I could write a book about this time in my life. Who knows, maybe I will. But let’s just center our focus on one spring so many years ago. As the calendar rewinds back to the year 1977, let me reset my mind. There are a lot of memories back there and I need to sort them all out again. I’ll start with the water and where it all came from…
Like I said it was the springtime and we were living in our secluded little farm home on the very northeast edge of town, a four bedroom ranch sitting on four acres of undeveloped land on Liable Road. To a fifteen year old adventurous boy, it was heaven.
Our property was surrounded by a large forest on three sides, leaving the fourth for the street, our street, Liable Road. Beyond the edge of the forest on the northern side existed the city dump and beyond that the Little Calumet River. Two things: one, the city dump sounds disgusting to my 61 year old self now, but oh boy, at fifteen, it was full of exploration and prizes waiting to be had. Second, the Little Calumet was a stinky river with nasty fish, so pretty useless to us. But one thing you could count on every spring, was it was going to rise from the spring rains and it was going to overflow too, like clockwork.
In 1977, we experienced rains like we hadn’t seen in our three years, and learned maybe in the last twenty years. With a little logistical calculating you could conclude that the rising water would run out of the river, around the dump and spill into the forest. It did, and for all I know all these years later, it still does. No real serious concerns for the town, they were not affected. What was affected? Liable Road.
That spring, the water came in, and in, and kept coming. Our whole family watched in absolute disbelief when we could see the water enter the back of our property. It crawled alarmingly closer and closer, drowning our garden, flooding our basketball court, overtaking our barn, meeting up to our swimming pool, and finally touching the walls of our home.
I wish I could say that was the extent, but alas, no dear reader, there is more, much more. That’s the thing about water. There are many natural disasters that can forever change a person’s life. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, fire, I can go on and on. But what I cannot do, is ever forget what it is like to succumb to a flood, lots of water, too much water. It has no mind-bending sudden approach or no scurrying rush as it leaves. No, it is a slow moving, non-stopping, never-ending real threat that will not stop when you cannot take anymore. No, it will continue. And when you beg, you plead, you cry for it to stop, it simply will not. I feel this real fear this much today as I did when I was facing it in 1977. It has been the cause of countless nightmares and the realization that as a man, I can still be broken easily by things I simply cannot control.
Once the water reached the house, it snaked its way through the cracks and crannies of the walls, pooling down into our basement. We could mark the rising water by the hour as it made its way to the ceiling of the basement. It stopped short by less than six inches and then froze, literally. Spring season in Indiana is cold, damn cold. So, there you have it. What came next? Worse.
The washer & dryer in the basement were drowned victims. Add the water heater to the list of lost souls. The furnace? Forget it. Then the unthinkable. The house shifted off of its structure. Not by a lot, but enough to make my father cry. And that painful image still lies untouched somewhere deep in my heart.
I have no idea how my parents survived that spring. They were making decisions that people make on sinking ships and stranded islands. My mother was the first to declare the house unlivable. My sister and younger brother went off to stay with a classmate from their school, Orchard Park grammar school. My older brother Bob, I believe, stayed four blocks away at his friend Jerry’s house. I shacked up at my friends, Scott & Steve’s home. And my parents, they tried to hold down the fort by toughing it out at the flooded house. When a borrowed city generator for electricity started filling the house with carbon monoxide, they too had to leave for higher ground. For two weeks, the family was separated. I won’t lie to you, it was hard times for sure.
On the fifteenth day of our family disaster, my mother declared we were all coming back in. I packed up my things and walked back home, down Liable Road. She did this for two reasons. One, we had power on in the house again and two, she simply could not bear to sustain this lifestyle any longer. I clearly remember all of us coming together. My dad had picked up a bucket of fried chicken with mashed potatoes & gravy. We all congregated around the kitchen, eating chicken and sharing stories of the last two weeks. When it was time for bed, we assembled a row of sleeping bags around the fireplace in the living room where a fire was providing the only heat in the house. Morning showers were cold and quick. Slowly, the road out in front of our house began showing signs of water abatement.
The next day, a city truck stopped by with a water pump. They dropped it off and we set it along the south side of the house where there was a patch of land. My dad opened a basement window and dropped a three inch wide hose down to the floor. Still with over seven feet of water down there, the idea was to pump it out. Another three inch wide hose ran the length of the driveway then across the street and into our neighbors ditch. Fun fact about Liable Road. The ditches running along the road on our side of the street never held water well, never flowed, and in some place didn’t even exist. But across the street, the best damn ditch you ever did see. We of course had ditch-envy.
The city pump was gas powered so we topped off the tank with a gas can from the garage. Then started it up. Water was flowing in no time. Things were finally starting to look up. You can’t keep a Hemphill down for long! I was fascinated with this setup and spent a long time looking at both ends of the process. Yep, it was working alright. The only problems I could see was the pump was really loud and the gas tank had to be refilled every two hours. The latter turned out to be a really BIG problem.
The pump ran for weeks and weeks. Even though water was moving away from the house, more water was coming in. Real progress would not materialize until the forest-water subsided. While I found it hard to sleep at night with that noisy water pump, it didn’t matter much when it was my turn to refill it. My dad took on the task the first few times, but it was obvious that he could not maintain this and work two jobs at the same time. My brother Bob and I could see exactly where this was heading. Like a big brother should, he took it on for a couple days until he was thoroughly exhausted and I had to step in for support. With a refill every two hours, my night was hacked apart with alternating short naps and tank refills. I quickly could see why this was such a difficult job. I found myself falling asleep in school classes and school buses. My mother had the horrible task of waking the fuel filling person every night so she was missing good sleep every night.
One night when it was my night-shift to replenish the much needed fuel I found myself really unable to fully wake for the job. I wandered through the house with one eye closed, promising myself I would be back on the pillow in six minutes. It must have been 3 or 4am. As I left the back porch door and turned to my right to face that pump again, I noticed I had forgotten to put on my shoes. As I approached the water pump with my five gallon gas can, I could feel the heat radiating off of this machine. Heck, it had been running nonstop for over two weeks now. It was HOT! I forced my other eye opened and leaned down and unscrewed the lid off the pump gas tank. “Mike, where are your shoes?” my mother scolded me from the back door of our house. I looked over at her said that I forgot them. She was wearing her night robe and looked so tired that I felt truly sorry for her and what this house was doing to our family.
I turned back to the gas can. It had one of those caps that you could unscrew, flip over, and screw back on the can. Now you have a spout for pouring. So, that’s what I did. I leaned forward and began filling the tank, but actually I was doing a terrible job and spilled gas all over the top of the pump! And worse, my socks! Suddenly, there was fire everywhere. My mother screamed and raced to my side. There is one silver lining to living through a flood, SANDBAGS! We had ’em. We had a lot of them. That was the solution. My mother reached down and came up with two massive handfuls of sand from a bag broken open and threw them on my feet dousing out the fire. I reached down and got my share of sand and threw it on the pump taking out half of the fire and with more help from my mother, we managed to put it all out.
The pump and my feet were just fine, but my socks were done. Off my feet and into the garbage can. I was relieved of my duty the rest of the night. I past my brother on the way into the house and he shot me a look that could kill. I was back on patrol two days later and never took the task lightly again. We made it through that week and cheers went up all around the family when we could once again see basement walls as the water resided. The water around the house too had begun to retreat. Another week later, the city truck returned and removed their water pump. We were all too glad to see that thing leave. I followed out to the street and gave a long wave goodbye.
With an empty basement we could now assess our household situation. For sure we had no washer, dryer, water heater or furnace. Like I said, my dad worked two jobs and there simply was no money to replace these essential items. You’re asking, “What about home owner’s insurance?” And right now I am too. I was fifteen then and things like that did not swirl around my young mind. If my parents were alive today, I would surely ask them. All I can assume is that my parents could not afford it. There’s a lesson right there in the importance of insurance.
So, what did we do? I like stories with happy endings and I am happy to say that I have one for you this time. Our church. Our church started a fund for the Hemphill family and raised over ten thousand dollars (a lot of cash in those days). A week later, the church treasurer handed my dad the check. A humble moment for him and my mother. We spent the money on the new appliances. My dad had the new furnace installed upstairs. I got the ugly task of climbing into the crawl space where the basement ended. In there I had to secure a few house blocks and bricks to realign the house from the shift it had suffered. And then that was it. We were done. We survived the great 1977 flood. Power, running water, heat, all of the amenities needed to run a household were back and working great. All of us kids moved back into our bedrooms and life in the Hemphill household was again returned to its normal, quirky, fun-loving self.
A big shout out to Trinity Lutheran Church in Hammond, Indiana. You were there when we needed you!
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