Interview: Early measurement - For students

The recording

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.