Women Over Fifty

By time you’re fifty (or older) you have lots of memories of Christmas.  I have a picture of my two brothers and I in front of the Christmas Tree.  We are dressed in Sunday clothes.  I have long fat curls instead of the usual pigtails and a ribbon in my hair.  I’m holding a doll I got Christmas - by one hand.  To me, that’s what my early Christmases were like.

When my family was newly arrived in California, I was 16 - a great age for me.  We lived in Marysville which is in Northern California north of Sacramento.  We had just moved from the snow country of Washington State.  Yet I remember that first winter as one of the coldest of my life.  It rained and rained and the cold wind blew right through your bones.  I felt like I’d never get warm again.

Near Christmas time that rain began to accumulate.  We calculated later that we had had the 40 days and nights of rain that Noah told about.  Water was in puddles everywhere.  We never felt totally dry.  The water began to rise behind the levees.

Those levees were a source of amusement when we arrived that summer.  There was maybe two miles of river bottom between the levees.  The river itself was so low you could walk across it - though we were advised not to do it.  Now, in the winter, the water rose.  The river overflowed its banks.  The slow lazy thin river of summer became a fast running fat river.   About the time the water reached the bottom of the levees, people started to tell us flood stories.  We tended not to believe them.

However, as it got near to Christmas, people began to pile sandbags on the top of the levees.  When we went to look, the water was bank to bank and only a few feet from the top.

People began talking about evacuating Marysville, and two days before Christmas they did evacuate us.  Our family had no knowledge of how this was done.  However, my Dad attached our long skinny row boat to the back of the car and filled it with prized possessions and supplies.  A friend called and offered their home in Yuba City.  They were going to be gone for Christmas and we might as well use the house.

I was an embarrassed teen as I rode in the family car over the big bridge to the friend’s house, pulling our boat trailer behind us.  I was hoping no one was watching.   We settled in to the friends home to sleep.  However, my Dad was beginning to think this through and told us to sleep in our clothing.  He and my mother stayed up to listen to the news.

About midnight on the day of Christmas Eve the order came to evacuate Yuba City where we were.  We were new to town and didn’t really know the streets they were talking about.  However, once we were on the highway and inching our way down the road with other evacuees, something was happening.

We were listening to a radio station that was near the levee in Yuba City.  He was telling us not to delay.  The levee had broken on the Yuba City side and we needed to leave.  NOW!  For hours he told us to get out, becoming ever more excited, and we inched forward a few feet and stopped.  We began to worry about where the water was.

No sooner did we have the thought than the radio station told us that flood water was coming down the street where the radio station was.  He said he’d stay on the air, but they were in the process of moving the radio equipment upstairs and there might be a gap when they finally made the move.  We inched along listening.  Water had reached the door of the station.  Most of the equipment was upstairs now.  He gave us news of flooded streets and the directions the flood was traveling as people phoned it in.  And we inched along.

We weren’t positive, but we thought the break was south of us and the water was coming our way. Three lanes of traffic were leaving the city and one coming in.  We worried about being caught in the flood.  Dad fretted that he’d been stupid to think Yuba City was safer than Marysville.  They were just on opposite sides of the river.  However, Marysville was surrounded by levees they said, like a cup floating in the midst of water.  If the levees broke there it would be hard to find any place to go.

So we inched along through the night listening to the news.  The radio continued to tell us how high the water was on the lower floor and to speculate that they might need to abandon the radio station.  Finally we reached safety in Colusa and were met by the Red Cross and volunteers and directed to a refugee camp - a Boy Scout meeting place.

Cots were lined up in rows.  Each family took what space they needed in consecutive rows.  We were six by then and with our stuff piled around us we made a recognizable heap.  The Scouts had a Christmas Tree up and we sat and reflected what a strange Christmas this would be.  We wondered what was happening at home.  If our friends were safe.  How long we’d be there.  I remember it was cold inside.  The heater just couldn’t catch up.

It was Christmas Eve.  There was a knock on the door and Santa arrived.  He told the delighted children that he’d heard they weren’t at home and thought he might find them here.  He had packages!  My mother whispered to us to let the little children go for the gifts.  “Little children” included my brother Bob who was maybe 6.  I felt very grown up as I sat back and watched the children have their fun.  They were so relieved.  Bob, who didn’t believe in Santa (none of us did) did believe in getting gifts.  I think he got a metal fire truck.

Dad told us quietly that the people of the town had gone quietly from door to door and collected gifts from under the family’s trees.  Every gift we got was given by another child (or his parents).

In the morning a school bus picked us up and took us to a school for breakfast.  I was old enough to ask who had paid for this.  I had never been on the receiving end of charity before.  I had to think on it because we weren’t poor - not wealthy, but not poor.  Why then did we need charity?  Because it was an uncertain time in our life and we needed the help and kindness of strangers to help us through it.

Floods happen quickly.  When the levee broke, the water spread into the low-lying farm land and through the town of Yuba City.  The damage you suffered kind of mattered where you were when it happened.

Marysville, it turned out, had been saved by the levee breaking below river from the town and we were allowed to go home in the late afternoon.  To do so, we had to go back through Yuba City where you could see where the water had been - and where it still was.

Marysville looked just the same.  Our tree was there with all the wrapped packages.  We were warm and dry.  But we were changed.

That evening we went to church for Christmas Eve services.  My Dad, being the Pastor, thought he should be there in case anyone came.  So there was our family bravely singing Christmas carols.  People began to trickle in, not a lot of people, but some.  They too had been drawn to church.  I remember that Christmas Eve.

Later as things came into perspective, our church became a place where you could come to get clothing and extra food.  Most needed were baby diapers.  The home church had diverted some barrels of clothing meant for China to our church.  We got to see what it looked like when you opened the barrels of gifts.  Hats, high heels, dress gloves, lots of silly things.  But also clothing, especially baby clothing, blankets and towels.  I think we gave away clothing for two weeks or more.

People had died in that flood and my Dad was busy helping the survivors.  I went with him sometimes to look at homes that had been flooded and were now being aired out and allowed to dry.  Because the flood had come and gone fairly quickly, most of the buildings could be repaired.  It STUNK!  There is nothing like the smell of a flooded house.  It smells sooo bad.

I was in the area a few months ago.  It looks a lot the way it did when our family lived there.  Farm towns tend not to change a lot.  The land and the people have healed.

But I remember that Christmas.

Marilynne 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS