Measuring the floodwaters

About this recording

Oral Histories of the American South, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Date created

December 7, 1999

Duration

2:25

File

MP3

License

This recording copyright ©2004. All Rights Reserved

Source

Original audio housed by The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

See this recording in context

• Measuring the waters: This lesson plan uses an excerpt from an oral history about measuring flood waters during Hurricane Floyd to teach students about the many ways measurements can be taken. Students are given an opportunity to practice measuring with a variety of tools and evaluate their effectiveness. (Page 1.2)
• Measuring the waters: This lesson plan uses an excerpt from an oral history about measuring flood waters during Hurricane Floyd to teach students about the many ways measurements can be taken. Students are given an opportunity to practice measuring with a variety of tools and evaluate their effectiveness. (Page 2.1)

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• Search LEARN NC for Duplin County, Earl Cavenaugh, floodwaters, Hurricane Floyd, measurement, and North Carolina.

In the classroom

Earl Cavenaugh, a man whose family has lived in Duplin County for a long time, talks about how his father and grandfather used to measure the floodwaters — and how much higher Hurricane Floyd’s floodwaters were than anything he had ever heard of.

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.