A Different Drummer: Flashback floods

I grew up with floods. I lived along the Clarion River that spilled its banks about every year. We lived just above the lowlands, which included much of downtown Ridgway. The water rose often to our doorstep.
A third of the town’s businesses, factories, stores, and at least 50 homes were built along the two rivers. Most of those establishments are gone today. In their place now sit two canoe rental shops.
A lot of construction went on along the Clarion River since 1824. Back before man altered the earth, floods didn’t occur that often. The water soaked in. A home or business along a scenic river was a big plus.
As mankind built dams, diversions, and alterations, floods increased. My town flooded a little most years, and a lot too often. I’ve seen canoes on Main Street, cars submerged up to their eyebrows, and rows of sump pump hoses stretching out to the sewer drains.
The annual floods would come, and people would be ready with sandbags and sump pumps. They’d kill the power. Turn off pilot lights. Put valuables near the door. Stores and factories would move merchandise to higher shelves. When the waters receded, folks would come in with shovels and brooms. It was a regiment.
My friend Lowell has lived along the river for 59 years. He says he’s been flooded seriously seven times. One flood left water lines chest high in his living room. He’s never thought of moving. “Eh. I’m used to it,” he says.
After high school I worked at Howe’s Leather factory along the river making shoe soles when a big flood came and filled the warehouse with four feet of river water. The flood rushed in after dark, and workers from the plant had long ago driven back to Mount Jewett, 27 miles north, where the factory originated before relocating to Ridgway.
My friend Ron and I were the only Ridgway employees, so we broke in. Water was just below our knees and rising.
A thousand boxes of leather soles filled the dark warehouse in wide, deep rows stacked five high. The bottom rows of boxes were under water and the second row was growing damp. We jumped in, hoisting wet and dry alike into handcarts and pushing them up a ramp to the higher ground of the cutting floor. Around 4 a.m. help arrived from Mount Jewett, two carloads of employees. The boss thanked us for breaking in. They rolled up their sleeves and trousers, and everyone pitched in saving soles.
Another year a raging flood washed away most of the yard inventory from the local sawmill. Water stayed high for a couple weeks. My friends Robbie and Tom and I paid a visit to the ink plant that year up along Elk Creek that flows to the great Clarion. We wanted to take advantage of the high water. The factory made black, blue, and red ink, but specialized in green. Don’t ask me why.
They kept hundreds of full and empty 55-gallon metal drums in their yard along the river. We went to the front office and asked the boss if we could have six. He was happy to get rid of them, but as we were on foot, he wanted to know how we were planning to get them home.
“We’re going to float them downstream,” we said. At the T with the Clarion a half-mile downstream was an abandoned tannery full of wooden pallets, where we had stored rope, hammer, nails, a saw, and a sheet of iron. We were dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers, no wallets or valuables, ready for a swim. He laughed and pointed out the empty barrels in the yard.
We picked six clean ones, rolled them out into the river’s current. We stepped in alongside them and floating we herded them down the river like lazy cattle.
At the tannery we laid out the six barrels on their sides, three in two rows, lashed them together, and pushed them into the shallows. We next lashed five pallets on top of the barrels. On one pallet we placed the iron sheet over a couple of buffer rocks as a fireplace.
We got our food, firewood, and sleeping bags, and launched the next morning. We floated out of town on the Clarion at dawn on our makeshift raft and into the forest. For a day? A week? We’d float until we grew tired of it, then we’d ditch the raft and hitchhike home.
As we floated along, we saw flood remnants — clothing in trees, trash along the banks, an upside down dog house in an eddy. We floated for hours and came to a diamond-shaped island covered in shady white birch trees. We decided to camp for the night and dragged our ship to shore.
What we found on the island amazed us. Lodged in the trees were a dozen strapped bundles of lumber in all sizes from 2×4” to 6×12” still wrapped tightly. Our eyes were bugging out. This was the wash away from the Buehler Lumberyard.
Tom stood in amazement. “We could build a whole city.”
Robbie picked up on the vision. “Yeah. We could make separate houses and a boardwalk.”
“We’ll need saws and hammers and nails,” I said.
We set up camp, built a fire, and spent the evening planning strategy. We’d go back to town. Get supplies and help, then return and begin building Birch Island. We’d populate it with cats.
And we did that, except for the cats. We got hammers, saws, nails, and friends, and were back on the island cutting bands and making plans when the big-wheeled, high-chassis lumber trucks drove straight down the middle of the Clarion River from town and some burly guys shooed us away and reclaimed the lumber.