Interview: Failed measurement - For students

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Running time: 1 minute 48 seconds.

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Transcript

Early Cavenaugh

General rain — it’s been known through our generation. If it’s rain, a general rain, it’s going to get out of the banks. It will rise by the time it quits raining, five days. Sometimes it depends on whether it rains more there or here, whether or not it would go four maybe or five. But we were looking for it to rise five, but it was up here the second day after it quit raining. More than it, uh, had been being as high as the flood.

Charles Thompson

After that second day, did y’all start knowing that it was different right away?

Early Cavenaugh

Always when it rains, I kind of wanted to know how high it is coming. So I got me an aluminum yardstick and I go stick it down in the ground to ten. Then I go back and read it and see how many inches it goes an hour. I’ve been doing that now since 1962, when it come into my house. So I know kind of how to prepare — see how fast it’s coming. So I took that one this time and went down to check it. Uh, I lost the thing. It was done gone. Usually two inches an hour at the very peak is all it would rise. This time it was coming a foot an hour or something.

Charles Thompson

A foot an hour.