The 2022 flooding in southeastern Kentucky will go down as one of the worse disasters of the decade. The photos on Facebook are heartbreaking. One of the most touching is of a girl on a roof. She put her dog in a plastic box that would float and swam to a neighbor’s roof where she is photographed huddled, surrounded by water, waiting for rescue, cradling her dog. Floods always strike anxiety in my heart as I remember the damage the 1963 flood did to my Granny’s house and land. I was away at college for the one in 1977 and wrote an article about how unfocused I was feeling so far away from a disaster I knew so well. The University of Kentucky school newspaper, The Kentucky Kernel published it, and I’ve copied it below with a few updates.


Mind Flow… Remembering, wondering and praying…
Published in the Kentucky Kernel, circa 1977
By Tess Collins

The first time it happened was in 1957—the year I was born. I don’t remember it but I do remember the second time in 1963. I was in second grade. I hated second grade, and I hated Mrs. Shoemaker. So I didn’t really care when the water rose in the schoolyard.

I remember sitting in the back room of Granny’s house listening to my cousin, Joddy, tell about the house swaying and shaking the night before. “We had to pile towels at the door,” he said. “I thought we were going to float away.”

Uncle Esridge’s car did float away. It ended up stuck between two trees on the forbidden ground of the Walter’s property. It sat behind that fence like a prisoner with its new lining of mud. Later, I would see Uncle Esridge’s face tighten, his eyes narrow, and his lips pressed as he cursed the insurance company, saying, “I want my money!”

The overflowing creek bed separated into a fork looking like Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken.” The regular creek moved at its regular pace. The newly created creek roared through the backyard amid broken dolls, muddy white shirts and debris.

Now and then as my cousins and I stood along the creek throwing rocks and playing Jungle Man we saw a kitten or a pup bobbing in the water. We watched the body roll up and down with the waves. It hit rocks and bounced off, turned over and over until it was out of sight. Then, with the Jungle Man secret holler, we continued solemnly raiding the Bandit’s campsite.

I remember going to bed those nights, listening to the rain hit the tin roof in little pings. I closed my eyes and prayed and prayed for God not to let the water get up the hill to our house, and not to let my brothers fall into the creek like the little boy who fallen in Stoney Fork Creek.

Drifting off to sleep it seems I woke twelve years later to find myself late for class. Mayor Foster Pettit’s voice comes over the radio asking for funds and clothing for flood victims in southeastern Kentucky. Food and clothing are coming from as far away as Ohio. The sun is shining outside. People are walking to class. The office tower seems a bit too tall this morning. I’m only on the second floor, but I’m still too far from the ground.

I’ll bet the sun shines on Harlan and Middlesboro today. The rain never lasts more than a week. Sunshine always follows but the water stays.

I wasn’t home for the flood this year. I don’t remember the one in ’57—the year I was born and the year my Grandfather died. Granny said he sat listening to the Victrola for flash flood warnings. Each year after that I took his place, listening and waiting, wondering if this year would be the year. Oh Granddad, will I be there for the last one too?