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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-0580, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Florence Dillahunt grew up on a tobacco farm near Grifton, North Carolina, during the 1930s and 1940s. The youngest of six daughters, Dillahunt, along with her sisters, often helped her father with various aspects of tobacco harvesting and curing. In addition to offering a portrait of small-scale tobacco farming during this era, she also describes what it was like to grow up in a rural working community, and touches on such topics as religion and medical home remedies. Following their marriage in 1955, Dillahunt and her husband settled on her family farm, where they eventually took over the farming while raising five children and putting them through college. Dillahunt spends the rest of the interview discussing the impact of Hurricane Floyd and the extensive flooding it brought to eastern North Carolina in 1999. The Dillahunts did not have flood insurance, and they lost nearly everything in the flood. Facing the worst natural disaster in recent North Carolina history, Grifton residents banded together to help one another during the crisis. Dillahunt recalls being rescued from her flooded home by a fellow community member. It was more than a month before Dillahunt and her husband could return to their farm, and even then they did not receive temporary housing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the time of the interview in 2001, the Dillahunts were living in a trailer provided and furnished by a local hunting club. Dillahunt concludes the interview by describing the extensive damage to the crops and their continuing struggle to rebuild their lives. The setbacks the Dillahunts faced were shared by many other North Carolinians.
Florence Dillahunt describes growing up on a small tobacco farm near Grifton, North Carolina, during the 1930s and 1940s. Dillahunt's family were victims of the extensive flooding that Hurricane Floyd brought to eastern North Carolina in 1999. She describes the devastating impact on their farm and their personal lives.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Would you tell me your full name, including your maiden name? And [tell me] where and when you were born.
My full name is Florence (McLaughlin?) Dillahunt. I was born here in Pitt County.
And where were you born? Right here on this property?
Yes, born on the property.
And what was your birthday?
4/17/35.
That's my brother's birthday! April seventeenth.
Oh yes?
Yes, that's great. Okay. So you were born in 1935. That was in the middle of the Depression.
I guess so.
How long had your people been on this land here?
My mother had been here all of her life because her home is next door. My daddyߞ. I don't know how long my daddy had been here before I was born. There was another one of us born here, so it had to be in the twenties.
And your mama, her parents were here, too?
Her parents was here. They all died, passed away, right up next door.
Wow. So your family's been here a long time.
Yes, been here a long time.
What do you remember from your childhood? What was it like growing up here in the thirties?
Well, it was good growing up. We worked. My mother and daddy had six girls. No boys. So the girls done the work, when we got old enough.
You were the farmhands?
Yes, we were the farmhands.
What all did you grow?
We grow cotton, tobacco, and soybeans. My daddy didn't have no wheat at that time. And he didn't grow too much cotton. He grow a little bit. And peanuts. He had peanuts.
How was it to make living? Was it tough in those days, or was it okay?
It was okay.
Yes.
I liked it. At that time, I didn't think I did. But considering now, I liked it.
How come?
Because the way things were then, to me, is better. It was better than
it is now. You have more convenience and everything, but otherwise, you
know, how people live now. At that time, we didn't have to lock no
doors. We lay down and go to sleep, didn't lock no doors. You could have
your windows up. But now you can't do that. You leave them up, somebody
might come in. But at that time we did. My daddy cured tobacco. We were
wanting to stay to the barn with it and finally he let us go and stay to
So you were minding the store.
Yes. We wouldn't stay out there no more. Daddy left us by ourself.
That's because the tobacco barn had to be stoked with wood during the night. And you slept in the barn. Somebody had that job.
Yes. Had to fire them
So tobacco brought in pretty good money for him?
At that time.
At that time.
At that time. You grow what you want to grow. You didn't have no tobacco allotment like you do now.
That's right. And you didn't have the price supports then either, did you?
No, we didn't have that.
So it was kind of a gamble. You'd try to get the best price you could.
That's what my dad always said. He said farming was gambling. Yes.
I've heard people say the same thing today.
Yes.
They didn't have that much money. My mother inherit from her parents,
Oh. So he bought it for the price of the taxes.
For the price of the taxes. And I think he said he give the man a milk cow. And that's how he got the farm.
Wow. That's pretty good.
That was good.
So tell me more about growing up in those days. Did you all have to go grocery shopping? Or did you have everything you needed here?
You mostly had everything you needed here. You growed your meats. You had your, the hogs, cows. So he'd kill a cow. And you know at that time, a cow could hang up. We had what you call a smokehouse. To keep the meat in. And you could hang it up in there and it would keep. It didn't spoil.
Because it was cured?
I guess it would cure out by hanging there. But it didn't spoil like it
do now. We had hams hanging up in the smoke house. Now we can't keep
them. Sure can't. I don't know whether it had to do with them eating the
peanuts, the feed that they was fed. Like corn and then in the fall of
the year my dad would put them on the peanuts. And they would eat
peanuts. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not. But
we had no refrigerators or no deep freeze at that time. And we didn't
have no lights at one time. I
In those days, was it a big deal to go into town? Like say to go
Yes. When you got a chance to go. We didn't go that often. We didn't. Mama and Daddy would.
How often would you get to go to town?
We hardly didn't get to go once a week.
And so that was a big deal?
Yes. When we got there, we had to walk to school. We had to walk two miles every day to go to school. And two miles to come back. And when we started high school, we had, my oldest sisters had to walk two miles to get the bus to go to high school. But when I started, I had to walk a mile to get the bus.
Now a lot of kids in those days, and I think girls, maybe especially, didn't go on to high school necessarily. Right?
To me, at that time, there weren't that many people.
Going on to high school?
There weren't that many people that lived in the neighborhood.
Oh. Period.
You didn't have that many people. When you go into town, you probably
know about everybody that lived in the houses that would be on the road.
There weren't
So pretty much like all up and down your road, would you know everybody?
Yes, you know everybody. Most likely. If anybody come through here, you would know them. Because there weren't that many people in and out.
Did you like that?
I liked it.
Yes. Is it different from now?
It's a lot different because you have so many people now in and out that you don't know who's traveling. You don't know who is who. So when you see somebody, you more than likely want to see, you know, especially if they come through like they want to stop, or driving slow, you want to see, because you think somebody might be going to stop and rob you. Or something like that.
So when you went to high school, your parents like wanted you to finish your education and so on?
Yes. All six of us girls finished high school.
What was school like, especially your elementary school, in those days?
It was okay. Of course we didn't know no other. So we had to go and we went every day.
Did you have like one room? Or two rooms?
We had more than two. And you had more than one or two teachers. Maybe you had about, about three or four teachers, or something like that.
For eight grades?
Well, we went to elementary, maybe there were these three teachers there. Because you had the principal and maybe about two more teachers to teach the children. We had different grades. And then after we left one school, which was two mile from here, then we went into Grifton, which wasn't a high school. We went there because, you know, the grade maybe took over like till maybe the sixth or the seventh grade or something like that. And then when you got up to the ninth grade, then you went into high school.
Then did you go to Ayden?
To Ayden, South Ayden High School.
So that was a big thing, to be riding a bus out of town.
Yes, riding a bus. Go to the high school.
Did you feel like you were getting to be a grownup when you got there?
Well, not really. Because my parents, they kept up with us.
They were strict?
Yes, very strict, very strict.
What kind of rules would they have?
They had all of them. You can't have boys coming to the house. You didn't go to dances. You didn't go to ball games. You didn't go to the movies. There was nothing for you to go to.
So what did you do for fun?
We play
What church was it that you went to?
She would go to different churches.
There wasn't one special one?
Well at that time, we belonged to the Episcopal Church at Hattie's Crossroad. That's between here and Greenville, out from Ayden. Then after a while, that church kind of went down. There weren't too many people there. The people continued to be Episcopalian. They had to go either into Greenville or Kinston. So by us being so far, my mother joined a church not too far from hereߞLive Oak, before you get into Grifton. And then, I think at one time that church got burned down or something. Then I know she moved her membership back here in Crane County to a church called Piney Grove. So that's where she was when she died, passed away. She passed away in 1968. And my daddy passed away in 1971.
So they were pretty close.
Yes.
So when you played, if you were to play around here, was it mostly just with your sisters? Or were there other kids?
There were no other kids.
Because you were pretty much in the country?
Just right here in the country.
So who did you have around you? Were your grandparents still around here?
No. My grandparents weren't. My mother's father lived next door. He passed away in 1934. So that was the year before I was born. So I never did know any of my grandparents.
So it was just your family, just you all, right in this little corner here?
Yes. And my mother had a brother that lived up next door.
So what would you do if you needed help? Like say, during harvest time or if someone was sick or something? Could you do for yourselves? Or would other people come and help you?
Well, if anybody got sick or something like that, usually the girls, as far as I know, we never, Mama would always have different things that she would doctor us with. She had her own little medicine.
Did she make her own medicine?
Like if you had the whooping cough or something like that, she'd go out and get a bullfrog and boil it. We would drink the broth from it. That was good for the whooping cough.
Did it work?
Yes, it worked.
It did.
Yes. It worked.
What did it taste like?
Well, it taste all right. We drank it. If you had whooping cough, she'd boil a frog. So you drank that water out of it. Sure did.
What were some of her other medicines?
When we had the measles, I don't know what Mama done for that. She had meal she rubbed us in. Corn starch, or something [like] that, she rubbed on us.
Corn meal, I believe.
Corn meal. I believe it was corn meal.
On your chest?
Yes, wherever the bumps was. They itched real bad.
That's interesting.
Yes.
And if someone else, like in the community, needed some help or something, would you all be free to go to help them?
Yes, my Mama, she would be free to go help them. I know my mother got
sick. I was old enough to remember. She had an artery bursted in her
head. And she bled a whole weekߞquarts of blood at a time. My daddy
would take her into Grifton to a doctor named Dr. Tucker. He packed her
nose with cotton, but the blood was running so freely, she would have
had to pour the cotton out because it started coming out her mouth. And
Daddy took her to the hospital and they done the same thing there. They
packed her nose with cotton and they couldn't do nothing for her to stop
her from bleeding.
After that. Howߞ?
A long time. She lived to get sixty-eight years old and I guess that happened when she was in her fortiesߞwhen that artery bursted in her head.
What wasߞ?
The doctor said if it hadn't have burst, she probably would have had a stroke. But instead, the artery bursted and the doctors couldn't stop her from bleeding. And she didn't die.
What was this cousin like? That he could help like that.
Oh, he was just an ordinary man. But at that time, like in that day, people said they could readߞ. They had a certain verse in the Bible that they could read, that would stop blood or it would stop, talk to fire, or get the fire from a person if he got burned. It worked.
Do you know about talking fire?
Can you tell me about that?
I don't know about [it], but I know that when Daddy went and got this cousin that morning, the lord showed Mama that man at night. When she described the man to Daddy, he said it wasn't nobody but his cousin. His name was Nabe Mills and Daddy went and got him.
What was his name?
Nabe Mills.
Nate Mills?
Nabe. N-a-b-e.
Nabe Mills.
Daddy went and got him and when he walked up on the porch, her blood went away to water. She didn't ever bleed no more. Sure did.
Did everybody think it was a miracle?
Yes, they thought it was a miracle that she stopped. Sure did.
Wow. Did he heal other people?
Yes. He could heal, like if you got burned or if you were bleeding or something like that, that's what he would do. That verse in the Bible would do [it].
And you said he could 'talk the fire out of people'?
Like if you got burned.
What would he do?
He'd just, he would never let you know what he would say. He wouldn't
let
You couldn't understand it, either, could you?
No, couldn't understand it.
It was something out of the Bible, though?
Because I know a lady, she lived at Grifton. I think her name was Miss Louise Atkinson. She could talk to fire out a person if he got burned. My husband got scalded one day on his foot. We was putting up corn and he went to take the bag of corn out of the boiling water. It got on him and burned him. I called this lady. I had heard that she could talk the fire out of a person, that it wouldn't hurt no more after you were burned, so I called her. She asked me what foot did he get burned on and where was it. I told her. My husband, he was sitting down in a chair after that had happened and he went to sleep. When he woke up, he said it didn't hurt him no more. He said he didn't feel the burn no more. It didn't blister.
Could you give me a second here? I just want to write down the name of that lady because some of the names, I just want to make sure I get them right.
Miss Louise Atkinson. Didn't you remember her?
Louise Jenkins.
Atkinson. She had a daughter named Hurley. Hurley worked at Cash and Carry for a long time. You didn't know her.
How do you spell her last name?
Atkinson, oh, how do you spell the Atkinson? A-k, I don't know.
It was probably A-t-k-i-n-s-o-n.
Sounds like it.
It might have had two As.
I've got you. Okay. Thanks.
And the man that stopped my mama's blood, his name was Nabe Mills.
Nabe Mills. Yes.
N-a-b-e.
And then you also mentioned a place, Hattie's Crossroad?
Hattie's Crossroad, that's where we went to church.
And how do you spell that?
H-aߞ. Ain't it H-a-d-dߞ?
Okay.
H-a-d-dߞ?
I'm sure it's H-a-t-t-i-e. I think I've seen that.
Okay, Hattie's Crossroad.
Okay. Okay. So now if you couldn't go to the movies and you couldn't dance and you couldn't do all this kind of thing, how were you able to court and get married?
That was a little tough. When you went to school, you slip and talk with the boys.
That's what it was? So how did you meet your husband?
One of my oldest sisters had got married. One of her husband's brothers
come
Was that big time flirting?
It sure was big time flirting.
Did he have tobacco gum on his hands when he was playing with your hair?
I know he did have some. He was back there pulling my hair. I told him leave my hair alone. He kept on pulling it.
Was that the first time you met him?
That was the first time I had met him. He left after that because he lived in New Bern, and he went back. And we was in school. And he left and went in service. He stayed in service three years. So he wrote me a letter before he got ready to come out. He wanted to come to see me when he come home.
And what year was this that he wrote thisߞaround when?
It was in the early fifties. It was in the fifties. I think he got out of service like '53. He went back to school to finish high school.
Oh, okay. So then he wrote you a letter wanting to come and see you?
Yes, he wanted to come and see me.
And did you say yes?
Yes, I said yes. So Mama and themߞ. But when nine o'clock come, if he
was here at night, he had to go home when nine o'clock come. They didn't
let nobody stay
So it would be more respectable that way?
Yes, it would be more respectable for them.
I see. And so how long did that go on before you got married?
It went on, it was like about '53 and I finished high school in '54 and I got married in '55.
So a couple years, that kind of thing.
Yes, about a couple of years.
Then where did you all live once you got married?
Live over there in the house with my mother and father.
Where you were born.
Because I was the last one out of the six girls and my mother was, you know, kind of sick. So she didn't want me to leave her. I asked him, if we got married could we continue to stay with her? So he told me yes. So we stayed with her.
Did you have any kind of a wedding celebration? Or how did you do it?
No, we just went to Kinston and got married. [We] got a minister to marry us at his house.
At his house. And did you have a wedding breakfast or anything?
No.
They didn't do that in those days?
My mother went with me when we got married.
Did you have a special dress or anything?
No, didn't have no special dress.
And that was just how people did it in those days?
That was how we done it in that day. Sometimes they had the weddings, but I didn't.
But you were happy anyway?
Yes, I was happy anyway.
So what was it like setting up farming with your husband once you were grown and married and so on? Were times pretty good or were they, you know, tough?
Yes, they was pretty good. He worked. He already had a job working somewhere else. I think it was a lumber company he was working to in New Bern. So he drove to and fro from here to New Bern. And then after a while, my daddy needed help on the farm, so he said he would stop and be close and be here and help him on the farm. So he did. He been farming ever since.
And at that point, price supports had already come in for tobacco?
Not at that time, no.
No?
Not at that time it hadn't.
Oh.
I guess it was getting, you know, it might have had just started some.
But the money was okay?
It was okay. You didn't get that much, but you got enough to survive.
Raise kids on.
Because things then didn't cost as much. We was raising hogs, too, at that time because my oldest boy finished high school and I sent him off to college. He went to A&T in Greensboro. So he didn't have a car so he had to get the bus and we took him up there. And so he wanted to come home. He didn't want to stay at the school over the weekends. He wanted to come home. So he had asked a boy that he know that live close by us, he had a car, you know, to bring him home. So he did. And when he got ready to go back, he went back and asked the boy that Sunday morning what time would he be ready to go back. And he told him two o'clock he would be by to pick him up. The boy didn't ever come to pick him up. So my husband, we had a lot of hogs at that time, and we sold enough of hogs and bought a new car for him to have to drive back and forth during the four years he was at school.
So you could do okay.
We could do okay because things weren't that high.
So you could do all that on a farm income?
Sure could. Then when the second boy finished school, we bought him one. Then after he finished, when it got to the girls, things had started going up. [We] couldn't do it. [It] got a little high.
And how many kids did you have all together?
Five.
Two boys?
Two boys and three girls.
Three girls. By the time the three girls were getting ready to go to college, you couldn't just buy a car like that?
No, couldn't buy it like that then. Everything got a little, had gone up high.
When was thatߞabout what time? What year?
Butch finished school in the seventies. Must have been somewhere around like '78, '79, somewhere along in there. It was in the seventies.
It was about '76.
About '76 that he finished school. We sold enough of hogs and paid for that car. That car didn't cost but aboutߞ. I forgot. It wasn't too much over five thousand dollars that a car cost. It was kind of cheap then. But now it's hard to buy one.
It is. It is.
Sure is.
And the three girls went to college, too?
Yes.
So you put five children through college on your farm income.
Sure did.
You must be proud of that.
Yes. I am proud of them.
How many of them live around here?
My oldest girl, she lives in Greenville. She teaches at Rose High. The next girl lives in Greensboro. She teaches there. And that's the youngest girl there. She's here with me. She's not doing anything now. And Mark, the oldest boy, he lives in Durham. He works with GTE. He is into engineering. And he's also into real estate. And Mark, the second oldest boy, we sent him to school. But he didn't like it. He took up bricklaying. He didn't like it. He liked the farm, so he works with his dad.
Here on the farm? So you'll have somebody to carry it on.
Yes, we have him to carry it on. He didn't like it [school]. He liked the farm, so he chose to help him.
Well that's kind of lucky, in a way, because a lot of farm families don't have any sons or daughters who want to go into it.
Well he likes it. He loves it.
So are you glad that someone will continue on?
Yes, I'm glad he's with it. Yes.
Tell me how things were going before the flood came.
They was doing okay before the flood. We weren't through putting in tobacco when the flood come and we lost a lot. In fact, we lost all of our crop except for all of the tobacco. We had put in maybe over half of the tobacco we had put in when that flood come. Then after thatߞ.
September.
Yes, we lostߞ. We had the barns full. We had a big trailer load ready
for the
Tell me what your house was like.
Well, it was a house. It was a five bedroom house. My mother had raised all of us up in it. My daddy had enlarged it and then I had had it remodeled. It was a pretty good house. Everybody liked to come. They called it home. So when everybody got ready to come home, they come home and that was the house they would come to. We had just had a family reunion that year. Everybody had come home and we had a good time. Then I turned around and lost everything.
How many people came to the reunion?
A lot of them. I guess there was over a hundred of them.
Over a hundred.
Yes.
And how old was the original house?
My house? That house must have beenߞ. I'm sixty-six and my daddy had that house way before that. The house might have been about a hundred years old, something like that.
Wow. Wow. So what were some of the things that you lost in the flood that can't be replaced?
About everything I had was lost.
Things from your family?
Yes. My son come in on a boat and he did get a few, few of the pictures that was hanging on the walls. He got a man that had a motor on a boat to bring him in here. The water come in. Started coming in that Thursday evening and we left out that Friday morning. They come in and rescued us. So we lost all ourߞ. [The] only vehicles that we had insurance on, that we could get replaced, was a truck and a car. All the others, we didn't have nothing on that. We lost all of it. So we was like three months getting back in here after we had the flood. The water stayed in here so long. They said you could touch the top of my house from the boat. And my house wasn't no low house. It was tall. This little barn right back out here, we call the smoke house. You just could see the top of it. I didn't ever come back in here while the water was up, but other people did. And my son and him coming here at that time, they took some pictures. And the boy told them that they didn't need to come in here no more because the water had such strong undercurrent in it and we had just gassed up all the tanks to the barn, with gas because we weren't through putting in tobacco. All of them tanks uplifted from the ground and all that gas escaped. So he said they could have got blowed up. He told them they need to stay out so they didn't get nobody to bring them back in here no more.
What about your animals? Did you have animals then?
Yes. They got my dogs. The Humane Society come in on a boat. I come down
to the water on a Sunday and they had my dogs. They couldn't get the
cats. The cats went
That was three or four weeks before you could come back, wasn't it?
Before I could come back in here? Longer than that. We couldn't come back in here. We had the flood and then after that, the water had started going out, I guess, about a month. And we had another big rain because my husband and them had come back in here on a tractor that they had got down low enough, he could drive the tractor in. Then it got right back high again.
So this place was underwater for about a month, really?
Yes, more. It was over a month in here.
Oh, my.
Because we [are] like a mile from the creek back this away.
So you lost the farm equipment. You lost a good part of a crop.
We lost, we lost a lot.
And some of the animals. Well, your pets were saved.
Yes, well, some of the cats I know got destroyed because they was in a tree. The Humane Society people said they couldn't get them. They was a little wild.
What about things in your house? Did you have any things that were family heirlooms from years back?
I lost all of that.
Like what sort of things?
Well, I had some of my mother's pictures. I don't have none of those. And all that stuff. All my furniture and stuff turn over. When the children come in, they said when they pushed the door open, the water had such a force they couldn't close it back. That was on that Saturday they come in here. It got much deeper after they went back out. They couldn't get back in.
Where did you all stay?
We stayed in Greenville. I stayed with my oldest daughter for a while and then my youngest daughterߞ.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Where did you all stay?
We stayed in Greenville. I stayed with my oldest daughter for a while, and then my youngest daughter got an apartment and we moved in the apartment with her. We were in there for two months. I stayed with my daughter for a month.
And where was the apartment?
It was near Wal-Mart.
Oh, in Greenville?
In Greenville.
And how long did it take you to come back to this place right here?
It took us three months to get back here.
What was it like afterߞ?
It was like somebody had never lived here. That's the way it looked. The hedges, the shrubs and everything was all brown. Some of my trees had died. It looked like nobody had never lived in here because a lot of our stuff was round the edges of the woods and in the woods. In fact, I've got some things out here in the woods now. A refrigerator, it's still out there in the woods. We didn't never get it out. It just floated away.
And they're still there in the woods, some of the things?
A lot of it is. Some of it we didn't ever find.
Why did you decide to come back? Were you afraid that this area would flood again or anything like that?
Well, I didn't think it was going to do that then. We always got high water in here, like when it rained a lot up around Raleigh. My dad always said that's where, when it rained a lot, up around Raleigh, and floods that way, then it floods down here. So we have always been used to having high water occasionally. Not every year.
And not all over the farm.
Not all over the farm. Just in the road. And it might spread out in certain areas, but it would take it like a week. Like if the water come in like this week, and then maybe next week it would get on a stand, you know, it would be through rising on a stand still. Then, the next week, it would be gone. So we had, what you say, like about three weeks of it, then it would be gone.
And so you weren't afraid to come back?
No.
And how come?
Because we had been used to having high water. But I don'tߞ. We just had faith that it won't ever get that high.
Again. So how would you and people along your road, whoever lived closest by here, how would they deal with it before when you had a little bit of flooding?
We had tractors and they would depend on us. We would take them out.
The neighbors, and so on?
Yes, we took them out.
And the tractors were high enough to deal with the high water?
Sometime they would get too high. We couldn't deal with it. It would come over it, come over the motor. The motor would be down under the water. But as long as we could kind of judge where the center of the road was, by the tractor being a diesel, it would run down there under the water.
Wow. And whoever was driving would sit up on top?
Well, they'd be sitting in the seat. At one time it got so high my husband had to put his feet up in the seat because the water come inside the tractor.
That's scary.
Yes, it was scary, but we got out.
So during the other times that something like this would happen, you
figured
Yes, we would take outߞ. We had our cars and trucks and we would drive them out before it got too deep. But this time, we didn't think it was going to do that much because the water wasn't in the roads that Thursday morning when we got up. It started coming in that day and we said well, you know, just a little water was going to come. It won't do that much. And that evening, the water's out there coming, and I said to my husband, I said, "Ain't you going to get a truck or something down here so we have something to go around on when we go out?" And that water had such a force to it, he drove the truck up on a flat body trailer he had. And my daughter and her husband, her husband got in the tractor with my husband. She was sitting on the truckߞin the truck that was on the trailer. And they was going to pull it out. And that water had such a force to it, he just, he pushed right on over in a ditch. But it happened he wasn't far from the house, so they got out and come back to the house.
They were lucky.
They were lucky. He couldn't get the tractor out, so it had to sit there. So we had a two ton truck. He got that, he tried to get out with that. He got about halfway down the road there, where you get in the curve, and it cut off. So he lost that and that had to sit there. So those two things was in the road. And they tell me, when they come back in here, the water had covered them. You couldn't even see it.
Do you think the community around your neighborhood and so on, and the
whole community in Grifton, responded differently to this flood than in
past times when
I think so.
How is that?
Because they had never had that much water before. I don't think they had had that water in Grifton.
I think that's true. And so, how was the response different? How did people react differently this time?
To me, it wasn't that much of a difference, but they weren't used to it. I was used to it because we had always had high water, but not that much. And when they come in and rescued us that morning, I had called my daughter. We couldn't get out. And my son's telephone had gone dead from the flood, you know, from the storm. I couldn't call him. He had drove in that morning. He come in, but we couldn't do nothing because we couldn't put in no tobacco because there was too much water. He went. They tried to get some out of the field, but the tractor got stuck so they had to stop. We had a barn which we didn't finish filling. He was trying to get enough to go in the barn to finish filling the barn, but he couldn't get it. He lost the tractor, got stuck, so they had to stop. And he thought maybe by the next day he would be able to go back and finish. We had no idea that we were going to get that kind of water. I had cleaned my yards up and done my flowers. I had flowers out there, sitting out there around the trees. That evening my daughter said, "Mama, look at that water rushing in." That water was coming so fast, you could see itߞjust the same as somebody were pumping it.
Where was that? Backߞ?
Down this road, that water was coming. Then it spreaded on into the yard. It was coming from that way, too.
So you were surrounded?
Yes, we were surrounded. That evening that water come in so quick, it
was getting deep. It had got waist deep in the yard when it got dark.
That water come just that fast. So I had called my son and I told him
about it. He said "Well Mama, if it's coming that fast," he said, "you
all might need a ladder to get on top of the house." I still didn't
think it was going to do that much. My husband went out to try to get a
ladder, but he couldn't get it. The water was so strong, it almost
throwed him down. So he come back to the house. And that night, the
water had got up to my porch. It was that porch out there. Did you see
how the water had got that deep? I called my daughter in Greenville.
Something told me to call her that morning. It was about two o'clock. I
kept getting up, going to the door, looking, seeing how high the water
was getting. I said, "Gail," I said, "if my phone go dead and I can't
call you no more," I said, "when it gets day, you get somebody in here
to get us out." And, do you know, my phone went dead? After I got hung
up, I picked it back up and I couldn't get another call. So when it got
to day, I told my daughter and her husband, "I said you all get up and
get ready because I'm looking for somebody to come and pick us up." It
weren't too long before I heard something. It was a man on a jet ski. He
come through and he went down. He was seeing who was in the
I guess.
But he pulled us behind the jet ski on a boat.
Everybody who could was helping rescue people.
With everything they had?
With everything they had.
Yes, we had a time getting out of here. So when they come pick me up, and he pulled a boat right up beside the porch, I had packed me a bag. He said, "Miss Dillahunt," he says, "I'm not taking anything but you all." I said, "You're not going to let me carry me a bag?" He said, "No." And I said, "You ain't going to let me carry nothing?" He said, "Well, I will let you carry one or two pieces." I had to go back in my room and take my stuff out and put it on the bed.
What did that feel like?
I cried all the way outߞall the way.
So what could you take with you?
I had a changing of clothes.
And that's it?
That was it.
Who was in the boat? You andߞ?
My husband and Tracy and her husband.
So what was it like to come back? How did you get the money to put up your home now?
This [trailer] belongs to some people in a hunting club. We weren't able to get one. I couldn't get a trailer from FEMA. I tried to get one from them. So I told my husband, I said, "Well, we got the boat barn." I said, "We'll come back and fix us up a place in the boat barn." I said, "We can stay in there." And so I went to this man's house that Sunday morning with my daughter. I talked to him and I told him if I could get somebody to help me to fix up a place in one of them barns out there, I said, "We could live in the barn." He said, "Miss Dillahunt, we can do better than that." He said, "You just wait a minute." He said, "Hold on." And he said, "I know one of the mens that's got a trailer house that's not using it." He got in touch with me. I give him the telephone number where I was and he told me that they was going to fix it up. They were going to put me some furniture in here. He said "We're going to let you use it as long as it takes." So he told me no longer than about two weeks ago. I told him I still hadn't got a house. I told him "I'm still waiting for some help." He said, "Well, don't worry about it." He said, "As long as you need to stay here," he said, "you stay here." So they painted it and fixed it up. Put refrigerator, stove, and that chair and this chair here, and the bed that's in that room and I had one in my room, that chair right there, the table. In fact, they putting about everything in there.
And this was a hunting club?
Yes.
Just from town?
Well, they hunt through in here.
Oh. And that's how you knew them? So where all do those people live? Are they just from around Grifton?
They in different places.
From around Grifton pretty much?
Yes, out from Grifton. And then someߞ.
Everywhere, we have had it.
Does it feel good to be back on this spot?
Yes, it feels good to be back here.
Does it feel the same?
It don't feel the same.
What's the difference?
In here I feel like I'm closed in. The only thing I see right now, is
like right here. If I look out here, I see here. But when I walk by in
the yard, then it feels like, it feels different. When I walk out in the
yard, then it feels like it did before I had the flood.
That looks like the best bet right now, right?
Right.
Depends on how much funds they have.
Right.
And how many volunteers they have, also, to come work.
I told her that we have people that's in the hunting club said if they can get the foundation and get the house up to where somebody can help, they have people in there that like works on building houses, that have retired. In fact, a lot of them said that they would come and help. If they could get it up, they would come and help. They say, "Miss Dillahunt, you are getting a new house." "If they can get it up," she said, "We'll come in here. So we could get it, if she could help me to get it up. So a lot of the people in the hunting club said they would come in here. So I want to talk back to her, see if we can get started.
It's really requiring a lot of patience.
A lot of it.
For everybody.
And not knowing, not knowing who it's going to be to help.
Right.
How do you get up in the morning and deal with it every time?
Well, you have to get up and deal with it.
Florence is so busy. She has so many things to do. She doesn't have time to think about that. She's just worried about getting it all done.
Sure is, yes. She's right.
Well that's the last little bit I wanted to ask you about. If you can, I know that farming has changed a whole lot from the time when you were coming up.
Right.
I wanted you to tell me how it was before the flood came, just to make a living as a farmer, and how it is now.
It was rough at certain times because, you know, price support changes on the tobacco when you go to the warehouse. At one time, I believe that was in '85, all the farmers had to leave a certain percentage of their money to the warehouse that they needed to have paid the bill with. They kind of throwing them back, then it takes you a while to get caught back up