LEARN NC

teenage boys removing a piano from a flooded house

Measuring the waters

By Kristin Post

1.2 Teacher's guide: Early measurement

By Kristin Post

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South

Introductory script

We are going to listen to Earl Cavenaugh and the man interviewing him, Charles Thompson. Mr. Cavenaugh lives in Duplin County, North Carolina. He is about 80 years old, and he and his family have lived there for a long time. Their house is near a creek, and every once in a while, when it rains a lot, the creek floods, and water comes near or inside their house.

In 1999, something different happened. Hurricane Floyd hit the coast of North Carolina, and brought a lot of rain in the area. This was a problem since the ground was already wet, and the creeks were already high from a previous hurricane and other rains.

A few days after the hurricane had passed through, the creek near Earl Cavenaugh’s house started flooding. Unlike previous floods Mr. Cavenaugh’s family had measured in the 1920s and 1960s, this time the water came up very fast and very high. Mr. Cavenaugh and his family had to leave his house to get to higher ground and to a shelter. When they came back, most of their house had been destroyed from the water.

When the Hurricane Floyd came through with all of the rain, Earl was not ready for the flood, and how quickly it rose. We can listen to Earl talk about the floods in the past, and how he and his family used to measure them. He talks about what he did to measure the creek and why that system did not work after Hurricane Floyd.

Preliminary questions

  1. (Display a North Carolina map.) Where is Duplin County, North Carolina?
  2. (Display a North Carolina map.) What major river runs through this county? (Answer: Cape Fear)
  3. Have you ever seen a flooded river or creek? What does it look like compared to what it looks like normally?
  4. Discuss vocabulary.
    I reckon
    Southern usage for “I think” or “I guess.”
    Crest
    When a wave or water gets to its highest point.
    Light wood post
    Probably a piece of a 4×4.
    Artesian well
    A well is a place for people to get water, and is necessary for farmers and people living outside the city who do not have water and sewage services. A well draws water from underground. An artesian well is bored perpendicular to a water supply that is at an angle (draw this on the board). The pressure forces the water to the surface without pumping.
  5. Earl Cavenaugh is going to mention several years there were floods. The first was in 1908, when his grandfather marked the tree with the light wood post. What other years are mentioned?

The recording

Play oral history excerpt. Running time: 2 minutes 25 seconds.

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Transcript

Earl Cavenaugh
My mother’s daddy, in other words — I mean, my mother was raised right over there across the canal. One mile down here, a half a mile, I reckon, my daddy was raised. And where he was raised was where my granddaddy was raised too. In 1928 he, um, I mean in 1908, there come a flood.
Charles Thompson
1908.
Earl Cavenaugh
Yeah. Whenever it crest, got as high as it was going, my granddaddy nailed a light wood post to a pine, level to the water. And in 1928, it came another one and the water went right straight just that same — about that high and that’s all. 1928. In 1962 there came another one, the old people were telling me. [phone ringing]
Charles Thompson
In 1962.
Earl Cavenaugh
Yeah. The old people were telling me that you had an artesian well, and you could go out there in 1928 and take a glass and be right easy, and get him a drink of water right out of that artesian well, you know, overflow. And in 1962, it was the same way. Those three floods were about like about four or five inches of being the same thing. My granddaddy said that him and his daddy and nobody else had never seen nothing any higher than that. So that dates me back yonder a hundred and fifty years ago. They had never seen nothing, and this time it was four feet higher in my house than it was at that time — in 62.
Charles Thompson
Is that light wood still there?
Earl Cavenaugh
Not now, I don’t think. They cut the timber and everything else by then. But uh, from what I can understand, those three dates when it flooded, it wasn’t four or five inches difference in neither way. But this time it came, it was four feet higher than any other that anybody had ever known.

Follow-up questions

  1. Based on the description you heard, draw a picture of an artesian well and a person getting a glass of water from it.
  2. Based on the description you heard, draw a picture of a pine tree with a “light wood post” on it, level to the water.
  3. How many years ago from today is 1908? 1928? 1962? 1999? How many years apart are they from each other?
  4. Does Earl Cavenaugh ever mention how high the water was in any of those years? If not, then as a class, make a guess for how many inches off the ground was the “light wood post” that Cavenaugh’s grandfather nailed to the tree.
  5. According to Mr. Cavenaugh, the floods between 1908 and 1962 are within how many inches of each other?
  6. How much higher was the Hurricane Floyd flood than the previous ones?