Beerbelly: You are 100% right. Every year we hear about some where along the Mississippi flooding. St Louis, Memphis, Cairo, New Orleans, somewhere. Other years it will be the Missouri River, that feeds into the Mississippi, flooding people out. I decided many years ago I am not living along a river. In fact I like being up on a hillside myself.
I remember back when I was a little guy, we lived up Indian Creek, in Jackson County, Tennessee. Our home was built up on a hillside. Back porch was right at ground level. Front porch was six feet above the ground. I can remember Thelma fussing with my Mom about how she would never live in a house like that. There was no reason to live like a bunch of Billy Goats. Cordell and Roxy lived across the creek, down low near the creek, but their house was build up on blocks, about five feet off the ground. Chester and Thelma lived just down the road, their house was built near the creek also but it was just a foot off the ground.
That spring we had one heck of a rain storm come through. The creek started rising. Cordell turned all his livestock loose and headed them up the hill behind his Barn. Then he and Roxy came across the creek while they still could and stayed with us. The creek kept rising. We watched the waters reach Chester and Thelma's house. We watched them carrying stuff from the house to an old barn built up on the hill behind their house. My Dad and Cordell could not get to them to help, we could only sit and watch as the waters rose. Finally the waters got too deep, and they had to quite trying to save things. Then the house floated off the foundation and moved several yards till it got hung up on some trees. By night time the water had gone down.
Cordell and Roxy's house was dry. Roxy's father had built that house back in the 1800s. He had seen the creek flood before and had built to account for such a disaster. My Great-Grand-Pa had chosen the building location for our house. Mom had wanted to build down lower, and so had my Dad. But the old man insisted, and he was used to getting his way, and it was his land, so that was where Dad built. After that gflood my Mom never again said anything about living up on the hill.
As for Chester and Thelma. The men in the area went and helped clear the trees that had stopped the house. They jacked the house up five feet and built a new foundation placing the house up a safe distance. But the house molded and rot had began in the lower portions of the walls that stayed wet inside for a long time. Eventually the house started falling down, forcing Chester and Thelma to move. One morning after a heavy rain Cordell and Dad walked down there and set the house on fire. They had shoved dry brush up under the place weeks before and had been waiting for a good rain.
All those people except my folks, are dead and gone now, but my Dad and I went up there last January. All signs of Chester and Thelma's place are gone. Cordell and Roxy's place is still there, looking much the same as it did when I was small. Someone with kids is living there. Our old place is gone, it burned 40 years ago, but the foundation is still there.
