Droughts and Flooding--Always Something It Seems

Last Sunday night late when I drove home from Katherine’s, it was raining heavily.   I enjoyed driving through it because I remembered son-in-law Brian at lunch expressing the wish that we’d soon get more rain to insure the water supply for next year’s crops.  I knew how happy this rain was making him. And how it was increasing our future income.
Despite that knowledge of our need for rain to break the summer’s drought, I was somewhat surprised this week to see the newspapers full of concern that the mighty Mississippi River might soon be too low for river traffic unless some plans were changed over in Missouri to block the flow into the big river.

All my life from childhood on, the worries I have heard about this river were the floods. I remember with personal pleasure that our neighbors across the street had their relatives move in when the river overflowed.  The pleasure to me was that one of the older cousins there providing me with a new chum that summer.   Repeated floods for two or three years brought refugees into our small town. Stories abounded of the hardships families faced when they moved back to mud-filled hosues. After those years, visits to the Mississippi bottoms reminded us of the floods because there we saw some residents built their homes five or six feet above the ground.  Gerald lived at the edge of those bottoms and has stories to tell about the high school kids released from school to sandbag levies.

The first farm we lived on after we married was protected from the river by a levy that we drove down to get to our home.  The first night there I had a nightmare about driving on that levy, which was scary to me when the water rose up on the river side.  When the river was down, we were able to go over in a pickup to picnic in the woods on the river side.
After we moved away, we still were concerned when floods threatened because we had friends and family whose lives would be affected.  When our granddaughter Tara was a little girl, we would sometimes take her on Sunday afternoon outings while her daddy was away at his lodge in Mexico.  Once when the news about the flood told of the river up in the park at Grand Tower, like many other people. we drove over there to gawk in awe at the enlarged river.  Unable to get to the swings, children were playing in the knee high water over the driveway at the edge of the park, and we let Tara join them.  That night on television, I heard the warnings about how dangerous flood water was with all its contaminants.  I shuddered at my ignorance, and was always grateful that my prayer for her protection was answered.

In recent years, we have been made aware of the dangerous deterioration of the levies protecting that part of the state.  One of the teachers, Jamie Nash-Mayberry at Shawnee High School near Wolf Lake not only made the students realize the danger, but for two or three years, she has engaged them to try to correct the serious situation there.  Those kids are the reason I know about the deterioration—they made sure all the media outlets became involved. They wrote Oprah. They wrote their representatives and everyone else they could think of. The Corps of Engineers and legislators met with the kids in a public meeting.
We held our breath when floods were so serious that citizens of Cairo and others on the southern tip of Illinois had to be evacuated. Cairo was only saved at all because a levy was opened and flooded acres of farm land.  I felt sad for fellow farmers, but they farmed there with the understanding that this was what was to be done if the river got too high. No one wanted to breach the levy, but I was glad that the people of Cairo were not sacrificed anymore than nature had already done.

I was very impressed with this activist teacher and all she has accomplished with public awareness, but the danger remains and the levies are still in poor shape because of lack of money. I hope to meet Jaime Nash-Mayberry someday.  Most of all, I hope funds become available to do what needs to be done to save land, crops, homes, and families from floods. 
Now suddenly this week I learn that the danger to the river now is not flooding but drying up. As the saying goes, if it is not one thing, it’s another.

Just found this on Internet but haven’t time yet to read through it: http://www.shawneedistrict84.com/. 

Tomatoes, Phone Calls, and River Lore

We have been enjoying luscious red ripe tomatoes with almost every meal. Unlike our special friend Helen Green Galloway, 87, who likes vine-ripe tomatoes with milk gravy, we don’t eat them for breakfast. They taste good to us with all other meals, however.

I filled up three sacks today and took to Katherine’s house for her and two of her aides. We took tomatoes to the brothers and wives last Friday night, and Gerald has taken some to neighbors. In the old days, I would have been canning tomato juice, but I have not canned in many years. I keep thinking someday I will again, but I probably won’t. (I did finally pass my pressure canner on to a neighbor.) Life seems too full already without canning. Gerald cut back his garden to just green onions--already gone now-- and the tomatoes, so I haven’t even had okra to put in the freezer. (I am afraid my family is going to be very disappointed this winter.)

My planned task for today was to make phone calls for my daughter Katherine to line up interviews for home health aides. The long list from a government agency of possible people gave me more disconnected phones than working ones. More and more people are cutting out their land phones and just using cells. I still like using the house phone more than my cell, which I am always misplacing, but it will be interesting to see if the custom of house phones survive in a few more years. At least today’s families don’t have to fret about their kids tying up the house phone—as my parents did and as I did when we had teens living with us.

As I called the listings, I left several messages on message machines—but some without answering machines called me back because they had caller ID. Some phones I called greeted me with music (including the call I made to granddaughter Erin), some were answered by the new owner of a phone number instead of the person I was trying to call and they were very polite even though I had bothered them unnecessarily. Many answered quite formally, and one recorded voice said: You know the routine, leave a message. Some who answered had pleasant cultivated voices and others were strident. Some, who were working elsewhere now, were very brief and business-like; some in the same circumstances were chatty. Some recommended others.

I also was reviewing today the many page report of an archeological study of Mark Wagner of the east side of the Mississippi River at the time of the Cherokee Removal in 1838-39. There in Union County was where the thousands of Cherokee had to take ferries day after day to reach the other side when the large ice floes finally allowed them to cross to Missouri. I had studied the report once before, but enough time had passed that I was no longer positive of some points. So I am re-reading it. Although the river has changed radically since then, the report opined that it might be possible yet to find archeological evidence of Willard’s Landing and Hamburg Landing, both of which once were located on the river’s bank. They provided ferries to cross the river as well as a landing for steamboats from Pennsylvania to bring goods down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to Union County or a place to load flatboats with excess farm produce to sell down in New Orleans.

It is interesting to look at the old maps of the river’s edge and see the changes from decade to decade. In the very earliest days of white pioneers, few acres in the bottoms could be cultivated because of the floods, but now most of the rich land near the river is well drained and growing productive crops.

Woods between the highway and the river make viewing the river impossible most of the time. The same is usually true when you drive off the highway and onto levee roads with fields and trees between the road and the river. Many years ago when we lived and farmed on one side of the 20th century levee in Union County, I would always feel I was definitely living on the river when the water rose against the levee. Other times I could forget that.

Although we were never threatened with the river going over nor the levee breaking during our three years there, nevertheless, driving with the river against the levee seemed very dramatic to me. I drove carefully at those times. One of my favorite memories is when the water was not high and we borrowed our landlord’s little pickup and took Katherine and Gerry for a picnic over by the river on the other side of the levee from our house. My brother’s family at that time lived across the river in Cape Girardeau, and I liked seeing the lights there and knowing they were just on the other side from us.

Old Man River dividing our nation in half is a fascinating phenomenon. Powerful and capable of being devastating down through the years. Yet most of the time, serenely lovely and peacefully soothing.

A Sunday Afternoon Drive and an Evening Visit

We woke up Friday morning to the most beautiful weather anyone could imagine. The weekend has been cool with gentle breezes, and every where people have been in their gardens, going on picnics, and relishing being outside in pleasant comfort.

We took off after morning worship stopping by the house only long enough for Gerald to get his camera. After a bountiful dinner at The Old Home Place at Goreville, we drove down I-57 towards Gerald’s goal of Horseshoe Lake hoping to see eagles there as we did several years ago. The eagles were not out and about, but the serene beauty there was worth the trip.

Because Illinois is such a long state, we have both northern and southern ecological extremes. At the very tip we have cypress swamps that remind you of the deep south rather than the Midwest. There is the Cache River watershed in Johnson and Pulaski Counties, where the state has three nature preserves, and we love going out on the boardwalks to see the l,000 year old cypress trees.

But today in even farther south Alexander County, we were seeing the fish and wildlife preserve the state has on this large lake shaped roughly like a horse shoe, which has long provided folk with places to fish and hunt. We were not there to do either, but to find places to enjoy and photograph.

We traveled along the lake stopping at various pull-over sites to view the algae covered lake with cypress knees and tall cypress trees knees growing out of the water. The green algae as far as you could see in many places looked like a perfectly kept lawn of grass with the buttressed cypress growing in park-like conditions. But when you walked out on the shaky boardwalks, you could look down and see the dots of black water beneath the green covering and occasionally hear a fish breaking the water. Except for the birdsong and an occasional motorcycle group, the peaceful quietness was as lovely as the view.
The only wildlife we saw today were the darting blue snake doctors and an occasional butterfly. In only a few places could we look out and see the moving blue water farther from the shore. At one breath-taking stop, there was no room for cypress as every inch of the water seemed to be covered with blooming water lilies.

Finally we left the lake and the few camping families at one or two sites, the kids fishing at the dam, and the cycle gathering at one picnic area. Taking Route 3, we headed back north and stopped in Thebes on the Mississippi River to see again the restored 1848 rock courthouse high on a hill looking out across the river to Missouri.

A handwritten sign on the locked door gave Saturday hours and the Sunday hours from 1 to 4. Either today’s volunteer did not show up or left a few minutes early as we and two men on motorcycles from Missouri were there shortly before four. So we could not go in, but all of us walked down the hill to see the columns on the river side and the staircase there leading up to the court room. The wide locked doors there would have taken us into the jail part of the building, and we saw the iron bars as we walked down the hillside.

Below and between us and the river were a lovely playground, a picnic area, a modern ball field, and the railroad bridge going over to Missouri. Since many years ago Gerald and Wolf Lake High School team had played baseball against the Thebes High School team somewhere along the river here, we explored that area trying to find a remnant of that memory of two high schools that no longer exist. We gave up and came on up through Anna going through the drive-in to quench our thirst and were back at Woodsong by supper time.

I fixed Gerald a sandwich and drove on over to our village for the evening church service since this had been my Sunday to teach the preschoolers during morning worship.

I had barely gotten in the house when Gerald said, “I want you to go up to the other farm with me. I want to show you something.” Only when we almost there did he share that Brian and Mary Ellen were down and Mary Ellen was in the camper needing a ride to Woodsong while Brian looked over his corn crops. Thus, the day ended delightfully with visiting at the kitchen table over bologna sandwiches and fresh peaches from a local orchard. When Brian arrived from the other farm, he had to visit with Gerald awhile, and Mary Ellen and I had a little more time to talk in the living room before they took off in the cool darkness for the long drive to their new home in central Illinois.