This week's word from Amy is "Nature". Today, I am going to share a story from my mother-in-law, Gail (Snider) Martin. She is a fabulous storyteller and her story of "The Big Flood" is certainly one that tells about the force of nature! So, I hope you enjoy her story!
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| Grandma Martin sharing a story, about 1996 |
“Hurry, girls. Pack as many of your clothes as you can get
in the boxes and take one toy, only one! That's all we have room for.” Mother
was packing groceries in her small box, leaving only a little space for her
clothes. “The water is already in the street.
We have to get across now!”
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| Gail (right) and her sister, Ann |
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| Gail's older brothers, John, Bob and Tom |
My older brothers had packed their boxes and were helping
Daddy block up the furniture. The mayor had said the flood waters would probably rise to
at least eighteen inches in the houses on our side of the street, so they were
putting twenty-four inch blocks under each piece of furniture – including my
“new” (used) piano we had bought only a few weeks before. They wanted to be
sure everything was high enough to be safe.
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John, Tom, Bob
Gail, Ann |
What an adventure!
What excitement! We were going to
live in the big house on the hill across the street until the flood waters
receded. We had never been in that house. Those people were rich! They even had a car! There were four families from our side of the
street plus the owners of the house who were going to live there. We children
were bursting with anticipation of what fun we would have. We couldn't figure
why our parents looked so worried.
All four families streamed across the street through an inch
of muddy water, being careful to wipe their feet before entering the big house.
Each family was given one bedroom upstairs and use of the kitchen downstairs.
We were lucky. Our family, with seven people, was the largest one, so we got
the biggest front bedroom. What fun! Mother and Daddy got the double bed; Bob and
John had camp cots set against the wall; Tom, my little sister, Ann (she was
bigger than I was, but younger, so I called her my little sister!) and I
got to sleep on doubled-up quilts on the floor!
We had never enjoyed such an adventure before. We could look out the big
windows in that room and see our house - and garage, too – this house was so
much higher than ours.
The first few days were great! All the children could play in the hallway
and we didn't have to take so many baths because we all shared one small
bathroom! Of course, we couldn't go
outside so we didn't get that dirty anyway. We had to eat in our room after
Mother went downstairs to fix our food because the mothers had to take turns in
the kitchen.
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| House nearby |
But when the waters started lapping at the front door of the
big house, then started seeping under the door and splashed over the floors, it
wasn't so much fun anymore. The mothers couldn't get into the kitchen to fix
food and we had to eat cold food right out of the can. We didn't have very much
left either, so we had to share what we had.
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| Men bringing food from the church |
Then one morning we looked out the big front window of our
bedroom and couldn't see the top of our house!
It was all under water! We ran out into the hallway and saw the muddy,
muddy water coming up the stair steps in the big house. We were scared then! We
didn't have any more food to eat and we couldn't play in the hallway anymore.
We listened to the radio to hear what was happening. We heard the mayor say the
Red Cross had food for everyone in the steeple of the big church downtown and
men in rowboats would come to each house to help people go to the church to get
food for their families. I watched my Daddy and the other fathers go to the
landing of the stairway and climb through the window into a rowboat to bring
back food for us. It was really scary because my Daddy had been in a terrible
accident right after I was born and he couldn't walk very well. His sense of
balance had been affected and it was really frightening to watch him try to
step out of that window into a little bouncing boat in all that water.
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Charles Williams "Chick" Snider
Gail's Dad |
One morning Bob woke up early, looked out the window and
cried, “Daddy, come here. Look!” We all
jumped out of bed and rushed to the window to watch our garage floating down
the alley! Our house was still completely under water, but at least the water
did not seem to be rising any further.
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| Snider house on Pearl Street |
The next morning when we looked out, we could see the top of
our house and that afternoon the tops of the windows appeared. By the next day, the water had receded from
the first floor of the big house and the children were anxious to play. We had
to wait until all the mothers grabbed their mops and pails to clean out all the
mud before we could go downstairs.
All that space to play in!
All the furniture had been moved from the living room and to us
children, it seemed like a great big park – with no play equipment, of
course. But there were all those big
windows! So, we devised a game of Glass
Tag. One child was “it” while the others scattered around the room trying to
keep away from “it”. If “it” got too close, all you had to do was touch glass
and you were safe. “It” came toward me
at one point and I ran for the front window. I was going too fast, however and
did not just “touch” the glass; I went through it! Finding a doctor to treat my slashed arm was
bad enough, but it ended our game of Glass Tag forever. The other children didn't like me very much
after that!
I don't remember how long we stayed in the big house or how
long it took for all the flood waters to recede, but it seemed like
forever. When we trouped across the
muddy street and cautiously opened the door of our house on the low side of the
street, Mother gasped in dismay. Everything in our house was ruined – including
my piano. Several inches of mud covered
everything and the stench nearly drove us out.
Mother took us girls (I was six and Ann was almost five) back across the
street until Daddy and the boys made arrangements to get rid of all the
furniture, books, music, toys – everything!
Then we began the cleanup. Daddy
and the boys shoveled mud out. Mother cleaned up after everyone. It was Ann's
and my task to strip the wallpaper. We started at the baseboard on one side of
the room and pulled down each strip of paper all up one wall, across the
ceiling and down the opposite wall. It
was so soaked, it gave no resistance at all.
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| After the Flood |
After one day of that I started coughing and having trouble
breathing. The doctor told my parents I wasn't strong enough to be in that
environment, so while my little sister stayed to strip wallpaper and help dig
out mud, I was sent to Connersville, Indiana, to stay with my maternal
grandparents.
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Nora (Sherwood) and Elmer St. Clair Trichler
Gail's maternal grandparents |
I finished my first grade year in Connersville, but have
never forgotten the 1937 Flood of the Ohio River in Middleport, Ohio.
A footnote:
When the floodwaters came we had to leave our little pet alligator in
the garage. We never saw him again, but two years later, there was a report of
a huge alligator being seen downstream in the Ohio River. It was never
confirmed, but we were all absolutely certain it was “Alli”.
Thanks, mom, for allowing me to share your story!
'Til Next Time!
#52Ancestors
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