by Linda Ellen
Bearden cast her a disparaging glance, noting the rumpled clothing and watermarked suitcase. He quickly deduced the woman as the type who maintained an air of the upper crust, without the means to back it up.
“Madam, this is a golfing club, not a hotel.” Dismissing her with a turn of his head, he once again addressed the group, leaving the woman clutching her children and sputtering about the man’s rudeness.
“Make yourselves comfortable. Some women from a local church will be here soon to bring food.” What he didn’t include was, although the club was known for the excellence of its cuisine, the refugees would not be partaking of any such fine dining. When contacted by the Red Cross, the owners reluctantly agreed to provide a place to stay for their unexpected boarders, as all club activities would need to temporarily cease.
“In the meantime, get settled the best you can. And…ladies, please see that the children respect the club’s property,” he pointedly added as he stared at a child of two or three who was, at that moment, tugging on one of the lace curtains. The embarrassed mother immediately took charge of the child.
With that the man inclined his head and left them to their own devices.
Lilly, Edna, and Louise looked around and chose a group of four mats as close to the fireplace as they could that the other women hadn’t already claimed.
“I’m hungry, Mama,” Billy complained as he plopped down on his mat. Lilly smiled sadly and leaned to caress his hair, before placing her belongings on the lumpy surface of her straw ‘bed’. “I know, sweetheart. Hopefully the ladies he mentioned will be here soon…”
Edna and Louise shared a look of resignation – or for Edna, more like aggravation – and set about making their temporary lodgings as comfortable as possible.
Before long, true to the promise, a group of ladies from the church arrived, their arms laden with cold cuts and bread for sandwiches. The friendly Mr. Bayford carried in a pail of fresh milk from the club’s own cow, while another man brought in a large pot of delicious smelling soup. The aroma filled the kitchen and filtered out into the dining room where the refugees were milling about.
With worry on her mind about her husband and her missing son, Lilly fussed with making a filling meal for the remaining three members of her family. They spent the rest of that day acquainting themselves with their lodgings, which included amazingly luxurious bathrooms. Finally as the sun set, the group retired for the evening to spend an uneasy night trying to sleep, and taking turns keeping the fire burning in the fireplace.
Each woman there felt mixed feelings about the situation. True, they were out of harm’s way and basically well cared for…but with little news filtering in to the secluded club, they couldn’t help but wonder and worry over their homes and the friends they had been forced to leave behind.
If some had known what would eventually happen at home, they would have spent a truly sleepless night, as several of their own relatives and friends had been sent to tent cities holding as many as 1,200 refugees – just as the situation would take another turn for the worse.
Sometimes, ignorance is actually bliss.
‡
CHAPTER 8
Black Sunday
Temperatures steadily dropped throughout the next day. Rain continued to fall, which helped to plunge more of what was already over forty percent of the area under water. As the day went on, snow and sleet began to pelt the waterlogged city and the high ground began to freeze. Ice formed on stagnant pools or pockets of water. All of this only made the job of the rescuers that much harder.
Broadway, normally the center of commerce and activity in the city, became a turbulent stream clocked at over 6 mph. Only powerful motorboats with experienced crews were capable of crossing the wide and dangerous avenue. Indeed, several smaller crafts had become deluged and capsized in the attempt. Several times during the day, Vic’s four-man crew traversed the wide waterway on assignments in the ‘Mary Lou’, one of the larger boats assigned to B-13. No one wished to find out just how cold the water was; needless to say, they were extremely careful.
Medical officials had direly predicted 15,000 cases of pneumonia due to the extreme conditions, and Vic was determined they would not become part of such a statistic. After one of B-13’s own men – 53-year-old John Shore – died of exposure and exhaustion, Doc Latham sent an urgent appeal straight to the mayor in support of his crews. As a result, the rescuers had been supplied with warmer coats, gloves, warm caps, and hip boots to aid in their efforts.
Irene and the other ladies from Doc’s church stayed on duty, providing sustenance and warmth each time teams of ‘their boys’ returned to the station. They were all treated as the heroes they were, of course, but Irene quickly became quite attached to young Vic and Gerald.
The love and concern of Irene and the other church ladies had inundated the young man with a feeling he couldn’t put into words. Indeed, the wall Vic had built to protect his heart from further hurt had begun to slowly erode, much like the banks of the muddy Ohio. As the hours and days of the crisis wore on, Vic felt more and more at home with his newfound friends, and cared for and accepted in a way he had never before experienced.
This was made painfully clear to him when he stopped by in his boat to check on Jack, Liz, and the kids that morning. He ordered his crew to motor down Fifteenth to the apartment’s front stoop and made his way up the stairs to their door. However, for some unknown reason, he didn’t feel the freedom to just walk in like he normally would. Everything seemed to feel different somehow. He felt vaguely detached…a bit like an outsider. So, he paused at the last second and knocked, half hoping they wouldn’t be there.
The reception he received was a bit frosty, to say the least. His sister-in-law, who regarded him with a mixture of dislike and disinterest, opened the door as she wiped her hands on a towel. The kids ran to see him and Jack came to the door and shook his hand. However…the whole thing felt quite odd, as if he were a long lost stranger.
“Uncle Vic! Boats are goin’ up and down the street!” Little red-haired Shirley squealed as she lifted her petite, sweater-clad arms for him to pick her up.
“They sure are, sweetie,” Vic answered, giving his adoring niece a kiss on the cheek.
“Mr. Fred, downstairs, got sick last night – a big boat with red lights on it came and got him,” Timmy informed his uncle, with large round, innocent eyes.
“That right? Musta been the Coast Guard…” Vic supplied, imagining the elderly gentleman bundled up and taken to the hospital.
The family stood awkwardly at the door, never moving inside to sit down or visit. Vic cleared his throat and self-consciously ran a hand back through his hair, scrounging for polite conversation. Jack moved to lean against the doorframe, his eyes now and then shifting to his wife.
“You best go on back to where you’ve been staying, ‘cause we don’t have enough food to last if we’re stranded for very long,” Liz made a point of saying when the children excitedly asked Uncle Vic if he were staying for lunch.
Vic turned to leave a few uncomfortable minutes later, realizing neither his brother nor his sister-in-law had even asked what had been occupying his time, or where he had been since the morning the flood had begun. And neither had he volunteered any information.
He clomped back down the steps and made his way out to his waiting friends.
Gerald eyed him as he stepped back on board. “You okay, man? The family alright?”
Vic huffed a small downhearted sigh and raised his eyes to his friend, noticing all three of the guys were staring at him in concern. One corner of his mouth lifted in his trademark smirk as he acknowledged silently that these guys, whom he’d only known for a few days, cared more for him than his own ‘flesh and blood’.
“Yeah, they’re alright. Let’s just…get outta here,” he mumbled with a dismissive shrug.
Glancing at one another and wondering just what had gone on upstairs that had affected their friend in such a way, they wisely sa
id no more as Gerald gunned the outboard, and they moved on down Fifteenth.
Vic stared back at the apartment building, brooding. He wondered if he would ever call that place ‘home’ again.
Somehow it seemed unlikely…
However, his melancholy thoughts soon receded to the back of his mind as the business of rescuing people and the responsibility of his position as rescue boat captain took precedence.
As the day wore on, Vic and his crew navigated past both Earl’s and Alec’s homes and he was saddened by what he saw. Both families were, of course, gone to places unknown. Though discovering Earl’s family’s home was flooded, Vic could see in the windows that the water had only covered the floors a few inches. Alec’s home, however, built in a much lower area, had already sustained quite a bit of damage – broken windows were allowing clothes and personal items to be taken away by the current.
Vic was afraid his friends would end up losing everything. Scooting over to the boat’s edge, he reached down and retrieved an item out of the water. As he turned it over, his lips parted with the shock of realizing it was the sepia-toned photograph of the family that normally resided on the mantel in the front room. He’d seen it there dozens of times…he’d watched Mrs. Alder dust it, and lovingly trace the images with her finger. With a sigh, he stashed it in the bow of the boat.
“Hey guys…” he began, intending to direct his crewmembers to help gather items into the vessel, when a fully loaded rescue craft journeyed by with an urgent request for help.
Sighing, Vic regretfully abandoned the Alder’s home and gave the order to proceed to the emergency, ten blocks to the west to the address of a large older home. There, Vic and the crew of the Mary Lou came to the rescue of a family of five, as well as a Doctor Morris Edwards, who had gone to the home to render aid. Five of the people were nearly unconscious inside the residence, but one had stumbled out onto the porch to feebly shout for help. Concerned neighbors had summoned assistance.
Vic and the others acted quickly, managing to carry the victims out onto the porch and into the waiting boat. Disregarding the fact that they could be suffering from Typhoid Fever and thus contagious, the team delivered the ailing people to the Louisville City Hospital. The front steps were serving as a dock for boats to deliver sick and injured people. Vic glanced up and smirked at someone’s obvious sense of humor, as an impromptu sign had been strung across the wide sidewalk leading to the front doors. Made with red paint on a bed sheet, perfect block letters proclaimed, HOSPITAL BOAT LANDING.
Doctors at the hospital confirmed what Dr. Edwards had gasped before passing out; the family had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, the culprit – a faulty furnace. A short article with an accompanying photo in the newspaper that afternoon read, “Thanks to the sure actions of a volunteer boat crew from station B-13, all six victims survived what could have been a tragedy.” For the first time in his life, Vic felt almost famous. The Courier had even spelled their names right when they listed the members of the team.
However…their euphoria didn’t last long.
As the weather worsened throughout the day, snow and sleet pelted the water, the boat, and the men inside. The temperature steadily continued to drop, on its way to a staggering 18 degrees. The rest of that day and the next, Vic’s crew, like many others, patrolled the streets, a.k.a. waterways, on the lookout for anyone who might need help. The cold, but hardy, volunteers huddled under blankets in their crafts, each man keeping warm with a heated brick wrapped in a cloth and tucked inside his union suit.
By the time Sunday evening rolled around, all of the crews of volunteers were exhausted. As twilight descended, and not having encountered anyone out and about in several hours, Vic eyed his tired crew. Two were so exhausted, they were yawning and wiping their eyes. Gerald, at the rudder, stared blankly, then shook his head and wiped a gloved hand over his face to try and wake up.
“Fellas, whadya say we make tracks for the cave?” he muttered, stifling a yawn. The others nodded listlessly.
“We ain’t doin’ much good out here, no use freezin’ our buns off,” another member of the crew, agreed.
Nodding, Vic ordered, “Go ahead and turn down Fillmore, we’ll head back that way.” Gerald turned the craft and they began to make their way back to base for a much-needed night’s rest. The water was deep in that area, nearly up above the windows on some buildings.
“Get a load ‘a that!” Gerald laughed a few moments later, pointing with a gloved hand to a lighted billboard at the edge of the street. The others looked to where he had indicated and burst out laughing.
It was an advertisement for some off brand of cigarettes. Pictured was a man with a jaunty hat cocked to one side, his mouth open as he happily allowed smoke to escape, as if he had not a care in the world. The cigarette held in his fingers also had smoke rising. The water line ran right across his mouth, effectively making the unknown man appear to be swallowing water and the smoke the resulting steam. It couldn’t have worked better if it had been planned.
“Remind me never to buy that brand,” Vic joked as they motored past it and on up the street.
“Yeah, I’d say they’re ‘all wet’, wouldn’t you?” Gerald snickered, referring to the common phrase meaning, ‘no good.’ The pun made all four of the guys chortle. Turning the corner, they continued onto a main thoroughfare, heading east.
Suddenly without warning, the streetlight several feet above their heads, along with every light in sight, went out as if someone had pulled the plug. It plunged them and their boat into a cold, watery darkness. No moon or stars were visible to give light – it was almost like falling into a large cave, and it struck fear into each of the young men’s hearts.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Gerald sputtered as he accidentally steered the boat into an unseen obstruction in the darkness. The others yelped and grabbed the edges of the craft in an instant of panic. Thankfully, the unknown object toppled away, only causing the boat to rock, but not capsize.
“Oh man, this ain’t good,” Vic mumbled. Instantly, he knew what had happened. The fear of the possibility of it had been lurking in the back of his mind all day. He had tried to push the thought away after he had heard some old-timers predict that it was bound to happen. Then he had chosen to downplay the rumors he’d heard during the day, that several sections of the city had been rendered powerless. There was no ignoring it now. Now, it was a reality.
Seeing large sections of the city already darkened, with only a few areas remaining electrified, Vic declared in barely controlled panic, “The power plants…their generators are gettin’ flooded…they’re droppin’ off the grid.” The thought of that was enough to send shivers of dread through his entire body. Water everywhere was one thing, but…temperatures well below freezing – and no heat or light…or radios?
“We better step on it,” Vic ordered, reaching for the oil lamp stashed in the bow. Gerald gunned the motor, heading toward the base. Phil and Eugene, the two other men in their crew, immediately began watching over the sides for anything that could potentially plunge the four of them into the cold, murky water. As they passed by another rescue team heading to their own base, the crews slowed and called warnings to one another in the flickering shadows of the bow lamps.
The four young men in Vic’s boat gazed about at the eerie landscape as the vessel glided through the choppy water. From a break in between two buildings, they could see the whole western section of the city had gone dark, where before lights had been burning brightly in every building. What next? The young men lamented. The crisis seemed to be getting worse…and worse. Four hearts pounded anxiously as they made their way along.
Minutes later, as Vic’s eyes focused on the welcomingly familiar bright red letters beaming on the O.K. Storage façade, he was about to make a comment that they had made it safely, when everything around them went dark – again. No more red letters, no welcoming lights of the station, no voice on the radio. The last power substation had gone down, plung
ing the remaining section of the city into total darkness.
Somehow, practically feeling their way along, the men made it to the base and filed inside after carefully tying the Mary Lou nearby.
The building, normally teeming with noise and activity, now housed subdued and hushed volunteers. One good thing, Vic mused, the old building’s coal furnace is still puttin’ out heat on this cold night. He made sure to shut the outer door securely against the blustery, wet breeze.
The emotional nadir of it was the silence, because with an earlier power outage, WHAS had fallen silent. WHAS! Vic cringed. Our lifeline! Just when they had thought they had everything under control and it couldn’t get worse… now contact with the outside world, not to mention between the citizens of their beleaguered city, had been eliminated.
It was 11:35 p.m. Sunday night. It would be forever immortalized as Black Sunday.
For Vic and the entire rescue force of B-13, things couldn’t have looked bleaker. Several of the volunteer women, including Irene, huddled together near the food tables and tried not to weep in fear.
Vic stepped nearer, depositing the lamp from the boat onto a table. In spite of the tension of the situation, Vic’s heart went out to the lady who had come to mean a great deal to him. Wanting to be a comfort, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, murmuring gently, “Aw, Miss Irene…it’s gonna be alright…”
She nodded and reached into a pocket for an ever-handy lace hanky, and proceeded to dry her eyes.
“Alright everybody, I think it’s past time for us to seek help from a Higher Authority,” Doc Latham intoned as he moved to the center of the large main room of the warehouse turned control center and lit another oil lamp. The two-dozen volunteers and church ladies who were there moved toward him in the dim light, each one taking the hand of their neighbor. Their leader cleared his throat and tipped his head back in silent acknowledgment of the Eternal One.
“God in Heaven…forgive us for not first coming to You for help in this time of crisis in our city, but relying on our own strength and wisdom. Yay, dear Lord, our strength and wisdom is nothing compared to your infinite power and authority…”
