A near disaster in Darlington
By Bill Shepard
“Gray skies, rain falling, a September Gale,” the people said. It happened every year at this time. Folks in the village were prepared.
This was the time to plant their small gardens with collards, turnips, and mustard greens. The crop of vegetables would make a difference in their dinners ahead. The period of the Great Depression was knocking at the door. Herbert Hoover was President but not for long. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and that on a promise to put America back to work.
The water rose higher and higher. From where the small boy stood, he could see the water at the edge of the pastureland that bordered the swampland. It had been raining for several days now and the black clouds overhead showed no signs of letting up. The boy had never seen rain in this fashion before.
There was an explanation of the strange happenings in the weather, but the boy had no way of knowing that. In his small world and in his time, there were no telephones or TVs, and radios had not yet come to his house. There were newspapers of course, but there was no delivery where he lived, and it wouldn’t have mattered because no one in his house was interested in reading newspapers. People in the village were indeed in a world to themselves.
So, the rain kept falling and the villagers kept wondering when it would stop; meanwhile, the water kept creeping closer and closer to the village and to the boy’s house. The Shepard family lived in the small house that was nearest to Swift Creek.
Every night before going to sleep, the boy would say his prayers and every morning he hoped that the rain would stop. He remembered the story his Sunday School teacher had told his class about a time that it rained so long that everything and everybody had been destroyed, except one man and his family and a lot of animals. He thought about his brother’s little bantam chickens and wondered if such a thing happened again if they would be spared. Of course, no one was expecting that to happen again. But the rain continued to fall and the water from the swamp kept getting closer and closer to where the boy lived.
Ordinarily the water would have flowed southward across the low swampland, but the tunnels that had been placed through the railroad embankment were stopped up with the floating debris from the forest through which the small creek flowed. The railroad track passed along directly in front of the boy’s house. The embankment now served as a dam holding back the rising water.
“Should we bring my bantams inside?” the boy heard his brother ask. They were standing on the back porch and gazing across the field to where the water had risen.
“I don’t think the water will reach our yard before morning,” was his father’s reply.
So, the darkness came again, and the boy and his family retired for the night. The boy wondered if his parents were more worried than they were letting on. Long after the lamps had been extinguished and the little house lay in total darkness, the boy could hear muffled sounds coming from his parents’ bedroom. He knew they were talking but he couldn’t make out the words they were saying. He could only guess that they were talking about the rain.
Next morning, the boy was awakened with sounds of men talking coming from his front porch. He jumped from the bed and quickly slipped into his overalls. He ran to where the voices were coming from. He could see the water had risen to the top step of the porch. A few more inches and it would be coming inside the house. Already on the back porch, the water had risen to cover the floor. He ran through the house to the kitchen and peered through the small windowpane. Everywhere the boy looked, he could see water. The field where he often played was now a sea of water. In the distance, he saw a man in a small boat paddling around where ordinarily the cow barns and pig pens stood. He even saw what looked like a cow floating on top of the water. He supposed it had drowned during the night. He remembered his brother’s bantams and ran to the back door to see if they were safe in their coops. The coops were floating around and around in the swirling water and the precious bantams were perched on the top. He saw some men trying to reach them while his brother stood urging them on. The small boy had never in all of his young life seen such a sight before. Again, the story told by his Sunday School teacher came to his mind. “It must have been an awesome sight,” he said to himself.
Fortunately, the rain had ceased but the water continued to rise. How long or how high the water would rise, no one had the slightest idea. He heard the suggestion made that they should move out of the house. They shouldn’t stay there another night.
The boy’s uncle lived in a house that was on higher ground not too far away. The decision was made to move the furniture from the house to where his uncle lived. Boards were placed in the kitchen window that extended outward to dry ground. The heavier items could be slid outside on these boards. The boy clutched his mother’s hand as he watched the stove being moved along the boards. A large number of people from the village had gathered, some to lend a helping hand and others to watch what was happening. And then it happened!
The boy had never heard such a loud sound of noise before. It was as though a hundred claps of thunder had happened at once. He squeezed his mother’s hand more tightly as he wondered what had happened. Then in the distance, he saw the gaping hole in the railroad embankment. The bank had finally given way to the pressure of the wall of water it was holding back. The water carrying all parts of debris could be seen swirling toward the opening that had been made in the embankment. It was an awesome sight to behold. A small freight train could not stop in time and its caboose left the track.
The steel tracks were swinging in midair still attached to the cross ties. The water could be seen receding at a rapid rate of speed. The picture of this scene, including the Shepard family’s house, can be seen in Darlington County, A Pictorial History on pages 76-77.
At the moment, the boy could not see what was happening on the opposite side of the track. He would learn later that the small store building and all its furnishings were swept away by the force of the rushing water. A deep washout in the road would mean that another bridge would have to be built to span the chasm left by the moving water. This bridge would be called in the years to follow, the little bridge.
Of course, the big bridge that had spanned the creek would be replaced also. Where the water had broken through the embankment, a trestle would be built. In the future if such a thing happened again, the water would have a passageway to escape and there would not be a repeat of today’s happenings. Days afterwards, even weeks, the small boy watched the pile drivers at work as the trestle was being built. He could stand in his own backyard and watch as the trestle slowly went up. The trestle is still standing, and such a flood has never happened again. The trestle is a reminder of an exciting event that happened a long, long time ago in 1928.
Now I know that off the coast of South Carolina, a hurricane was taking place, causing all the rain that caused the flood. There was no way of knowing about that in my small world – the mill village in Darlington!
