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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
K-0281, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh, long-time Duplin County residents, lost their antiques business and turkey farm in the flooding that accompanied Hurricane Floyd. They spend much of this interview describing their response to the flood and their efforts to rebuild afterwards. Damage to their home and businesses was so extensive that they have been consumed by it and have not had time to stand in line and request help from groups like the Red Cross. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been generally unhelpful, so they have relied on help from individuals and volunteer groups, but they seem to have done much of the recovery work on their own—braving noxious mildew to clean their refrigerator with Q-tips and bleach, for example. This interview provides a picture of a poorly organized local and federal response as well as a devastated and fragile community held together by outsiders kind enough to volunteer.
Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh, long-time Duplin County, N.C., residents, lost their antiques business and turkey farm in the flooding that accompanied Hurricane Floyd.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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.
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.
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.
Describe it the way you were describing it when we were at the river. How the water rose and how that was different.
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—
You had the generators going because the electricity was gone.
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.
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."]
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
And you've lived here how long?
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.
Right on Highway 41.
Yes.
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?
It came probably a foot in the old house we used to live in.
It didn't even come on this piece of property.
No, huh-uh. It was just—this was high ground here.
Every other flood it's always been the high ground.
Yeah.
You could go here and be safe.
And '62's the only real big flood that you've had.
Right. Now Fran brought in a little water but nothing out here on 41, no.
No. It did go in our river house. But it didn't go in our turkey houses at all.
No, no.
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.
How far is it to the river from right here?
Three miles approximately.
That much?
( )
Across 41—
Across ( )—. I'd say at least two miles maybe three. I'm not sure.
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.
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.
Yeah. It came up that night—
Thursday night.
Thursday night we—
That's September—
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.
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.
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—
While you're working at the turkey barns.
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
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.
And then that was the place you decided to go first when you left here to go take care of the turkeys, right?
That's exactly right.
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—
Tractors run the generator.
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.
Okay. Now I've heard you say about getting off the tractor. Why were you moving the tractor? I'm not sure—
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.
It has—it's pretty high up off the ground.
Yeah.
Or at least it was.
We thought it was but it drowned out.
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.
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.
It's chest deep.
Chest deep.
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.
Came home and went to bed. It was about ten o'clock Thursday night and we went to bed.
Even after you'd lost all your turkeys.
No. We had not lost—. It wasn't even in the turkey house at that time.
Okay. It wasn't in it, okay.
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?
He didn't have any idea. He thought that it had done what it was going to do.
Now the electricity was off.
Yep.
Was there any news whatsoever from outside the community, any news stations saying, "Prepare yourselves. This could be a flood."
No.
There's water falling up stream.
We didn't hear anything.
No one heard any of that.
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.
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?
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.
Do you know who made the decision to tell them to get everybody?
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
Maybe you would like to, at some point, as a community have a community story telling—
That would be good.
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.
Right. That's a good idea.
It is.
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.
Do you know who made it?
No. I have no idea. I don't know.
Now we got some aerial photos.
Aerial photos, yes, that somebody gave us.
Frankie English, I believe.
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.
How did you know it was coming too fast? I mean what were the signs?
Well as a rule if the river rises we can tell it by putting a stick out. And we'll say—
That means you put the stick in the ground?
( )
—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.
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.
Well not that much but it was—
Okay. How much?
Going fast—six inches, probably, an hour.
Okay.
There was—the mailman would have gone out at one point to check on things.
He lives on the supply road behind us. And he was evacuated—
What was his name?
Nathan.
Nathan?
Nathan and Vicky Cavenaugh.
Nathan and Vicky. Okay.
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.
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.
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.
He went out at one point—Nathan—
Yes.
Over to the fire department. How did he know—I can't remember—he knew to go over there and check.
Okay. Tina called at three o'clock Friday morning.
That's your daughter?
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.
So he walked out on dry land and while he was talking—
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—
( )
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
Weren't you stacking furniture or something?
Yeah. We got up her furniture and put it up on—
He and the little Mexican boy.
Put it up on—
Do you remember the little boy's name?
Junior Enrique —
Enrique Segovia Junior. We called him Junior. And he was—he worked on our farm. His whole family lived on our farm.
In a trailer.
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.
So Enrique speaks English fluently, I'm sure. Does the whole family speak English?
The mama not quite as good as the children. But they do very well. The children do very well.
Now they have a father too with them.
Yes. Their father is not on the farm.
Okay. Okay.
He was until—
Two years ago.
Two years ago.
But he had been with us since ' 85 as well.
( ). 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—?
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?
Griggsport.
Griggsport. He's a ( ).
Bedford, Pennsylvania.
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—
He stayed on the road a lot buying antiques.
Oh I'd be out three to four nights a week buying antiques. I'd look at them.
Running the farm in the day and buying antiques at night.
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.
So you had the building here. That was one of the reasons that you—what were you going to say?
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—
Well, Greenville to Wilmington's a pretty main route. We had a lot of people from Greenville, Kinston, Wilmington—
Southport.
Yeah. Little Washington. It was amazing.
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—
We sold to a lot of dealers. I mean, we done good.
So that means your prices are low enough that they can mark them up.
Right.
And that's how—
We didn't try to make a bunch of money.
We just enjoyed it. Now we need to make a bunch of money.
[Laughs]
How many antiques did you lose in the flood? How do you—?
Dollars-wise or—?
Well, either that or—
Phew. We had a barn full.
( ).
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—
Completely ruined.
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
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.
So your auction did well.
It done good.
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?
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.
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.
It could and it scares you. It really does.
What's changed? Has the river changed? Has something upstream changed?
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—
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.
Where? I know that was a lot of water. But y'all, we're talking about a lot of water around here, too.
Well the ground was already saturated. It was wet. What was it, eight or ten inches before a flood?
( )
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.
But it came so quick.
Yeah, it came quick.
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.
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?
Wednesday night was the wind.
Went back down there Thursday morning, you know—
No water.
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—
The water came up and they cut the power off?
Um-hmm.
At what point in time?
That might have been Friday. I don't know. Anyway—
But our power was on Thursday down there. It was on Wednesday night. Remember?
Wednesday night's when the storm came.
Right. And we had no power. You were down there with the generator on Thursday.
Okay. Thursday I hooked the generator. But Thursday morning everything was calming down after the wind. The turkey house had blew over, you know.
Oh yeah. Our turkey house was leaning.
We would have been to scared to go in that thing if it ( ).
Is it torn down or is it back up?
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.
We should have pointed that out.
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—
But not much. We weren't worried.
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.
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.
That's what I'm talking about. It was fast.
Fast. It—has anybody else that you talked to—have they thought it came fast?
Everybody.
Everybody.
( )
But we really have not had time to talk. But it came fast.
Tell us about what you've been spending the time doing. You don't talk to people right now because you're too busy.
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.
It's the worst four days I ever spent.
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
The baseboards?
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.
Mildew.
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.
Were you doing all this yourselves?
We—
We had a little help.
We didn't put the baseboard down. But our—
Son helped us with that ( ).
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.
In the three bedrooms.
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.
Let's go through those. Who all came?
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?
Yes.
That is took us to get back ( ).
Now they would just drive up and say, "What can we do?"
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.
How do you spell Bazemore? B-A-Y—?
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.
They had damage during Hugo.
Sure did.
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.
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.
They were just volunteers. They weren't here to give money or anything.
Oh, no. No. No.
Unofficial.
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.
Men and women?
Um-hmm, men and women.
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 —
They came from the Baptist church. They were connected with the Baptist church.
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.
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,
Mitsubishi?
Yeah. That's—a '91. But we have run it. It is wonderful. And
then I have [dog barks].
Hannah. [Dog barks.]
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
For how long? How many days did you do that?
Three weeks
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.
When the turkeys get—
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.
Yes it is. And when do you think you might have the antique store back open?
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?
I have no idea.
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.
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?
That's right.
So you'll have quick turn over of money.
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.
So the primary goal is to get the farm running and get that flock out. Get that money.
That's right.
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?
They gave—the government gave us $2,855.10. That was FEMA.
Okay. That wouldn't pay for even one tractor loss.
Oh no.
Well that was only to be used in this house.
On the house.
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.
You found water inside the wall.
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.
Insulation works like a wick. It pulls that water up.
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.
It smelled so much like mildew? Is that what you mean? It was so bad.
Uh-huh.
How did it smell?
Mildew.
Musty, mildewy, stuffed up, no air.
Couldn't breathe, burned your nose. Do you smell it now?
I don't smell it right now. But I have smelled that smell, yeah, in people's houses.
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.
And you have this sprayer over here where you sprayed Clorox. How many gallons would you say?
I wish I knew how many gallons.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A ]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B ]
When we done the floor, the door would have to be opened—
And flies.
It was just black with flies. It was terrible.
Of course, yeah, they love damp places to breed. How about mosquitoes?
Mosquitoes have not been that bad. There have been some but not too bad.
Did you smell it when you first came in here?
Clorox?
No. The mildew, musty?
I don't remember noticing.
Maybe it's getting better.
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?
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—
I cleaned it though with a Q-Tip and Clorox.
Yeah, Q-Tips. Just ( ). But it's better than laying out there aside the road.
I went in every crack, every crevice of that refrigerator.
Now did they tell you to throw away your refrigerator?
I don't know.
I've heard all kinds of rumors. I don't know.
I don't remember—
But there's been an awful lot of them down the road piled out for the state to pick them up.
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.
Well, we're going to let it work right.
Well, that's—. If you only get two thousand and some dollars, what else can you do?
What else can you do?
That's right.
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?
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.
But they thought they had to.
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.
Well, once you dip it through Clorox, they'll be all right. They'll be sanitized then.
I wouldn't want this on tape either. But I had aunts that wouldn't come over here because they were scared of—
It is on. That's scared. That's no problem. I've heard of other people being scared including workers coming from FEMA even.
Oh, they wouldn't go in some of the houses.
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.
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.
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.
Probably not.
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 ca