Keith Tillotson
The Flood (1926)
But back to when Dad was still livin' with us on the farm. Guess it must have been 1925 or 26. They decided to dredge the creek – this little snaky creek. Biggest mistake ever made – dredging. 'Cause of the floods, you know, the farmers couldn't grow their crops with the flood. But while they were dredging this thing, it was almost down to the bridge near our place. You know how in Iowa, about a mile this way and a mile that way – everything north and south. So the creek run caddy-cornered across that. So they had to have a bridge here and a bridge here – lots of bridges.
While they were building the new bridge, we had a flood. The people who were building the bridge were from Harlan, and it was all done with mule power – mules and horses. And some of the farmers would come over and use their horses, and they would pay 'em for doin' that. You dig the dirt out of the ditch and build up the road. 'Cause they would raise the road up a little bit for the new bridge. They camped in our front yard – they had covered wagons. I remember one down by the oak tree next to the road, then another one. I think they had three covered wagons. One of 'em was to eat – cook and eat – and the others were just to sleep in, I guess. They had these canvas covers, and they used to have to put something on 'em so the water wouldn't get through the canvas.
And the flood came. That was interesting as a kid – that flood went clear up into our yard. 'Cause we lived – the house was on kind of a hill. It did come up into the barn. That was wonderful – this thing looked like a half a mile across! All this water piled up in the flood. That was wonderful – yeah, us kids enjoyed that to no end. You could walk out – walk in the water.
Right after I graduated the third grade – I'm trying to think if that was before the flood or after. We had the school picnic in our front yard. Dad built a stage, you know, for the kids to have their little acts. I was supposed to be an Indian, runnin' around goin' "woo-woo-woo!" I remember that little show we had. I was around eight or nine. That was a lot of fun, except I didn't like to be performing on a stage. We only had one toilet, you know, that was out back of the house. So, most of the kids went out in the woods somewhere.
And they had all kinds of games – tug of war, races with a sack for the kids, and little prizes they'd give 'em. After they left, Kenneth and I discovered a lot of money dropped around. So we were goin' out collecting money. He always wanted to be right with me all the time when we were lookin' for money, 'cause he was quicker than me – and bigger. "There's a quarter!" He'd get it! He'd always pick up all the money. Might be a half-dollar, might be a quarter. We picked up two or three dollars worth of money after this picnic. That was fun.
We had a beautiful front yard. There was a bunch of timber. We'll say here's the road [gestures], was a bunch of timber here, and the barn set here, and we had trees along here. A couple of walnut trees, a big oak down here where the road went along. Had a bridge to get across the ditch into our property and our house up here on a hill. And down here was a whole bunch of trees. No underbrush, just grass – that's the way it was. We had like a lawn between all the trees. In fact, one time after Perry come into the picture, we leased out about half the property to graze the cows out in the timber. They had all the grass they needed right between the trees. All summer, guy had about 30 cows out there. My job was to pump the water for 'em. Always had those little jobs, you know.