I’ve realized of late that my daily accounts about my life has become the norm for me and I catch myself wondering why I haven’t “written” much lately, stretching my literary muscles so to speak, as in my silly poems or stories. Then I posted my five Friday facts last night and one of them was about surviving the flood. I don’t know why I haven’t written about that before since it was one of the most terrifying times in my life, but it just hasn’t occurred to me until now.
It’s raining this morning, I’m not particularly motivated to do anything except listen to that liquid gold that we need so badly falling on the roof, so I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee and decided to tackle the story:
August 3rd, 1978 wasn’t a typical day in Albany Texas. We had had over thirty days of 100+ temperatures with no rain for longer than that. It had been so miserably hot and dry that due to the severely low level of “Albany Lake”, the lake had been treated the previous week with whatever they do it with and all the fish floated to the top. Boats were everywhere full of folks with nets to get the fish as they surfaced. There were a lot of fish fries that week, needless to say.
My first husband worked in the oil fields of the area and I was a cook at the nursing home. The teenage daughter of one of my friends from a neighboring town was living with us and babysitting the kids to earn money for her school clothes and spending money. I worked six hours in the afternoon and early evening cooking the evening meal for the residents. The nursing home is approximately an eighth of a mile from a normally dry creek bed that runs through town and probably 30 feet below the bridge that runs over it. This bridge is on the outskirts of town and has been there forever.
The nursing home is just outside of town past the bridge and is one of those buildings that is built like half of a wagon wheel, the main nursing station in the center and halls that run out from that center like spokes on a wheel. The northern most hall pointed toward town and was to the right of the nursing station and front lobby. There was a small park with a couple of picnic tables between the northern end of the of the building and hwy 180, which curves north just before the bridge into town. The nursing home was actually situated on the Baird hwy that “y’d” off 180 just before the curve and the bridge. So the nursing home was not far from the “corner” between those two highways and the park was in the actual “corner”.
It had been raining pretty hard all morning and the night before when I left for work and husband had come home shortly after, forced by the rain to quit early that day. All through the day as I worked in the kitchen, we had the local TV station tuned in on the television that was located in the sitting area of the dining room which stated how much rain we were getting. The number just kept getting bigger as the afternoon wore on. The drapes were also pulled back in the sitting area and I would take a break once in a while to look out at the torrents of rain falling from the sky. Tropical Storm Amelia had arrived in the gulf, but I never made the connection, since we were in the northern half of the state and a long way from the gulf.
But I remember thinking that I had never seen rain like I was witnessing that day. It fell in sheets, never letting up and the clouds were so low that it looked as if I could just go outside, reach up and touch them. The NOAA website entitled “Texas Torrents” states that 33 inches fell in Shackelford County in the 24 hour period and that 29 of those inches fell in Albany within the last 15 hours of that 24 hour period. So the rain was falling at a rate of two inches an hour and never letting up. If you’ve never seen rain that heavy, it’s an awesome sight.
My shift ended, the kitchen was clean and I was ready to head home, but there had been so much rain that the brick flower beds along the front of the building had completely filled with water and the water was seeping in around the foundation of the building in the front two halls. There was a half an inch of water in all the front residence rooms and hallways and the staff was having a time trying to keep it mopped up. In fact they were fighting a losing battle. The turnstiles on the roof were also letting in rain, so they were trying to figure out a way to stop that also. They were looking for any help they could get so I offered to go home and get my husband so that we could both come back and do what we could to help since we had a live-in babysitter. They were grateful for the offer, so I drove home over the bridge and noticed that the creek bed was full and not far from the bottom of the bridge. It gave me a creepy feeling as I passed over, but was on a mission and concentrated on seeing my way through the streets to my house, which was on the opposite end of town and built on a hill.
I’ve pondered on whether to include what I’m about to tell due to the sensitive nature of it, but it is in fact part of the story, so I’ve decided to go ahead and tell it all. When I arrived at home, I told my husband what was going on and he proceeded to start gathering up things and getting boots on so that we could go back to the nursing home and try to do whatever we could. In the meantime, I started to explain to the babysitter who was 13 at the time what we needed to do and she stated that she would be fine with the kids, but also told me something that rocked my world. She said that sometime that afternoon after husband had come home from work, he had approached her and tried to touch her in a very inappropriate way. She had put a fast and definite end to his attempt, but was still understandably upset about the ordeal.
I was shocked and totally taken by surprise with her statement. I’m not sure what I was thinking at the time and to be honest just wanted it to go away. It wasn’t something I had ever thought about having to deal with and times were a lot different back then. This sort of thing wasn’t brought out or talked about much and I truly didn’t know what to do other than to tell her I was sorry for the incident and that I would take her home the following day. It made me sick to my stomach and truly didn’t know how to handle it, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to believe her because to believe it would totally turn mine and my kids worlds upside down, but yet a big part of me did believe her. I was angry with her and felt sorry for her at the same time, but I tried very hard not to show my anger. It would have been so easy to just deny the entire thing which would have made her a liar and just go on with life as if it never happened. I knew he had affairs, but was still pretty naïve even about that, so the added fact that he had molested a child was more than I could handle. I was actually grateful that we were in the midst of a semi emergency situation so that I had some time before I had to really think about it.
He and I got into the car and headed back toward the nursing home and I didn’t say a word about the incident to him. I rationalized that there would be time when things settled down and I was still in such shock and sick to my stomach that the survival instinct kicked in and I did what I could to just put it out of my mind to be handled later. As we passed over the bridge again I noticed the water was level with the bottom of the bridge and could feel the bridge moving a little as we drove over. The parking lot in front of the nursing home was paved from the highway to the front of the building and it had a low area just off and running parallel to the highway which matched the ditches on either end of the lot to accommodate water runoff from the highway. This paved “ditch” was full of water and the car drowned out as we went across it to park in front of the building. We were at the northern most end of the lot, so some guys came out and helped us push it up beside the exit door at the end of that hallway.
We went in and went to work, so I was quickly absorbed in the task at hand which was by now getting coordinated with the staff that was there. Husband got together with one of the men and they took trash bags on the roof to put over the turnstiles and I joined the others that abandoned their losing battle with the mops and were now placing two of the big long dust mops side by side and pushing water down the length of the hall and out the same exit door that we had parked close beside. There was now about an inch of water inside and it was seeping in at an alarming rate. Most of the residents were in their beds sleeping and were pretty much oblivious to the efforts going on or the water that was in the floor of their rooms except for one, Mr. D. He was a tall man that got around pretty good and was the lady’s man of the nursing home. Always charming and fun to be around, but didn’t like to miss anything, so we were constantly asking him to sit down somewhere or go to bed so that he wouldn’t fall on the slippery floor.
Within a few minutes we heard screaming and a lot of noise, so we went to the exit door to look out and saw water rising from the direction of the creek and people trying to wade toward the nursing home from the hotel that was right next to the creek. The water was rushing at an incredible speed and we all knew it would be suicide to try and get into the water to help. There was also a blue sedan being driven by the same man we had bought our car from trying to drive south just north of the parking lot and his wife was with him. The water was moving his car around and they got out to try and swim away. A guy in a big pickup with a lift kit that sat just above the water drove up and tried to get them to get in his truck, but for some reason, they refused. The water started to push his truck too, so he had to pull away. When he did, the full force of the water hit their car and them and it washed them several feet away, then I saw them stand up in the distance, then disappear again. At the same time, there was a man coming toward us with a small child on his shoulders that by the sheer grace of God actually fought his way up out of the water and folks half carried him into the building.
The waters edge at the north end of the building was about 15 feet away at the time, but I looked very closely and next to our car was a rock on the ground and I watched the water getting closer to it at a fast rate, then cover it within a matter of seconds. I alerted the others who watched for a second or two, long enough to realize that we had to take action fast before we were inundated with rushing water also. We all scrambled back inside, the door was closed and locked, then the men placed furniture and whatever else they could find in front of it to withstand the pressure of the water. It was dusk at the time and was quickly getting dark. The men also went to the back of the building and secured all the doors they could, but within a few minutes, water was about a foot deep from seeping in around those doors and it was then pouring out the front door. In my blissful ignorance I assumed that the water was only that deep outside the building and I had chosen not to venture back into the back kitchen and dining area because I knew of all the freezers and electrical appliances sitting on the floor back there and I wasn’t keen on going near them. Within a few minutes, the men from the Lueders Fire Department which was about fifteen miles away arrived and we found out later they were the last ones to get into the area because every highway going into Albany flooded and the town was a virtual island with no way in or out.
It was decided that the residents, who were mostly all still asleep in their beds and unaware of the foot of water in their rooms, had to be evacuated and the men thought that if they could get a vehicle big enough, they could transport them out the front of the building and go south and west to the administrator’s home which was a few blocks away and on higher ground until they could be transported to other facilities. This meant that we would need to gather up enough sheets, towels and supplies for 52 evacuated residents. So that was my project for quite a while and I stayed busy trying to get everything gathered up that I could, wading around in water halfway to my knees with slick silt at the bottom. Mr. D. fell at least twice and amazingly didn’t hurt himself too much, but we finally had to get pretty stern with him to get him to just sit down somewhere.
After an hour or two, the men had managed to round up an oilfield “logging” truck which was a big truck with lots of gauges and controls inside a compartment that would seat probably six people. They also managed to get a road grader operator that agreed to drive in front of the truck to break the water til it could be driven to higher ground with residents and supplies in the compartment. The supplies had to go first, so I stayed pretty busy, not having time to really think about what was going on around me. The man from the hotel was safe and sound along with his three year old son, but the man seemed to be in shock and the little boy was terrified. Also during that time the director of nurses all of a sudden decided she was going to “swim for it” and disappeared into the dark. There were a few remarks made about her jumping ship when we needed all the help we could get and also a lot of prayers that she would be okay.
The true picture of what was happening outside that building just didn’t occur to me and I was so focused on what was going on inside that I never even looked out. All the drapes in the resident rooms were closed and I hadn’t spent much time in them anyway being busy gathering sheets and supplies from the supply room, getting them loaded in garbage bags and ready to load. We still had electricity, thank goodness but nobody else in town did, so we couldn’t have seen anything out away from the building if we’d tried and it was still pouring rain. We couldn’t call out on the phone, but could receive calls and before long the phone started ringing. Most of the town could receive calls but couldn’t call out, except for the pay phone at the Dairy Queen. So when that was discovered, folks started going to the Dairy Queen to call friends and family to see who was okay and who wasn’t, so the few calls coming in were from there. I managed to get enough phone time to ask the person on the other end to call my home and let the babysitter know we were okay and that we would be home as soon as we could. We knew our house was safe from the flood, so I felt better to know word had reached my kids that Mom and Dad were okay. How and when we would get home didn’t occur to me since the flood was between where we were and our home. The pay phone quickly filled with quarters and the phone calls stopped.
Sometime after that, my husband came to me and told me that our car had washed away and it just didn’t seem real to me, but again I was so busy and so oblivious to the real danger we were in that I only paused for a moment or two and went on with the task at hand. The supplies were loaded and hauled to the administrators home and it was a slow process, so it was after midnight before they were ready to start loading residents. One by one, we went into their rooms to wake them up and get them dressed and ready for the trip. It was a slow and painstaking process to do this in so much water, putting them in wheelchairs and holding their feet up out of the water, the men carrying them and putting them into the logging truck. Four at a time were moved to safety, then the process would start again.
It was during this time that I went into the room at the end of the northern most hallway and was helping get that resident ready for transport when I heard something like an empty gas can or something bumping against the brick outside and the sound was high on the wall. I thought that was kind of strange, so I pulled back the drape to look outside and literally froze in terror. I couldn’t see out into the dark night, but what I did see was dirty brown water halfway up the window outside which meant that it was around four and half or five feet deep out there and rising. Nothing but a plane of glass stood between me and all that water and I stood looking at it frozen to the spot. One of the men was wise enough to approach me and slowly back me away from the window, closing the curtain as he did and talking to me in a very even and soothing tone. I barely remember him leading me out of that room.
Most of what came after is pretty much a blur, so I must have been in shock or something close to it. I managed to go on but don’t remember most of the details past this point, not even the ride out of there to the administrator’s home. There, after we helped all the residents settle down and get some sleep, scattered everywhere on mattresses and on beds and couches, I found a spot on the floor under a table in the corner of the den and tried to close my eyes and sleep, but couldn’t. It was so close to daylight that I probably didn’t stay there over half an hour, then we went to work trying to feed everybody.
A while later we heard that a natural dam had formed up in the hills from logs and debris washing into the creek and that “dam” had given way, sending a 25 foot wall of water crashing toward and through town on top of the already overflowing creek . After a few more hours, we finally received word that the water had receded and that the bridge was damaged but we could walk across it, so we did. Walking on that highway toward the nursing home, I became more and more aware of the danger that we had survived the night before. There were well heads (pump jacks) that had washed across the highway and were resting in the park by the nursing home. There was also a pickup with the front end resting on one of the picnic tables while the back end was up in a tree not 30 feet from the very window that I had looked out and discovered the water. If anything had hit any window of that building just right and that water had poured in, our situation would have been so much worse. There were entire houses gone and tank trucks washed down the creek. There was a car in the lobby of the hotel and debris everywhere. The nursing home building had actually trapped water in between the hallways that spoked out from the center, which meant that the water had to have been a lot deeper in the back of the building and explained why it was running out the front door.
Several people drowned in that flood, one being a baby that was literally swept from her father’s arms by the water and including the man we saw in front of the nursing home. His wife was found a mile away, her clothes had been torn off her body that was battered and bruised and she was caught in a fence, but still alive. The last I heard, there were four people that have never been found. A week after the flood, a side mirror was spotted under the bridge and they dug up a pickup truck that was buried in the mud. There was one of the missing men in there along with his dog, who both perished. I realized that I only missed the same fate by less than an hour and realized the folly of crossing a bridge in those conditions. Our car was located and by the time we got it back, the motor and everything else was full of dirty water and mud and useless. But it could have been so much worse. We found out later that the nurse that “swam for it” was actually successful in getting to higher ground and safety, thank goodness.
Albany Lake, which had been almost dry the day before, filled to capacity and spilled over the dam that eventually broke and the lake drained once again. The National Guard came with their helicopters and picked the vacant lot next to our house for a landing area, so we watched these helicopters going in and out for several days looking for the missing.
I left my husband not long after the flood and never really addressed or spoke to him about the incident with the babysitter. I took her home the next day and they moved to Dallas a few days later. I lost touch with them and never spoke to her about it again. I realize that same situation today would be totally different, but I was a victim of the times and my naïve youth, so I’m left to hope she is okay and grateful that I took my kids away from that environment. I’ve always known that even tho I broke up their home, they were much better off because of it. I hope they know that too. It’s one of the things back then that I did right. He had also been abusive a few times in our seven year marriage and the next time he became violent, I left and have never looked back.
I guess you could say that day in August was one of the worst and best in my life. It was tragic on many levels, but I also survived and so did my family. To this day, when I’m anywhere near a creek or river, I watch the water level constantly. Since then, I’ve actually packed up and left areas like that if the water rose the least bit. Needless to say, I respect the power of water since that day. I’ve seen what it can do and I have no desire to live such an awful day again. I much prefer the kind of rain we're getting today which is a good thing. You just never know what Mother Nature has in store. 
