<TITLE>23. Par 74-77</TITLE>L-74 Then I went on down, this--this flood was about ready to break through the dike up above there, at Chestnut Street. And some of them called me up, said, "Hurry down there right quick." I was raised on the river, and thought I was a pretty good boatman. I got my boat down there real quick. They said, "A woman's trapped out there." And I looked out there and heard a woman screaming, standing out on top of a porch with a baby in her arms screaming, "Have mercy, have mercy," the house shaking like that, and the flood coming down, sweeping through, eighty mile stretch of water through there.
And I got my boat and started up through the alleys of the... Like this, and got it so I could get down and fall in behind the place in the current. And I landed against the place; and the woman had fainted; I picked her up and got her in the boat (About eleven o'clock that night.), two or three little girls. I got back away and got to the bank. When she come to herself, she kept hollering, "My baby, my baby, oh, don't leave my baby." And I thought she had a little bitty baby over there. The baby she had was about two years old. And I took back to try to see if we'd left a little baby laying on a bed or something, because she fainted on the porch when I picked her up.

L-75 And when I got there and tied my boat, and I--I went in and looked all through the house. But the baby she was talking about was a two year old baby. And just about that time the house washed from the foundation. And I ran out real quick and jumped in the boat, threw my hands down in the water and pulled the slip knot, ice, sleeting, cold, the wind blowing, blizzarding. And I got into the boat; I tried to pull the string on the starter. I couldn't get it started, and the current caught me this way, got me out onto Market Street, swept me out into the river. There's the Ohio Falls crushing just below there, the waves high as this building here, romping like that with such a current. And me standing in that boat pulling that string trying to get that motor to start, and it wouldn't start. Seemed like I could hear somebody say, "Now, where's that bunch of trash at?"

L-76 I tell you, brother, the way of a transgressor's hard. Don't you let no one call you trash, no. I pulled that string, and it wouldn't start, and I said, "Oh, God, I did that which is wrong. Please, I don't want to die out here in this river, my baby and wife laying out there very sick. Please God, don't let me die."
And I was pulling that string and it wouldn't start, and I turned around, and the boat was half full of water almost then, going on towards the falls. I know just ten minutes longer it'd be too much. I pulled again; I thought, "Oh, God, forgive me for my sins." And I pulled again; and when I pulled that time, the motor spluttered; I pulled again and it started.
I whirled around like that in the boat, got back, come out way down around by Cane Run Creek, down towards New Albany. I got back up to Jeffersonville again, walked back up. I said, "I'll go out and see my wife."
Said, "Your wife" said, "where's she at?"
I said, "The government hospital, out there."
Said, "That whole thing's washed away."

L-77 Oh, my, then I jumped in my boat and ra--or my car, and run it as quick as I could, the little patrol truck I was in, and went out to the government out there. I met Major Weekly, a friend of mine, I said, "Major, is the hospital washed away?"
He said, "Yes, it's all under water down there, reverend," he said, "but I think all the patients got out."
I said, "Do you know where my wife did or not?"
Said, "I don't know."
And went and seen someone else who said, "Yes, your wife and all the rest of them got in a cattle car, and they've gone towards Charlestown."


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