<TITLE>28. Par 107-110</TITLE>L-107 Finally the flood come up, and I was on a rescue party out there. I had a speed boat; I was trying to get people out. And I remember one night they took--they took her to the hospital then put her over here in--in a place at the government. And her and both babies were sick, horribly sick.
And I will never forget that fatal night when the flood walls broke through down there. I heard a scream way back over on Chester Street. And I had a speed boat, and I got out there and tried to get a mother out of there. Just as I picked her up, she fainted. I picked her up in my arms and put her in the boat about eleven o'clock, put the babies in there. And when I got her back to shore, she began to scream, "My baby. My baby." She had a baby there about two years old, and I thought she meant she had another little baby out there in that place. And back I went to try to get the baby.

L-108 I tied my boat up the side of the pillar of the porch, and when I went up into the room to try to look around for the baby, I heard the house giving away below, and I run down real quick just in time to jump into the water and hold on to the end of my boat, and pulled the... And it sub-zero, sleeting and snowing.
And I pulled the rope like that and got in my boat. The waves caught it and swept me out into the middle of the current, out into the river. And I got back in there, and I couldn't get my boat started, the old chain, it will pull on the outboard motor, you--you know, the old-timers, where you have had a whirl on the top of it. And I pulled and pulled, and I couldn't get the thing started. And there was the Ohio falls roaring just below me. Oh, brother, a way of a transgressor is hard. Don't you never think that.

L-109 And I pulled and it wouldn't start. And I pulled again and it wouldn't start. And I tried, and I got down in the boat; I said, "God, it isn't but a few more jumps down here and I will sink beneath those falls there," where they're roaring and bubbling, miles of water stretching through there. I said, "I got a sick wife and two babies laying out there in the hospital." I said, "Please, dear God, start this motor."
And I could think, "I will never let my girl go out with a bunch of that trash." And I say this with all due respect to every church; I find out what she called trash is the cream of the crop. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

L-110 And I pulled on that, and it kept roaring in my ears. And I pulled again, and I... Just a few minutes and it started. And I had to pull right back upstream and give it all the gas that it could. Finally, I landed down almost to New Albany, just whirling the edge of those falls.
I got back in, and run back up to the hospital to see where my wife was, and the flood had done took this thing away; it was gone. Now, where was my wife, where was my babies? Wet, and cold. I run out there. And I met Major Weekly. I'd just...
Brother Ryan had just left somewhere; I don't know where he went. I think you went with Brother George and them on out. And I met Brother George. The last time I seen him in life, he put his arms around me, said, "Brother Billy, with all my heart..." And he was a converted medium. And he said, "With all my heart, I love Jesus Christ, and if I never see you again, I will see you in the morning."
I said, "God bless you, George," as he went on. He was trying to find Brother Ryan then, somewhere, 'cause he was in the city.


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