that the water was not going to come here in the house. They said, "Well, we'll just go back to bed." So they all went back to bed.

Nathan and Vicky, and their children and Aaron, and the little Mexican boy that we had staying with us. But then Autumn and I were in the office. And we were putting deeds and files in a trash bag and tying them up. She would hold the flashlight, and I'd hold one side of the bag and we'd put it in.

Nathan decided when he heard us doing that that he'd walk to the firehouse. And he did and when he got down there the water went through his legs. He said he was standing with his back to 41. He ran back up here to our house. And he said the next truck that goes out we're all going to get on it.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So he walked out on dry land and while he was talking—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But we walked from my carport—from our carport to 41 to get on the truck. It was dry when we left here. It was dry. But by the time we got to the firehouse, which is right down here—between here and Betsy's—the water was already across the road. Before we got to the big curve down there, which is less than a mile, this truck—. I remember we were on this truck. And I can visualize it. He had a boat trailer hooked to his truck. The trailer was completely submerged in the water. And the truck was high. And I remember the taillights being—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

( )

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I don't remember. But the taillights were under water. I felt like that I was a refugee or something because we were all—. I mean I went out with my gown, a shoe of one color on each feet, foot and my pocketbook. That's all. I mean we left. But

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Aaron stayed. Aaron stayed. He was going—. I don't know what Aaron was going to do. But he stayed until that afternoon and went out on the boats. And see the water was already here by that evening.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Weren't you stacking furniture or something?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. We got up her furniture and put it up on—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He and the little Mexican boy.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Put it up on—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you remember the little boy's name?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Junior Enrique —

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Enrique Segovia Junior. We called him Junior. And he was—he worked on our farm. His whole family lived on our farm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In a trailer.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

In a trailer that was destroyed by the water. And, of course, we lost two flocks of turkeys. That's half a year's income. Plus we have all these repairs to make and we do not have the income to pay them now. So we're having to do the work ourselves. And they have relocated over around ( ) between ( ) and ( ). Maybe one day we can get them back if they'd like to come. They've been with us since '85. So they've been here a long time.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So Enrique speaks English fluently, I'm sure. Does the whole family speak English?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The mama not quite as good as the children. But they do very well. The children do very well.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Now they have a father too with them.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Yes. Their father is not on the farm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Okay.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He was until—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Two years ago.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Two years ago.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

But he had been with us since ' 85 as well.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

( ). You said—. Let's talk about the antique business a little bit. The—how did you decide you wanted to have an antique shop here in Northeast, first of all. I mean did you think about having it in Wallace. Did you think about—?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well when we went up north we went up there several times. And we'd go to these auctions and we'd always buy something: box lot stuff or occasionally we'd get a good piece here and there, you know. And bring it back home and we'd put it in this barn down here that I just showed you. And we kept going for several years and I soon had the thing about half full of box stuff and a few pieces of furniture.

So I told Jenny we were going to set this stuff out and sell it. So she didn't believe it much I don't think. And I got it set out and it wasn't arranged right. So they got in there and they got it, you know, looking halfway decent. So I said, "We need to sell this stuff." So we opened a half—we've got a division in it. We opened the half, the front part up. And the things were for sale. So we started selling them, kept going to Pennsylvania, picking it up. Finally we met a man named Joe Griggsport?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Griggsport.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Griggsport. He's a ( ).

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Bedford, Pennsylvania.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

He would bring us a load probably once a month of pretty good furniture and stuff. That helped out with the sales because when you've got a good piece you can sell it. Plus all the local salesmen. There's a lot of auctioneers would go to Pennsylvania. They'd have an auction every Saturday night or once a month. We'd pick up a lot of stuff there. So—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He stayed on the road a lot buying antiques.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Oh I'd be out three to four nights a week buying antiques. I'd look at them.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Running the farm in the day and buying antiques at night.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

But it's just something that I like to do. I mean, you know, there's not a whole lot of money in it but it's a lot of fun.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So you had the building here. That was one of the reasons that you—what were you going to say?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He said that he was going to open up a shop. And I said, "What kind? A tack shop?" Because at this time he was going up north to buy horses. I did not know he was packing all this stuff. But the barn was full. He said, "No." He was going to open an antique shop. He'd been furnishing the river house, you know. So he had—.

Anyway, I said, "Aaron that will never work. It will never work out here on 41." And he said, "Well, let's just try it." Well I was amazed. I was overwhelmed. We picked up traffic from I-40. We had people that came from Charlotte, Chapel Hill—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well, Greenville to Wilmington's a pretty main route. We had a lot of people from Greenville, Kinston, Wilmington—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Southport.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. Little Washington. It was amazing.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And they'd come one time and then you'd see them come back every time they would pass. So we had a lot of regulars but—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We sold to a lot of dealers. I mean, we done good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So that means your prices are low enough that they can mark them up.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And that's how—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We didn't try to make a bunch of money.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We just enjoyed it. Now we need to make a bunch of money.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

[Laughs] Now we don't have any money.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How many antiques did you lose in the flood? How do you—?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Dollars-wise or—?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well, either that or—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Phew. We had a barn full.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

( ).

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well we probably threw out a hundred thousand dollars worth aside the road for the state to pick up. That's mostly furniture, which was—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Completely ruined.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Completely ruined, which is most expensive. Furniture costs you more than the small stuff. Of course I enjoyed the small stuff but I guess I had too much of it. And I don't know—.

We had an auction and sold a lot of stuff. Got what we could. Of course we cleaned it all. It done pretty good on the auction. But we felt like that was the thing to

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do because when a customer come in, "Well this has been under water. I don't want that." So we feel like selling out the whole contents and start again we'd be better off.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We put that money back on our farm, too. The farm has to get going because that pays for the inventory. There's no way without the farm. We needed that money to go on the farm, too.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So your auction did well.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It done good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And maybe a lot of people would say—who don't know this community would say, "Why would you want to locate the antique business back where it was. If it flooded, it might flood again." What would you say to that? Is there a sentimental attachment?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They could be very well right. It could flood again. But, you know, I think that the building can be cleaned and repaired. And that would be an expense that I wouldn't have to go into. But the water could come back. It very well could.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's something different. You wouldn't have said that back in the summer that the water would ever come there. Now you're saying it could.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It could and it scares you. It really does.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What's changed? Has the river changed? Has something upstream changed?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I think somebody let the dam open somewhere for it to flow that fast. I'll say it until somebody tells me I'm absolutely—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They had dredged the river, what, a year or so ago ( ) getting all the debris out of the stream and everything. That should have helped. So I don't know.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Where? I know that was a lot of water. But y'all, we're talking about a lot of water around here, too.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well the ground was already saturated. It was wet. What was it, eight or ten inches before a flood?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

( )

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. And then Floyd did drop, what, nineteen to twenty inches? So—. But I think we've had that much rain before at times and had no flood like this.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But it came so quick.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah, it came quick.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

It came quick. Even if you had that much water it should have risen somewhat like it's always risen so you could tell what was going on in the river. You're talking about a foot of water that afternoon to chest deep on a six foot man by eight o'clock. That's a lot of water.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Going back to check the turkeys during the storm, the wind part of it on what was it, Wednesday, Thursday-Wednesday night did it start?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Wednesday night was the wind.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Went back down there Thursday morning, you know—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No water.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

No water nowhere. Later on during the day they cut the power off. I don't think the storm done it. The companies done it for safety reasons. The water had begun to come up within what—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The water came up and they cut the power off?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

At what point in time?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That might have been Friday. I don't know. Anyway—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But our power was on Thursday down there. It was on Wednesday night. Remember?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Wednesday night's when the storm came.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Right. And we had no power. You were down there with the generator on Thursday.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Okay. Thursday I hooked the generator. But Thursday morning everything was calming down after the wind. The turkey house had blew over, you know.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Oh yeah. Our turkey house was leaning.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We would have been to scared to go in that thing if it ( ).

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is it torn down or is it back up?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

No. We straightened it back up. It took us ten days to get it back up, about seven or eight head of us. But we done it.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We should have pointed that out.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. We should've. But I can't remember everything. Anyway the wind was—. Thursday morning everything looked—after the wind had quit it looked fairly normal except the water was coming a little bit. But not—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But not much. We weren't worried.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

No. We weren't worried. And, you know, it was probably after dinnertime before we got the generators going. That's on Thursday. And the water came right on it just that quick, fast.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And it did come up but it was only about a foot deep in that low place at four o'clock. And by eight it was chest deep.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That's what I'm talking about. It was fast.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Fast. It—has anybody else that you talked to—have they thought it came fast?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Everybody.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Everybody.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

( )

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But we really have not had time to talk. But it came fast.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Tell us about what you've been spending the time doing. You don't talk to people right now because you're too busy.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

You do not have time. When you get up in the morning it seems like nothing you've planned to do or want to do is what you do. It's something that pertains to the flood that you've got to do. But in the beginning there was nothing——. Well in the beginning we had sixty thousand dead turkeys. And Aaron worked for four days.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It's the worst four days I ever spent.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And those turkeys had been dead a week. And he spent a terrible time. Well the whole time he was down there working around the clock, I was here thinking that I could save our floors and walls. So I was trying to dry them out with the dehumidifiers. And I was trying to spray Clorox on everything.

And after Aaron finally got the turkeys removed and then they started to remove the litter, he came home and—. At that time we were not staying here we were staying with our daughter. But you didn't have—. We didn't have time to go stand and see if the

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Page 21

Salvation Army could help us or the Red Cross could help us. We did—I did take time to get a FEMA number. FEMA came. And they said, "Well you can save your walls." Which you can see we've cut those out and replaced the boards there.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

The baseboards?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm. And so FEMA and they said we could save everything. Well we couldn't. We moved back in here. And we took the sub-floor up one night after we had moved back in here. Aaron said, "If I live until in the morning, we're going to take the board up." It was just as green as it could be.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Mildew.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Uh-huh. The walls were spongy. And the—when we cut these walls out and pulled that insulation out, the water ran down my arm. We had to take everything—. But we did it in between working at the turkey house. We might get an hour that we could come home and take a floor up. Or we might get one whole day that we could come here and work.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Were you doing all this yourselves?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We had a little help.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We didn't put the baseboard down. But our—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Son helped us with that ( ).

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And then we had a family, a real nice family from Lillington that came and helped us one Saturday. And they helped us put down more of the sub-floor.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

In the three bedrooms.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. In the bedrooms. And they helped us put—. A piece of sheet rock had to go behind each one of these boards. And they helped us get one room fixed there. And the rest of it we've got hired done. But we've had a lot of volunteer work in the barn. I am forever grateful for the volunteers that we've had.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Let's go through those. Who all came?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. I hope I don't leave anybody out. The First Baptist Church of Charlotte, North Carolina. There was Stan and Judy Crisp and their family from Lillington. There was Connie Mack Johnson from Wilmington. He has not been, but he's brought a lot of food to our center. And he introduced us to Stan and Judy. There were some turkey growers and they were from up Pageland. And they have been twice. They came once. I think there was seven or eight of them. Some of them helped on the farm. The men helped on the farm and the women helped me in the shop wash the dishes and things getting ready. That was over a period of at least four weeks, wasn't it Aaron?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yes.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That is took us to get back ( ).

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Now they would just drive up and say, "What can we do?"

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm. Or some of them came to the Wallace Baptist Church and Mr. Bazemore, the pastor there, he would call and ask did we need any help.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How do you spell Bazemore? B-A-Y—?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

B-A-Z-E-M-O-R-E, Bazemore. And that's the First Baptist Church in Wallace. And Aaron has a nephew that goes to church out there. And they found out—. The nephew and his wife found out that some turkey people were coming. So they knew that they would like to be on a farm so they contacted us. And that's how we met them.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They had damage during Hugo.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Sure did.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

And it was so bad that the volunteers came in and helped them, and they said if anybody ever needed help on a turkey farm and they could, they would come and help them. So that was nice.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And they did. Because they knew how to wash waterers and feeders. The North Carolina Department of Revenue came and helped us wash turkey feeders. It was a group of ten.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They were just volunteers. They weren't here to give money or anything.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Oh, no. No. No.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Unofficial.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He came to the door and he said, "I'm with the North Carolina Department of Revenue." And I said, "Well, son, I think I mailed my sales tax and paid all my taxes." And he said, "Well I didn't come to collect." And I said, "Well what can I help you with?" And he said—. And by then I had invited him in. And he said, "I've come to help you." And I said, "You've come to help me?" And he said, "Yes, ma'am." And I said, "Well what would you like to do?" I had no idea that's—. He said, "Anything that you want cleaned up pertaining to this flood." I said, "Let me get my pocketbook and we'll go to the farm." So I got the gloves and they helped. They were good help, too.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Men and women?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm, men and women.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

There was another group that came in on a—I don't even know who they were really—on a Saturday evening about four o'clock —

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

They came from the Baptist church. They were connected with the Baptist church.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They'd had been somewhere all day and they'd work all day long. What we had built—or repaired the turkey house we had a lot of timbers laying around. And some of them were still nailed up that we were through with. And we had to get them down and pull the nails out and stack it. They asked me what they could do. So they jumped in there on that. And, phew, an hour and a half they had that stuff cleaned up. It would have took me three days by myself to get it. And a couple of them went and put a water pump on my well for me. They were a big help. They sure was.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Hands have been the biggest asset that anybody—if you've ever been flooded, hands are what a person needs. They need financial stuff, too. But in the very beginning those hands—. You don't even know what you need financially but you know you need hands because your mind is working so much faster than your hands can keep up. And it was like every morning when we left here, we left this in a mess.

We had no vehicle. We didn't have time to go buy a vehicle. I was driving my nephew's car. And we finally—. For weeks—I don't know how many weeks after—we finally went to see if we could get Aaron a truck. I know the man from Safeway Chevrolet. Aaron called him and he let us use that little white truck.

And then we went back down and bought this little red truck that was their parts truck. As a matter of fact, we went that morning to buy me a car. And I was just overwhelmed. And I said, "Aaron, I don't need a car. You need a truck." So we bought the little truck Safeway had let us use. And when Aaron came from around the back of the shop, he was grinning from ear to ear. And I said, "What is it, Aaron?" And he said,

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Page 25

"I bought two trucks." He said, "They're going to sell this little parts truck here. And I bought it, too."

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Mitsubishi?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. That's—a '91. But we have run it. It is wonderful. And then I have [dog barks].

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Hannah. [Dog barks.]

CHARLES THOMPSON:

We were talking about—. We just had lunch and now we're talking about the volunteers who were in the antique shop and all the different groups who came. And you mentioned several different groups just now. You mentioned the Salvation Army. You mentioned customers coming back. You want to tell us again, go through that a little bit.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm. Aaron—. While we were having lunch we were talking about how the Salvation Army truck would come through our community. And they would stop and they would have like a box lunch with a drink. And at that time we'd been on the farm. If we weren't on the farm we were in the shop. Sometimes we were back here.

But it was—. Always we were so busy. You never had time to think about what you were going to fix to eat, what you were going-where you were going to go and get it. And at the time we were eating a lot of beans and franks and vienna sausage. We got it from the center, which we were truly grateful.

But that hot meal when they would pass it out that window, I never ate anything that was bad that came off that truck. Everything that we ate was delicious. And then on Saturdays we'd go down to the barn to work. And while we were down there working

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Page 26

we had former customers that would call and they'd volunteer to come back. They'd say, "I've got to work all week but I can be there on Saturday." We had friends. We had neighbors. We had family. Without those hands, we would have never gotten the merchandise washed and ready for the auction.

And it was like everybody that came—even church groups from out in Wallace came. Ladies would come in the afternoon after their prayer service. They would come and wash dishes with me for an hour or two hours, three hours. And when they'd come in, I'd just say, "Go pick a section. Here's some gloves. Here's a tub. Pick a section and just wash what you want to wash." And they acted like they had fun doing it. Of course I was so strained at that time I didn't even know who I was. I didn't think. But without their hands we could have never gotten it done, just never.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So, also, how did those people help you? When you say you were strained. They helped physically. They helped move things. But what other ways did they help?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Just knowing that somebody cared. It was like everywhere that I went there was devastation. The house was devastated. We were having to drive an hour. When we got through working at night we had to drive one hour to get to our daughter's house. We would give completely out when we got there. We would eat supper with her, take a bath and go to bed. And then the next morning we'd get up and start again. And we didn't see anybody. We'd see our friends and our neighbors all along the road. But nobody had time to stop and say, "How are you? Do you need anything?"

If this—if this flood had happened to just one person in our community, we could have all joined together and took care of that one person or five families or whatever.

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Page 27

But when it's every house for a twelve mile stretch, nobody has time to help anybody. You are so busy trying to get—just keep your head above the water to help yourself.

Or that's the way we were because every bit of income we had, every business, everything we owned was underwater. I mean we didn't even feel like we had—like I said, to go shop for a vehicle. There was no time to think about that. There was no time to go stand in line to see if Salvation Army would help you or the Red Cross could help you. It was needless to go for food stamps. But you didn't have time to even partake in a lot of those things. And, too, the shelter—.

In the beginning there were times when churches would come by. I know Penhook Church or Oakdale Church—I think it was Oakdale Church came by one day and it was around lunchtime. They stopped in our driveway. It was two ladies. And they had brought us some paper towels and things from their church. And I was so glad because I hadn't had time to go get any. And out she brought some potted meat. And Aaron said, "Well I just want some potted meat." I mean anything that you could just pop the top on a can. That's what we ate.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

For how long? How many days did you do that?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Three weeks

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Oh it was weeks. It was weeks. It was weeks. But it's—. I appreciate all the help—like I said—with the hands. People have been good to us. People have been good to our community. And to be able to go down to the center and pick up cans of beans and corns and detergent has helped tremendously because our last income was in August. And we won't get paid again until 2000, the end of April or the first of May. That's a long time.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

When the turkeys get—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

When these turkeys that we've just put in, that's when they'll sell. We'll have to raise them that long before we can send them to market. So that's a long time without the income.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yes it is. And when do you think you might have the antique store back open?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well I don't know. He's got some stuff down there now that he's going to have an auction in January. But all that stuff does not belong to us. That consists of the remaining things that we did not have a chance to sell October 30th. We're going to sell those things. And then another man has brought some stuff in to sell. But as far as us opening back up, I don't know. Do you?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

I have no idea.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We've got to have that farm income. And that's one thing I was saying about the Small Business Administration that's good. We did not need a loan to buy antiques because you cannot shop for antiques out of a book or a catalog. And they come rolling up to the door and you put them on a shelf. That's not the way that works.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So that the problem is that if you take a loan from SBA, you're holding that money and paying interest on it. But to buy antiques it takes a long time and you don't want to hold that money. Is that what you're saying?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That's right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So you'll have quick turn over of money.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That's right. And you've got to have time to go and find them. You can't just go out here and buy an antique. You've got to go shop. We usually would go and stay a week at the time.

But we had—right now's not a good time of the year to even go because estate sales and things aren't going on. And that's a lot of what we do is estate sales in the spring and the fall.

Plus we can only go when the farm, when the turkeys are at a certain age. And now that our income's gone, we're doing all the work ourselves on the farm. We have no help so we don't even have anybody to leave at this point that can take care of the farm while we go and shop for merchandise for the barn. So we're in a two-fold problem really. I don' t know when we'll ever get back with it.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So the primary goal is to get the farm running and get that flock out. Get that money.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That's right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In the meantime you're having to work on your house. You're having to spend money on the farm. How are you doing that? How are you managing? Is the government helping by giving you some money?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

They gave—the government gave us $2,855.10. That was FEMA.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. That wouldn't pay for even one tractor loss.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Oh no.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well that was only to be used in this house.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

On the house.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. And our house—I can't tell you how many thousand we've already had to spend. Because when FEMA was here they said, "Oh you don't have to take the walls out." And when we cut the walls out all that had to be replaced.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You found water inside the wall.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We found—cut the wall out, and we reached up and pulled the insulation down and the water ran down our arms from that wet insulation.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Insulation works like a wick. It pulls that water up.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And while other people were tearing theirs out we thought we were safe, weren't going to tear any walls out, might take the floor up. For a long time we thought we wouldn't take the floor up. But we slept in here one night and mildew was so bad. Aaron said, "Well we will in the morning." And so we did. And it was green.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It smelled so much like mildew? Is that what you mean? It was so bad.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did it smell?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Mildew.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Musty, mildewy, stuffed up, no air.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Couldn't breathe, burned your nose. Do you smell it now?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I don't smell it right now. But I have smelled that smell, yeah, in people's houses.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

I'm sure. And the barn as open as it is it was terrible. I mean just mildew all over. But we've aired it out and dried it. And the weather's been pretty. It's pretty well gone.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And you have this sprayer over here where you sprayed Clorox. How many gallons would you say?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I wish I knew how many gallons.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

AARON CAVENAUGH:

When we done the floor, the door would have to be opened—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And flies.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

It was just black with flies. It was terrible.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Of course, yeah, they love damp places to breed. How about mosquitoes?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Mosquitoes have not been that bad. There have been some but not too bad.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Did you smell it when you first came in here?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Clorox?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No. The mildew, musty?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I don't remember noticing.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Maybe it's getting better.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It's definitely better than most houses where they're just ripped and stripped. Yours is in close to the condition where you bring furniture back in once you get the flooring on there, right?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That's the way it was with the refrigerator. I mean that thing was awful when we came back in here. But she Cloroxed it four or five times. I wouldn't let her throw it away. And now you can't even smell it and it works—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I cleaned it though with a Q-Tip and Clorox.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Yeah, Q-Tips. Just ( ). But it's better than laying out there aside the road.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I went in every crack, every crevice of that refrigerator.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Now did they tell you to throw away your refrigerator?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I don't know.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

I've heard all kinds of rumors. I don't know.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I don't remember—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

But there's been an awful lot of them down the road piled out for the state to pick them up.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

But now Dawn over here told me that you're not supposed to use the hot water heater. And our hot water heater's working.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well, we're going to let it work right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well, that's—. If you only get two thousand and some dollars, what else can you do?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

What else can you do?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

That's right.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well, you ask what we're doing. We're taking from our retirement. That's what we're doing. What else can you do, you know?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

I'd a made a fortune going up and down the road picking up refrigerators and ( ). I mean really. They worked and they just tossed them out.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But they thought they had to.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. They thought they had to ( ). Well that's just like I thought I had to get rid of my shoes. But I didn't because Kaye's wearing hers.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well, once you dip it through Clorox, they'll be all right. They'll be sanitized then.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I wouldn't want this on tape either. But I had aunts that wouldn't come over here because they were scared of—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It is on. That's scared. That's no problem. I've heard of other people being scared including workers coming from FEMA even.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Oh, they wouldn't go in some of the houses.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Well, and all these hogs and turkeys and the water that had been all over this district. It's not a no good situation. It's really not. So if they'd been you and you'd been them, what would you have thought, probably the same thing.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They weren't from this community I suppose. Everybody that's from the community understands that had to live through it. But that's maybe something I haven't heard so much about is people not—. I mean some people say it's drawn the community closer. And it seems to have done that. But people aren't really sharing and talking. How is it closer if it's not through talking? Is it you just know by passing one another on the road or—? Maybe you disagree. Maybe you don't think it's closer.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

There's something about when I am around when I meet somebody down at the center. Or if somebody—if you do get together and talk. I had a neighbor stop by and talk this morning. It's like there is a closeness and you share the same things. Our lives are somewhat the same right now because everybody's got the same problems.

She doesn't have the income problem. I have the income problem but we both have the house that we're working as a goal. I think there probably is more closeness. And other people might have more time to socialize but I don't think so. I don't think so.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Probably not.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And I think, too, that we did have—. You know some people could go to their jobs and they came home and they were through. We were never through. We're still not through. But ours was—we worked seven days a week up until this past weekend. And I'm serious seven days a week. We kept foster children. We have a foster son. And he's come and helped us do a lot. But he can only come on the weekend. And Randy's helped us a lot. Our children have been good to us, good to us.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Everybody's been good to us.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Everybody has—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They really have.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Our children rallied around us from square one.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did they rally?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well our daughter was right here. And then she took us in our home and she's been here ever since. Randy lived in Laurinburg and as soon as he could come, he was here. He came as soon as the dead turkey—we could get in there, he helped Aaron get those dead turkeys out. And he would stay like the whole weekend. He wouldn't go home until Sunday night.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What are their names and how old are they?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. Tina is twenty-nine. Tina Batts and Randy Sweeny. He was a foster child. And he lives in Laurinburg and he is thirty-one. And then we had—. Michael was a foster child. And then we adopted him. You met Michael today. Michael was in Tennessee when the flood happened. And he had gone and found his real mother. And when he heard about the flood he moved back. He's been a lot of help to us.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

He's really done good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

He decided to move back to help?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He called and I said, "Mike, I don't even have a bed. I don't even have a room." And he moved back while we were at Tina's, didn't he?

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Yeah. He slept on the couch at Tina's until we could get back in here. And my family and his family—but his family's all been flooded. But my family's from Harolds. And they have been good to us. We've had a lot of good family really. And—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did the government come in and let you know that you were getting two thousand—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Eight hundred fifty-five dollars and ten cent. That was—we applied for a FEMA number and an adjuster came out. And when he—. Some weeks later—. Of course we didn't even have an address at that time because when we applied we were staying down the road. And then we moved over to Tina's.

When it got so that Aaron couldn't come back in and check on the farm then we left Northeast and moved with our daughter. But we evacuated right here in Northeast where it was not flooded for four days. I think it was four days.

But, anyway, they sent a check. And with it they sent a printout as to what it was to be used for. It was $110 for clean up, $200 for—or to $200 and a few dollars for doors, windows, and the rest of it was for our flooring.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And they said walls don't have to be replaced so there was no money for walls.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Nothing for walls. And I don't know if anybody else got money for their heating system. We did not.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You lost that.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We lost the ductwork underneath. It's forty-one hundred dollars to get that back. We're at the point now that we have to go and talk to the heating and air folks to see if we're going to have to have a new unit. I've heard that we do. If it went underwater then it has to be new. That I have to inquire about.

We had to have insulation put back in. That's like a thousand dollars. We did save our cabinets by Aaron taking them out real careful, got a real good carpenter. And I begged him. Hank McGowan, he's the best. And he came from over at Willard. And he came and bless his heart he put our cabinets back in.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

If we'd a throwed those cabinets out it'd a been about seven thousand dollars. He put them back in for $250.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

He is good.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

He was good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In order to really build back you had to go against the advice of the officials who came through here.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Oh yes.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Otherwise you would have been much worse off.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That's true. I hadn't thought about that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You decided early on to sort of stay and pile furniture. You began to not heed the advice—I'll put it that way—of the officials from the beginning because you knew better. Or somehow you sensed—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

I kept believing it wouldn't come. But some halfway said it was coming so I started packing that furniture up high where it wouldn't get wet.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But they were telling you—

AARON CAVENAUGH:

We saved that furniture.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They were telling you to leave at that point but you decided to stay and do it anyway.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

Right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So all along I've been hearing you say you only do what you think is right and not necessarily what the officials give you on a printout.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

You can't do everything they tell you. You just cannot.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And they certainly did not give us a bunch of money.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Some people have thrown out all their belongings out at the curb thinking that FEMA was going to replace that.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

They shouldn't have done that.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The FEMA says they'll make it safe, secure and—something. But they won't give you back everything, which is understandable.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And how's that understandable?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Well, because if they gave everybody back everything that they had and that person that lives next door to me possibly—I'm not saying they do. But that's just an example.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Right. This is hypothetical.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Okay. If the person that lives next door to me does not work and pay his taxes and I work real hard and I pay my taxes and then the federal government comes in

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and they say, "Okay, I'm going to put everything back just like it was." They're going to go broke because the man on my left is not paying anything. And I'm doing all I can to pay everything that I can. I'm just keeping him up and me. But you can't replace—. I don't think they can replace everything.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But, the government is obligated to do what? What do you think in a flood situation?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I know what they said they'd do.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Make it safe and livable, is that what you're asking?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yeah. Safe and livable across the board. Everybody's house should be made safe and livable — paid for.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I don't know about the paid for.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Do they—? I know they're doing the loans. But I don't know about that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. The loans—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The SBA loan. We could have gotten an SBA loan on this house. But we didn't. We didn't get any SBA loans.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You turned them down on the antique business and the house.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

That's right.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

How are you going to pay it back?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I asked the man that. When he was—when he came to our farm with a group of senators and legislators. And I asked him then. I said, "You'll lend me money on the shop?" And he said,

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"Yes." And I said, "Money on the house?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "But without any income until the year 2000—and at that point didn't even know what month it was going to be in 2000—why would I want to go get a loan? I don't have any way to pay it back." And I said, "We can live on sub-floors, which you can see that's, you know, we can."

And then they did bring us a FEMA camper and we stay there. And we don't have heat and whatever in here. And I cook out there. I don't have a stove. But I didn't need a loan here to have to pay back when I don't even have any income.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. The FEMA trailer is not part of the $2,855. That's—

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You don't have to pay for that.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No, sir.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You do get it for what eighteen months? Is that what they said?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The lady told me when she put it in—and it's been less than a month—she told me she'd be back in thirty days to see what kind of progress I was making on the house. And that if we were making no progress, they would come pick the camper up. If we were trying to make progress in the house then they would leave it. But she never said they'd leave it for how long. I've read in the paper what you're saying, eighteen months. But I've never—she did not tell me that. She just said, "Somebody will be back to check in thirty months, thirty days, excuse me."

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And if these people come to your house, how have they treated you? Have you felt weird about our officials who visit?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

The FEMA inspector that came here—very arrogant, rude. He was not interested. And I think our $2,855.10 showed that. He was not interested in us at all. He

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came from California, a very rude man. And I would have appealed that but I didn't have time. I've not had time to appeal or do anything other than keep our head above the water.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So you called the FEMA number at some point.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I did. When I was—we had not even come back in here. We knew the water was in here.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where were you then, at your—?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

We were evacuated down the street between here and Wallace.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. And you were at this shelter or someone's house.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I was at someone's house.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And you called from that number?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I called—. Her phone was out so we went into town where there was a phone and I called from there.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You called an 800 number to FEMA.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I did.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And how long was it before this man from California came after that?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

I do not remember.

AARON CAVENAUGH:

A week probably.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Or longer. I'm not sure.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And so one day he knocks on the door here.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

No. He called the night before.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where you were staying?

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

Um-hmm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

JENNY CAVENAUGH:

And said that he was—. By that time we had moved to our daughter's. He called Tina's and he said he would be here the next day. And he was. And he just came in and looked.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How was he arrogant?

JENNY CAVENAUGH: