Ollie Huntley

Partial Transcript: Well, what I know is what I’ve heard. I was born two weeks after the flood. And up the road, a woman and her two children—not her children but they were children they were keeping—washed away and they found her in a barb wire fence. That may be half a mile from the house—from the home, and the two children went on down the creek to the first curve down there where you started up the mountain. And they’re buried over at Possum Hollow Cemetery—that first cemetery. You know there’s one down near the road and then one on top of the mountain? And then there was—at the other fork—there was a house that washed away, but nobody was washed away. They got out and come on up the mountain to my buddy’s house.
Well, the water wasn’t too bad on—up on the higher mountain. They said the trees, and the logs, and that kind of stuff done more harm than the water did. But now, further down it went, the worse it got.
Well, the schoolhouse is right here where my house is, and some said it washed away, and others said it didn’t, but I don’t think it did.
Well, over above the church, there’s a little road on your right that goes over the hill, and a girl got washed away there. The water come in and took—I guess a room of the house and they found her down the mountain up in a clump of ivory bushes.
And that’s about what harm was done to people, but the land was really messed up.
And it washed our church away. Middle Fork Baptist.

Partial Transcript: Well, it all depended on where you was—where you lived then. There was very few houses at (???) (inaudible) 0:04:35.3 and further up, no houses washed away. It wasn’t about a mile up the road washed away, but the people got out and went climbing up the mountain.

Partial Transcript: Well, they just done the best they could. There wasn’t—there wasn’t much to do back then. People just done what they could and got by with it.

Partial Transcript: Well, I grew up on Middle Fork and spent—I’ve spent most of my life on Middle Fork. But back then, people in the community was just like one big family, but now it’s so many, they don’t get together too often.

Partial Transcript: Well, my mother was raised on Middle Fork, and she lived on Middle Fork all of her married life. And my father was born over on—near Edneyville and went to the (???) (s/l Barnword)Church over there.
And they had nine children. And I had a brother older than me that was around during the war—I mean during the flood, but I was born two weeks after the flood.
He was (???) (inaudible) 0:07:51.5 and he was a farmer, and had cattle, and apples, and made cider, and made molasses, and all that good stuff.
Well, my mother was a Hill, and she was born back on the hill back that way, and they lived on up the road up there and lived up there during the flood, and when the flood come, a lot of people gathered at their house, and they had nine children.

Partial Transcript: Well, growing up was a lot of fun, but we had to do a lot of hard work and help out with things like hoeing corn, digging potatoes, and all that stuff.
Well, we had to walk off of the mountain down here to school, and with a little bridge that crossed the road and come up the hill here into the schoolhouse, and it was all about—about three feet wide—didn’t have no banisters or nothing. We just walked it. And one teacher taught the whole seven grades.

Partial Transcript: Well, I don’t worry too much about that. I was small. But we’ve had a lot of water since then. We had the little la—little lake that bursted up on the mountain here, and the water got on up into our yard.
Well, it was bad.
Well, there was water everywhere.
And the further down the creek went, the more water gathered.
Well, it went through Lake Lure down through there and Lake Lure wasn’t there then. But it swept through Bill’s Creek—a little town down there—a little place, and they had a lot of trouble, and a lot of houses washed away, and they had a mess of trouble.
Well, we just done the best we could.

Partial Transcript: Jumping rope. (laughs) That was our main thing on Sunday evening was we’d be gathered—my mother didn’t go to church. She’d stay home and cook dinner for what we brought home. And then we’d jump rope, and played hide and seek, and all that stuff.

Partial Transcript: Well, my mother was sickly, and most of the work and everything fell on me as far as the housework, but I made through it. Done the best I could, I reckon.
Well, I done most of the cooking and the bed making and all that good stuff.
And you know that followed me down through the years. All—most all of the family depended on me and my baby sister now—if she runs up to something she don’t know what to do—my telephone rings.

Partial Transcript: Well, my husband was a good man, but he—he made mistakes. We all do. And in his later years, he lost his mind and was in and out of Broughton for about six years, and he died in ’80, and he was sixty-six years old. And my mother died—I had my mother then—and she died in ’81. She was eighty-five.
My husband build it, and he worked—my husband was a rock mason, and he worked—we had four children then—and he worked in the day at his job, and he worked on this house at night. And, back then, it was during World War I, and you couldn’t buy two windows hardly alike, and we just had to get what we could get—what we could find.

Partial Transcript: Well, I worked at CP Clare for twenty-six and a half years, and we made stop signs and all that, and now it’s changed to another job, but we had a hard time then. It was a cold winter—one of the winters was. And when we left—we’d leave on ice and come back on ice, but back then they had studs in the wheels, and I’d have to walk. And when it was real bad, my husband would take me to work. And I missed one day on account of weather in all those years that I worked over there. And I worked at the stone cutter in Ralston for—I think about three years, and I filled batteries then, on that job.

Partial Transcript: Well, he was born in Ralston and lived in Ralston until he was grown. And then when he got grown, he come up here to work at Mishimoka Camp. And that’s how I met him. We had a good marriage, but it was a hard time; no work and all that. But after the flood several years, when they made the road through the parkway, my daddy worked there for—I don’t know—I guess until they got the road finished.

Partial Transcript: Hm. Well, I got a broke hip, and down through the years, it’s caused crippling arthritis. But I was working at CP Clare when I got my hip broke and I worked about four months on crutches. But I could drive, but I couldn’t manage to go with my hip broke.
And the plant manager told me, if I—when I was out about four weeks—he asked me if I thought I could make it back to work, and I told him, “Well,”—he said I wouldn’t have to punch the clock and he’d fix my car for me, and I did that.

Partial Transcript: Well, after our church washed away, we had the church on the mountain under tree up there. And then—Jesse Huntley lived on up on the mountain, and he give an acre for the cemetery and Edgar, his brother, give the land for the church, and they built the church down where it is now. And we have good attendance for the amount of people that live on the fork. We got a good preacher that does good for everybody.

Partial Transcript: I’ll be a hundred my birthday in July
But getting there is a little bit hard. (laughs) I’ve enjoyed life, though. And since I’ve had this arthritis, my family’s been real good.

Partial Transcript: Well, I’d try to do more for my church and try to do more for my family, I guess. In the later years, it all fell on me. When I start to town, I can see houses along the road and things that my husband’s made—built.

Partial Transcript: Well, I have wondered a lot about what people would do now if we had another flood, and there’s a lot of people around talking like it was coming. The history would definitely set back.
If we have a shower or a hard rain in the night like we did in the 1916—when the house up the road washed away, they went in the night, up through the ivy thickets to my daddy and mama’s house, and I wondered a lot of times which way we’d go if we had another flood. (pause) People ought to really consider what they would do if we was to have another flood.

Partial Transcript: Well, we just have to do the best we could, I guess.
Sometimes the things you think will be the hardest to work out is always the easiest.