Terrifying Evening

By Muriel A. Durkee

November 3, 1927, was a rainy day in Vermont. In fact it rained for several days, before it finally stopped.

At the time, we were living, as we had for most of our married life, with my husband's parents. The rest of the occupants of the old two-story house consisted of my sister-in-law and her three children and also my husband's grandmother.

Because of the overcast skies and the rain, it became dark early. The baseball park across the street from the house had turned into a lake.

The rain continued to come down, and the water continued to rise. The ground was a little lower along that section of the street than it was elsewhere.

Suddenly, the sister-in-law, Inilla, called excitedly: "There goes Mr. Bashaw leading his horse, and he is swimming!" There was a narrow dirt road between our house and the one next door that was used mainly as a short-cut.

This alerted us to pay more attention to what was occurring out-of-doors. We had previously been occupied with the evening meal. We discovered that the entire lawn was submerged. And still it rained.

There was a shed attached to the rear of the house where the car was kept. It was my husband's pride and joy, a 1926 Locomobile, two-tone cream and maroon. The water came to the bottom of the doors. It was too late to try to get it out.

Sometime in the evening, Inilla called me again to come and look. Between the back door and the shed was a trap door leading down into the cellar. The water had risen to the top stair. Inilla decided we wouldn't tell anyone, just yet, about this latest development.

It was so dark that we couldn't see out into the night. The power was off, as might be expected. The phone was also out. We could only sit and speculate on what was happening outside. We only had kerosene lamps for light.

It was debated that we might have to go upstairs. My husband and I and our three-year-old daughter had three rooms finished off up there. There was also the bathroom and another large bedroom.

Grandma sat quietly in the chair by the window, where she was in the habit of sitting most of the time. She simply said, "No, I'm not moving."

We continued to sit. Daylight eventually came. Desolation greeted our eyes. The river, which normally ran about a quarter of a mile beyond the ball park, was a solid sheet of water, far as the eye could see. The father side of the ball park had been the municipal playground. There were several neat, green-painted buildings that housed a workshop and bath-houses. These we could see, floating down the rushing stream.

It had stopped raining by now, and we were able to venture out on foot. The ground was higher up the street toward Main Street, where we women-folk (all but Grandma) made our way.

We found a group of people already assembled, looking toward the river. On the higher portion of the street there were three or four large homes of well-to-do citizens. The river had changed course and was cutting closer to the backs of the buildings.

The attraction for us was waiting to see the inevitable breaking off of the ground, and the big fine barns that were attached to the big fine houses topple into the current, as they eventually did.

News started to trickle in; the dam and the new cement bridge were gone; everyone on the farther side of the river was cut off from stores, the hospital and some from members of their families. A footbridge was thrown up as soon as possible.

A foundry, located close by the river, was completely gutted. An elderly, affluent lady in town was able to have a message broadcast to the outside world: "Hard hit, but no lives lost."

I was worried about my parents who lived about 50 miles away, in an apartment house that was located on the banks of the Connecticut River. It was days before I learned that they were all right.

The state of Vermont suffered greatly from the flood. In a town some 10 miles south of us, an elderly couple and their tenant were lost. The old man was found clinging to a tree, but he was dead.

A few miles further south, another tragedy occurred; a man and his son had gone across the field to the barn to do the evening chores. They looked across to see the house, containing the man's wife and the other children, floating down the river with the lamp still burning inside. It was weeks before the bodies were found.

The railroad tracks and many bridges were washed away, and even now, nearly 70 years later, reminders of where the roads used to go can be seen and recognized by those of us who can remember.

The face of the beautiful state of Vermont had been changed forever.

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