The Rite of Spring

On a cold and starless night early last week, gaunt, red-eyed men patrolled the Mississippi levees near the Illinois town of Meyer (pop. 73), 18 miles upriver from Quincy. They walked in an eerie bath of spotlights, casting their flashlight beams over the tops and sides of the sand-and-soil embankments, looking for soil that had chinked away and for the brown tongue of the river flicking over the top. On the riverside, the great Mississippi growled heavily along, swollen by spring rains and by the countless acres of melting snow that boiled into the feeder streams and into the big river itself. The spring floods--the annual ritual of turbulence and destruction on the Mississippi --had begun, trying once again the dogged perseverance of the thousands of families along the river.

Along the levees, hope was scarce. Aided by police, Red Cross workers, National Guardsmen and college youngsters, the farmers worked round the clock to raise the levee with sandbags as the river continued to rise. Farmer Elmer Meyer was prepared for the worst: "If we had a million sandbags we couldn't do it," he said. "It's awful. We have to keep making the levee higher where the water is topping over and we can't strengthen it in back. You can't tame the old Mississippi--I don't give a damn how you levee it."

The Break. Then it happened. At 1:55 in the morning the levee broke on Joe Caldwell's rich soybean, corn and wheat bottom land. Nobody was right on the spot as the swollen river exploded through the levee, but everybody heard the agonizing roar of water as it rushed over the top and tore a hole in the dike. Instantly, state highway patrol cars sped through the area with red lights spinning and sirens shrieking; it was the signal to move out.

Joe Caldwell rushed to his green-shuttered farmhouse. His wife Carol met him at the door and read his face: "I guess it's gone," she said. Replied Caldwell, 50: "Yup, Mamma. Don't try to get anything. Get everybody in the car." Mrs. Caldwell went upstairs and got Son Dan, 9, and his ready-packed bundle of blue jeans and shirts, and they packed into the family Ford with their daughter and niece. Joe Caldwell drove the truck; another son, John, 14, released the ducks from the breeder house, then mounted his Arabian horse Lightning and led the procession slowly out of the bottom land.

The river moved in and rose, flooding 28,500 acres in the district. After dawn, farmers returned to their land in boats, opening windows in farmhouses to ease the pressure on the walls. First-aid crews boated through the village of Meyer to check on the diehards who stayed behind to stick it out. Widow Corny Lloyd, 82, who had slept in her attic, snorted: "I could have slept downstairs in my bedroom, but I didn't want to put my feet out in cold water. I'm webfooted. I watched to see it come in and I'll watch to see it go out. I recall the 1944 flood, when it came in gradual. It crept in like a cat creeping after a mouse through the wheat fields. But this one came in all of a sudden. Just busted across the road."

The Comeback. As the week wore on, the river relented. In the town men in boats cruised up and down the streets salvaging furniture and other possessions. In the fields, mice clung to cornstalks, cats perched in trees, sows and anxious little pigs sunned and scampered on the high stretches of levee that held. Throughout the whole flood area between Keokuk, Iowa and Hannibal, Mo., Army engineers and other officials counted the damages of the spring floods at $9,000,000--remarkably small compared with the good old days before the massive dam system slowed the major tributaries. But nothing had changed the sting of personal hurt. Farmer Caldwell's buildings and perhaps his farmhouse were ruined. About 160 acres of his good bottom land were suffocated by the sand that had been dumped over them. And a 50-acre lake, 40 ft. deep, had been gouged into his land.

Still, like the men along the Mississippi who come back every year after every flood, Joe Caldwell was not quitting. "You can't get flood insurance," said he. "You can't get act-of-God insurance--he never came around and tried to sell me any. But I hardly think I'll move out of the bottom. I've made what few dimes I've got out there, and I don't know how to make a living anywhere else." Added Mrs. Caldwell: "A lot of our land will be ruined. But we'll be back there. This is part of living. We might as well laugh. It's a good show, and we're paying for it."

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