Hurricane Carol 50th Anniversary Transcript of Part 2
Lynn:
… So we had absolutely no opportunity to see anything as far as TV was concerned. We got most of the information we had from radio. Well, they didn’t have any really startling news approaches at that time, but the radio did say that it was quite a storm coming up the coast, we may get 50 mile an hour winds. So before I went to work, we went out, Sue and I went out together-
Sue:
About 6:00 in the morning.
Lynn:
… And I let out the lines on the sailboats and tied up the rowboats very, very tightly. Probably saved her life because what happened was then I went to work in Providence and she called me about 10 o’clock, I guess, and said, “Hey, there’s a terrible storm going on down here. You better come home.”
Sue:
I’ve been down trying to untie the boat to go rescue the two sailboats of our brother, Tom for hours. I never dreamed, it would’ve been impossible, that I untied that and gone, I would come with the boats.
Interviewer:
You were going to go alone out there?
Sue:
I’m sure that I would not have survived.
Lynn:
Yeah.
Sue:
Really tragic. But it was lucky that I didn’t-
Lynn:
It was lucky that I’d tied them up to the point where she couldn’t untie them, untie the knots. So anyhow, then I got home around noontime and we shipped the kids up the street, our three youngsters-
Sue:
Let me interrupt.
Lynn:
Okay, you tell her.
Sue:
Because I call my sister-in-law [inaudible 00:01:35] and said, “Your boat is going, my boat is going and I can’t untie the rope to go get them.” She said, “Let the damn [inaudible boats go.” And she came down and picked up my three children, one and four and six that were sitting by the fireplace fire. I was hauling boats, debris up from the moment that we went out. I was in the house only to get the kids out. And then of course the sour gas packs up because the water is coming up and I couldn’t stay in the house and people would come and say, “What are you going to save, with the house?” And I didn’t know, it was dark in the house, the sour gas and I don’t know where I would’ve put them at that time anyway, because I didn’t have the car and-
Interviewer:
Where was your house?
Sue:
A little house right up there. Three houses-
Lynn:
Two houses up there.
Interviewer:
So you saw the water coming up the Paquachuck-
Lynn:
Not only saw the water, you could feel the water coming up and then it finally came in and flooded the basement.
Sue:
Yeah, it did. But while I was out there trying to save things, the Nadles had a guest house, the Periwinkle Inn, 30 foot long, right on our property and it started moving back and forth like this and I thought, oh-
Lynn:
Floating up.
Sue:
It’s going to ram the little…
Interviewer:
And when did it occur to you to come home, Lynn?
Lynn:
Well, as soon as I got her message, I immediately left Providence-
Sue:
It took you two hours to get home.
Lynn:
It took me two hours because I couldn’t come down main road. The trees were across the road. The telephone poles were going like that. I finally got down Drift Road, went around a couple of trees and what have you, and got here about noontime.
Interviewer:
That was the thick of it then.
Sue:
That was the eye of the storm.
Lynn:
Yeah. The water began coming in this way because the wind was coming from the west and the tide was about 10 feet over high tide, full moon tide. It hit on a full moon tide, which is just the wrong time to hit. And the sailboats were pulling their moorings for the very simple reason that as they got to the end of their moorings, while they were pulling their anchors up and floating down the river towards the bridge. The bridge at that time was right up over here, wasn’t this one. And they then smashed up against the old bridge and they also caught other boats as they came sailing down, the larger ones would tangle up the anchor lines and pulled a lot of small boats over and smashed them up against the bridge.
Interviewer:
And Sue, you’re watching, you did lose your boats, did you lose house and you’re watching all these boats-
Sue:
All this time, from 6:00 in the morning until [inaudible 00:04:37].
Lynn:
We had a sailboat that we’d worked like the devil on for about two months trying to get it, we just bought it, it was a wooden boat. We got it in the water the 1st of August and the hurricane took it out the 31st. Put the mast right through the bottom, upside down. It was a mess.
Interviewer:
You weren’t laughing then?
Lynn:
No, we were not. So we, as far as boats were concerned, we ended up with no boats. And I think we finally got the rowboat. I don’t remember what happened to it, but we finally got it.
Sue:
We had all sorts of boats with other people.
Lynn:
Oh, yeah.
Sue:
The Paquachuck Inn where you have the [inaudible 00:05:29].
Speaker 4:
Go back to [inaudible 00:05:29].
Lynn:
So anyhow, then as the eye of the storm went by, the winds reversed themselves 180 degrees and went roaring out. They took this porch off of the Paquachuck, moved the, I should have said that when the wind came the other way, there was a restaurant right out here where the parking lot is and it ended up right out there on the marsh. And they then went out and rescued the man. I’m sure they told you all about that.
Interviewer:
We’ve heard the odyssey of Laura’s, yeah.
Lynn:
And then when the winds changed, came back 180 degrees, the water went and roaring out and took the porch off and moved the Leach’s boat house, which had drifted across the road, moved it right almost back to where it had been. It wasn’t on a foundation, it was just on post. So once it got back over there, it kind of settled down. But the after effects of it going back out I think were as destructive as the incoming.
Interviewer:
That must’ve been as frightening as watching it come in, watching it-
Lynn:
Oh yes it was because it went roaring out and the wind was just as high. When the eye of the storm passed, it settled down, it was very close. We were exactly in the eye of the storm but the wind slowed down tremendously and then picked up again as the eye went on by and came from the completely opposite direction and the water went roaring out right through here and-
Sue:
It flooded our basement. It just came up to the back door and I thought, uh-oh, this is it. And then fortunately it [inaudible 00:07:19].
Interviewer:
Did it shake? Did the house shake or…
Lynn:
No, the house didn’t shake but the basement-
Sue:
If it did, I wasn’t in it to feel it.
Lynn:
The basement filled up and it was a terrible mess in the basement-
Sue:
The fire department came and bailed it I mean pumped it out.
Lynn:
The fire department pumped it out.
Sue:
They also pumped out the [inaudible 00:07:38] well, which was a mistake because it brought salt water in. Then they had to pipe into our [inaudible 00:07:46].
Speaker 4:
Great witch.
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:08:03] hopefully we can do the Devil’s Pocket maybe in the fall, which deals with [inaudible 00:08:14] and stuff like that. And I know some people have asked to maybe be able to go through this stuff and look at the computer stuff. What do you call them?
Speaker 6:
The PowerPoint.
Susie:
Here she is.
Speaker 5:
The PowerPoint. Where’s Brenda? Come over here. I’ve already talked them into coming back for a PowerPoint presentation on the hurricane, kind of a smaller group in the fall and maybe doing the Devil’s Pocket, which is the [inaudible 00:08:44]. We’ll do it here. But anyway, thanks again, Brenda for having us all over. And like I said, we can’t have a party unless we have people show up and all showed up. Anyway, Beverly Shook’s here, Beverly and Mike Cushing did… Beverly, get up and take a bow here. Beverly, she used to be Channel 10 and CNN News [inaudible 00:09:12] Mike Cushing did the video over there with kind of the glasses on. I won’t say anything else.
And at any rate, hopefully with all the pictures that we’ve gotten, Brenda scanned a lot of these 54 hurricane things. We’ve got 38 hurricane things. You want to feed this all into Allie’s memory lane plus the West Point Historical Society. With computers and everything now you can put all this stuff on and the photographs don’t go bad and it’s the history of the town and Allie’s really love this town and when you walk around the store you can see it and hopefully we can add a few pictures to it. Right, Brenda?
Brenda:
Right.
Speaker 5:
So anyway, without going any further, I want to introduce Roger’s system. This is going to be an informal thing. Roger Broadcast live from here in 1954. For what radio station?
Roger:
W-A-L-E.
Speaker 5:
Come over here, Roger. I know Roger’s sons are Lincoln, Jay, right?
Roger:
Yeah. And Greg.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. And Greg also. He’s here tonight.
Speaker 11:
Greg is there.
Speaker 12:
Greg’s here.
Roger:
Greg, Joshua, Christine, Gregory and Lincoln.
Speaker 5:
God, you got a fleet of them. He’s got a fleet of then. But Roger, most people didn’t know we’re having a hurricane until about 7:30 in the morning. When did you find out you were having a hurricane?
Roger:
10 o’clock.
Speaker 5:
Look over this way here. Huh? 10 o’clock in the morning?
Roger:
Yeah.
Speaker 5:
And so what did you do? Grab the family and come down here?
Roger:
Yeah. I’ll start from the beginning.
Speaker 5:
Go ahead, let it [inaudible 00:10:37].
Roger:
The thing is, if I’m surrounded by a bunch of Yankees down here, [inaudible 00:10:41] I don’t feel [inaudible 00:10:46]. I feel right at home, my name is [inaudible 00:10:50] but I’m not a Yankee. And I’m a Republican. And I wish I was in New York City right now.
Speaker 5:
But we got to tell them about the hurricane. You come down here.
Roger:
But vote Republican, will you?
Speaker 5:
Thanks for coming, WALE or whatever it was.
Speaker 6:
I told George Bush, I had to mention this.
Speaker 5:
George, you got it.
Speaker 6:
My brother, George and I own WALE in Fall River. A lot of you folks possibly remember it. A lot of you people might not. But we had this station for about three years. It started in ’45, I’m thinking about it, ’46 or seven. I know. Anyway, we were working like hell trying to get situated. There’s no TV at that time. And we were working like dickheads because we were against a radio station called WSAR that was very [inaudible 00:12:00] in the public and we had to do things that other stations wouldn’t do just to get a name for ourselves.
So we used to broadcast whatever chance we got and I didn’t have any time off except one day and that was the day of the hurricane. We had a cottage down on the West Beach, right on the water. And my wife Jackie, who’s right over there. Where are you Jack? I don’t want to get home and get the kids ready for school, she was pregnant at the time, seventh pregnancy. And we had the other five. One was Gregory, he’s around here someplace. He was a year old-
Speaker 13:
He’s still tied to the bed.
Speaker 6:
… And some guy lived next to us, said, “Listen, I’ve been here a long time, you’re going to get out of here.” So we get in the car with all the paraphernalia, back to school stuff and started to drive away and the dog was sitting there and Jackie said to me, “Oh, we got to take the dog.” So all of us are in a car and we came across the bridge and including the dog, we came across the bridge right by Paquachuck and it was pouring rats, terrible. And I said, “I got to make a report to the radio station.” “Oh, for God’s sakes, Roger.” “I’ll only be a minute. I’ll just make a fast shot so we can travel on.” So we decided, the water wasn’t up at that time, “All right, we’ll go in and have a chowder or something,” and nobody was in there, nobody. I forget her last name.
Speaker 5:
Reese. Reese George.
Speaker 6:
She said, “Oh, all right, I’ll make some chowder for the kids.” And the first thing I know, we saw the [inaudible 00:14:11] building, I don’t know who owns it now. We saw it float away.
Speaker 5:
Right by the [inaudible 00:14:19] here.
Speaker 13:
Right over the greenhouse.
Roger:
And next thing you know it was Laura’s restaurant and there’s two guys in there, what do you call that? Over the top.
Speaker 14:
Skylight.
Roger:
The Skylight. And two guys came out. I saw the thing going down the hill.
Speaker 5:
That way, going [inaudible 00:14:42].
Roger:
And not only the two guys but rats are coming out too. Then I knew we were in trouble because the water was coming down here. Something fierce. I couldn’t get across. I have to swim to get over to that house over there.
Speaker 5:
It’s called the Velocity Zone.
Roger:
All right. We were stuck here. So we had Greg, he’s only a year and a half, maybe a year, and we tied him, there was two other guys and we tied Greg to a bed post. And I came down here. Now you remember anybody that knows this place, there’s a beautiful bar there, right there. All the bottles were up on there and I was telling it was this deep in the water and I don’t know what the hell I was doing down here [inaudible 00:15:35]. You can see these bottles go by… I couldn’t get drunk because I was scared to death. [Inaudible 00:15:56]. By this time Jackie was getting so nervous about it and then we didn’t know what to do. We just stayed right here. We went up to the second floor and waited. And the first thing I know, everything dropped down. So I’m going to tell you, I had an experience in the Paquachuck Inn that nobody else has had.
Speaker 5:
Did you tell this on the radio?
Roger:
Yes, I did.
Speaker 5:
How did you do that? On the telephone or…
Roger:
Oh no, I didn’t broadcast it.
Speaker 5:
Oh, you did. He broadcast live from here [inaudible 00:16:42].
Roger:
No.
Speaker 5:
No?
Roger:
No. By telephone. We didn’t have-
Speaker 5:
Oh, okay. You on the telephone.
Roger:
Listen, don’t forget this. It’s before your time.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. [Inaudible 00:16:56] ’83, right?
Roger:
Before your time, hardly any TV, it just started. So it was a great catch to do that show from here and it’s been in people’s mind for years since then. The guy was down there, crazy guy with all the kids [inaudible 00:17:12] probably Paquachuck Inn. Everybody would call and say, “How do you spell it?” I said, “I don’t know.” I’ll give somebody a dollar if they can tell me how you spell Paquachuck.
Speaker 5:
I lost already.
Speaker 15:
P-A-Q-U-A-C-H-U-C-K.
Speaker 5:
All right. You win.
Roger:
Thank you very much.
Speaker 5:
Thank you very much, Roger.
Speaker 16:
Whoo.
Speaker 5:
Thank you very much for bringing Roger down here and going through this with us. [Inaudible 00:17:50]. Thank you, Roger.
President of Tripp’s Boatyard. For those who don’t know, George Owens is a school teacher, lives over at Masquesatch and whose uncle Ed Yeomans had a boat called the Amberjack, beautiful sailboat. And George and Bill have two stories to tell about being over in the boatyard and up in the dunes and how they got there, I’m not sure, but they can tell you. So Bill, you want to start off? Bill and Howie Giffen, my cousin who’s up in Maine, wished he could be here but he can’t.
Bill:
Oh yes, that’s right. He was there.
Speaker 5:
But Bill and Howie and Charlie maybe who’s deceased now, Charlie, they were with the boat and I guess they didn’t know how bad it was going to be and they ended up running for their lives probably. So Bill, why don’t you pick it up?
Bill:
Oh, something like that. Yeah, it was kind of a bad day, right? The water [inaudible 00:18:48] we kept going further in. We ended up right behind the dunes.
Speaker 5:
On the north side of the dunes.
Bill:
Yeah. We were on the [inaudible 00:18:56] side [inaudible 00:18:58] didn’t make much of a difference.
Speaker 5:
Probably thought you were in the desert the the sand dune.
Bill:
[Inaudible 00:19:02] the sandstorm was [inaudible 00:19:10] and I remember looking over the dunes to see if I could see what was happening in the water and you didn’t see anything but sand, sand in your eyes I would say.
Speaker 5:
Now how many folks, Bill, were on [inaudible 00:19:17]? 20? 30?
Bill:
Oh, I’m sure there were probably at least [inaudible 00:19:26], I don’t really remember, but they were on it when we left, but there weren’t quite as many on it [inaudible 00:19:29].
Speaker 5:
And I think you told me, Bill, that there was many as what, 20 or 30 people up in the dunes?
Bill:
Oh, yeah. There were a whole bunch of people in the [inaudible 00:19:36].
George:
That’s right. I was there.
Bill:
There were men, women, children.
Speaker 5:
George, pick to up.
Bill:
Who else? Who was there, George? I’m sure [inaudible 00:19:42].
George:
My uncle was there and my cousin-
Bill:
Your uncle, Ed Jones.
George:
That’s right. [Inaudible 00:19:49] was he there?
Speaker 5:
And Tommy Owens?
George:
Right.
Speaker 5:
George, give us your recollection. How’d you end up there? You were 14 at the time.
George:
That was a long time ago.
Speaker 5:
He was 14 but you should have a sharp memory.
George:
My uncle picked me up about six o’clock in the morning or 7:30 in the morning and said, “We’re going to go watch the Amberjack, make sure she’s all right.” So we went across the bridge, we went up the road, go to the boatyard, and all of a sudden all hell broke loose and jumped in and went up into the dunes and buried ourselves a little bit. And my uncle said, “You got nothing to worry about.” So I said, “All right.”
Speaker 5:
George was [Inaudible 00:20:33].
George:
So we rode it out there. Then we came back in front of Tripp’s main shop there. There was an old Volvo sitting in there. They floated up and we opened up the hood and there were about three or four crabs sitting on top of the engine. Remember that one?
Bill:
You’re right.
George:
And then the only surviving boat at that time was the Windsong, Charlie Lawrence’s boat, which didn’t have an engine in it. He used to come into the harbor and moor outside the mouth waiting for the tide to turn and then it would drift in. That was the only surviving boat. The Amberjack went up to West River luckily, ended up by [inaudible 00:21:10] Lane and later on they got her tarp and hauled her back again. And my uncle got a letter just before he passed away that he sold the Amberjack to somebody down in Florida and the only thing left with him was the mast and he could come down to get the mast if he wanted it. The [inaudible 00:21:27] two years and that’s a beautiful boat.
Speaker 5:
What about the Jane, Jack Brighton from the bank, BMC [inaudible 00:21:35] I guess it was. “Bring more cash,” they used to say. Anyway, Bob and Don around here. I wish they were here, but Jack Brighton’s dad, Jack C. Yeah, he’ll be back hopefully. It was a beautiful schooner. She was a schooner. It was called a Jane and she was on a mooring out here and she got caught and she went up and she hit the old wooden bridge and I think Paul DeNatale’s probably got a photograph in his place of business up there that shows the mast of the Jane and the bridge here during the height of the storm and the Jane then she slid back and she went back halfway Shamrock Marine out there. She sat there for a year or two. But did you see the Jane at all? Did you see any of these boats moving off their moors or was there too much sand and rain?
George:
No, we saw them before that.
Bill:
Yeah, we saw some-
George:
Because the wind had changed, remember that?
Bill:
Because I had a boat with the [inaudible 00:22:31] with the Jane, they all went up to the river together, [inaudible 00:22:35] disappeared. The Jane [inaudible 00:22:40] all I found were pieces…
Speaker 5:
All he found was pieces. So anyway, when you got through it, Jim Mullins and his wife Jerry couldn’t be here, but I know Jim told me that Harry Cooper over next to the art club used to have pigs up in the dunes. He had a bunch of rentals and he used to rent out the houses and he had to get rid of the garage, so I guess he had a few pigs up there in the back.
Yeah, he said there were a bunch of them up there running around and about what, 20 or 30 people and the [inaudible 00:23:09].
Speaker 19:
Two [inaudible 00:23:14].
Speaker 5:
No, two pigs and a bunch of people I’ll say. That’s Harry [inaudible 00:23:20] over there and his wife, [inaudible 00:23:22]. But anyway, yeah, Jim told me some funny stories about over there. But at any rate, that was kind of the scene from behind the boat yard and Howie Giffordson ask you when you came back, now mind you, they’re up in the dunes, they’ve gone through the storm. They come back to see what’s left. They get into Tripp’s Boatyard office. Howie says to me, “There’s money floating around in there.” And Bill’s biggest concern was something about a shoe, something for a shoe. What was it, Bill?
Bill:
Well, I think I had a [inaudible 00:23:51] up my shoe and I guess I washed them [inaudible 00:24:01].
Speaker 5:
He had a [inaudible 00:24:01] in his shoe and he didn’t care about the money, didn’t care about ports. All he wanted do was buy the [inaudible 00:24:01] for a shoe.
Bill:
I think I lost my shoes too.
Speaker 5:
Oh, did you? Well, anyway. Well, thanks a lot and thanks for coming and we’ll get somebody else. [Inaudible 00:24:14], how about Q? [inaudible 00:24:15] come on up here.
Speaker 20:
I’m sorry, but this is [inaudible 00:24:26]. It happened 50 years ago.
Speaker 5:
Okay. This is [Inaudible 00:24:27] for those that don’t know him. And [Inaudible 00:24:30] has pictures here and I’m going to let him talk. I think you were over kind of like where Walter Quinn Shamrock was on Cherry Web Lanes, is that correct? And Bill Healy had a seaplane base there then?
Speaker 20:
Yeah. He wasn’t there then. We used it.
Speaker 5:
You used it. So I’m going to let [Inaudible 00:24:48] pick up here and tell you what happened to him during the ’54 Hurricane Carol. Go ahead, Q.
Speaker 20:
Okay, mine doesn’t have any funny parts, so don’t be prepared to laugh. My father called me at 5:00 in the morning, said that he understood the weather report that it was supposed to blow 55 Northeast and shouldn’t we go down and fill the floats on the sea plane with water to hold it down? I owned a seaplane where Walter Quinn lives today with three other fellows. So I called two of the guys that owned it with me and we all met down there. My father with his pickup truck, me with my 49 Chevy and the other two guys in one of their cars. We spent quite a while filling the floats of water using the five gallon can.
It would probably hold maybe three, 400 gallons in each float, which was enough to hold the plane down in a good blow. And we got that done and our surface boat was on a mooring out in front and we just took a look and it’s okay, we were going to come home. We started out in those days it was tearing Web Lanes, that road. And as we got near to what is today the [inaudible 00:26:14] building, the water was too deep, the engines are going to be underwater. We still didn’t know there was a hurricane coming. So we backed up and got back near Walter Quinn’s house and drove as far as we could up into the dunes.
The other two cars got up ahead of me and I was last in line, which meant that my car was underwater before the trip was over and the wind was blowing well over a hundred miles an hour out of the east. And we were on the west side of Walter’s house. I’ve forgotten who owned it in those days.
Speaker 5:
John Bacon probably.
Speaker 20:
I don’t know. Anyway, just peeking around the corner was really terrific because the sand was blowing so strong and hard that it would almost cut your skin. So we had to watch things that happened in front of us. We saw the Jane go up and go into the bridge and then as she turned around and came back downward a little ways and then we saw a huge [inaudible 00:27:22] floating up the river and it cut our mooring line off on our boat. The wind is blowing from the east at a hundred miles an hour, you’ll understand, over a hundred miles an hour. And yet the current was so strong that our boat went up river doing about 20 knots and it hit the granite pier that held the draw, the draw bridge.
Speaker 5:
Little wooden bridge out here.
Speaker 20:
And it was as if a case of dynamite had gone off inside of it. It just, boom and pieces went flying in all directions. I couldn’t believe a boat could break up so quickly. Anyway, that happened to our boat. Meanwhile, the Broadbill was on mooring out in front of us with Eddie Crow, and George Vinson on board. And after Eddie saw our boat go, I guess he decided, “I got to do something. We can’t stay out here.” He started his engine up, which is a Detroit Diesel 671. And with that engine going wide open, you could hear it roaring. George could not undo the mooring line because it’s so tight. So he went below and got a hatchet. He came up and he chopped the mooring line off.
Well my brother-in-law and I decided that naturally they’re going try to come in here. We better see if we can’t do something to help him out. So we put on life jackets and meanwhile Eddie was working the boat. He was going backwards, but he was also coming to shore. And we put our life jackets on and felt we could get over to a telephone pole, which it looks as though it’s where is coming in. We can get a line in from him and tie it to the pole. The peculiar thing was that out in the river, that current had to be doing I would say 20 knots. But in Cherry Webb Lane, there was no movement at all. We just paddled across. And by the way, we didn’t touch bottom. We were floating all the way.
And we got to the other side and sure enough, the Broadbill came in right alongside that telephone pole and George Keith was aligned to us and we put it on a pole and got that made fast and Eddie decided, he told me afterwards, and it was obvious that he would stay on board and when the current started to go down or the tide started to go down he would get out-
Roger:
[Inaudible 00:29:43] and between the rain and the wind and everything, it parted the bow line and boat was only two years old. So anyway, away she went. So we started looking for her two or three days later and somebody found the bow. The boat was 14 feet longer. I think it was six or seven feet of the bow up in Wardell’s Peach Rocket-
Speaker 5:
Where was that?
Speaker 22:
It’s right across from where we live.
Roger:
Yeah. Found the stern almost up to Adams.
Speaker 22:
This is Roger’s 2-year-old boat that they borrowed.
Roger:
Anyway, old Roger Hat, I gave him the bow and he saw it off square and he nailed a stern on it and Sweet Pea and him lived over the beach in the little pond behind the house and he rode it around…
Speaker 5:
In the pond. What about Roger? I don’t know if you’ve got anybody here. I think Walter Vincent went back home. And is Billy Hatch still here? Is Billy here?
Speaker 23:
Billy?
Speaker 5:
Billy [inaudible 00:31:04] and I know they gave an interview to Beverly and Mike over on the causeway banning the cars and stuff. Walter Vincent?
Beverly:
Yeah.
Speaker 5:
And anyway, Roger, you got a story about, mind you now during the thing, there was a colony of people, I want to call it a colony. It was a village over on Gooseberry. Quonset huts. And we are dying to find-
Roger:
Young girls.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, young girls. Barroom over there. There was a barroom over there too, Roger. Nick the Greek had a place. Yeah, Nick the Greek had a place, but at any rate, there was a village over there and a distant cousin of mine, Henry Plant’s daughter, she had pictures of it and we got to dig these pictures out, but if anybody has pictures of Gooseberry, the Quonset huts, the military had an installation out there where they [inaudible 00:31:56] submarine cable. We’re looking for pictures.
Speaker 25:
I think Russell got some.
Speaker 5:
We’re looking for pictures of that. But at any rate, there was a whole village of people out there and they got caught out there in the hurricane. And Roger, you ended up over there-
Roger:
No, no…
Speaker 5:
Tell us what you were doing over there and why you were…
Roger:
A swordfish was on Bob [inaudible 00:32:19] boat, an RS and we were going to go out the day before, but there was sea yard, but there was no wind. So we turned around, we came back in and tied her up and well maybe we’ll go tomorrow or the next day so George Vincent and I stayed aboard that night, the night before the hurricane. So the next morning we got up, we turned the weather on, the weather you can only get it twice a day. We had the weather on at 6:20. They said, “Nah, there ain’t going to be no hurricane. Probably be a little breeze of wind.”
I had a ’37 Ford sedan that bought up at [inaudible 00:32:57] very long. I drove over to the [inaudible 00:33:01], Shirley’s husband, Manchester, and Jeff Wilkinson. “Let’s take a ride over the beach, see if there’s any sea on.” So we went over to Allen’s parking lot and it was blowing pretty hard. But then we stayed there. I don’t know what the hell we was thinking about. We stayed there.
Jeff would say, “Jesus Christ, that one broke over the telephone wires.” He said, “Well, maybe we better get out of here.” So went to start her up, and in them days the side through the hood you could take them off and just have the top out on. Anyway, the engine got wet so we couldn’t get her going so we pushed it around a little, around, let’s face to the southwest. So we pushed it around, we got it around. Wind was coming from the southwest and we had big doors on it. So we had both doors open and we didn’t, enough wind so that it was [inaudible 00:33:56] up to the corner there to go [inaudible 00:34:03].
Speaker 5:
Went [inaudible 00:34:07] southeast, went down by Sandy’s.
Roger:
We lost the wind on one door. So they got in the car raining like hell and we ducked out the window and it was a back window and there was a milk truck coming in. So we pushed it, we got it right in the middle of the road so we wouldn’t let him by. We made him push it, so he was starting to panic or something because he knew what was going on. So he pushed us, once in a while he tried to get slack off and try to go around his, but we’d just pull right in front of him.
He took us all away to, you know the midway where the first parking lots were? Then he’d give us a [inaudible 00:34:47] shove, let off and we went on [inaudible 00:34:48]. And we got her going. And then we came over West Beach and pulled up in here. And then we made the corner there by Henry Plants and I was going 15, 20 miles an hour. She got rolled up a little bit and we noticed that she lost oil pressure.
So Allen first had a [inaudible 00:35:11] station over there and he used to save me drain oil for people that changed the oil regularly. “Send Jeff Wilkinson in. Tell Allen we going to have two or three quarters of [inaudible 00:35:24]. He wouldn’t give us no oil. We came across maybe 20 minutes or… There was no water, but I’d say 20 minutes maybe before that other car, McClary, he was working that-
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:35:41].
Roger:
No, the [inaudible 00:35:40]. That’s mine.
Speaker 5:
So anyway [inaudible 00:36:01].
Roger:
[Inaudible 00:35:50].
Speaker 5:
Yes. Thanks. Roger. One fella that was hoping to get here, he’s in his eighties now. We used to call, I don’t know his real name, we call him [inaudible 00:36:06]. He lives over on first street near Walter Vincent. And he spent, believe it or not, some people on Gooseberry, the ’54 hurricane could not get off the island. And they spent it in the tower, which you see is the tower out there, it had stairs by the way.
And I can’t imagine what the view was like up there, but they spent the hurricane in the tower. We got some other people, get some stories. Norma, would you like to talk? Norma Jackson. [Inaudible 00:36:36] Bridge was here and this complex was on the east side of the bridge on the southeast corner over there. It all went up the East River. This new bridge wasn’t here then. And it went up and landed up on the Ashley Delano, what you’d call Delano today, property north of Masquesatch. Right, Norma?
Norma:
Yeah. It was a hundred feet long. It was quite a big building. But anyway, this is what was left. This was the Moby Dick restaurant and this was the dining room. And this is my second shop over here. Okay.
Susie:
And that was in ’55?
Norma:
That was in 19… Did I get ahead of my [inaudible 00:37:17]? Oh, okay.
Speaker 5:
That was 1955.
Norma:
- And this is the way it all ended up. The golf station came from over here and became the [inaudible 00:37:26] the Moby Dick restaurant.
Speaker 5:
This gets convoluted.
Norma:
Yeah. Here’s the third Moby Dick shop. 1, 2, 3. Three [inaudible 00:37:38].
Speaker 5:
This is the parking lot.
Norma:
Yeah, this is on the Big Rock right in the middle of the Back Eddy’s parking lot.
Speaker 5:
People that don’t know right now where the Back Eddy is, their parking lot, there’s a big rock. And her shop sat on top of it. Right, Norma?
Norma:
Yeah. There it was. And then over here we have the sandwich shop, the three wooden buildings which have since burned. They were burned and then put up what? Cement blocks, cement-
Speaker 5:
Yeah. Right.
Norma:
But that’s the way it ended up when my dad stopped moving things around. Ultimately this building was moved over the bridge up to Central Village and became Silas Brown.
Speaker 5:
Right.
Norma:
So all of sudden I got some of my father’s moving genes. I kept [inaudible 00:38:24] but they served me very well and-
Speaker 5:
Where were you during the hurricane?
Norma:
Oh, I was right here
Speaker 5:
At the Paquachuck.
Norma:
Oh yeah, I was right on the edge.
Speaker 5:
Really?
Norma:
Yeah. [Inaudible 00:38:34]. So anyway, that’s my story. It was a very sad day for our family. My dad was up in John Kinney’s house. He was sitting there. Someone said the Moby Dick is gone because you couldn’t see across the river in the [inaudible 00:38:48] storm. And I walked up, I ran right up to see him and he cried too. Tears were coming down his face when he knew what had happened. His life just suddenly blown up in his face. But anyway, he recovered and I recovered and everything turned out okay.
Speaker 5:
And then the state came and bought the whole thing.
Norma:
Yeah, the state took over-
Speaker 5:
This isn’t bad of a hurricane. Then the state comes and buys the whole thing. Right?
Norma:
Yeah.
Speaker 5:
And he came over and he talked to my dad and he ended up buying the property where the Moby Dick is now.
Norma:
If it hadn’t been for Milton [inaudible 00:39:21] and his compassion, we wouldn’t have had any place to set up again. And it was your dad’s goodness that [inaudible 00:39:29].
Speaker 5:
Wow. But a lot of people, they got thrown out by the state and they all hopped over the road there. Thanks, Norma.
Norma:
Okay, that’s my story.
Speaker 5:
I remember the little bait shop. We got a movie of it somewhere, but the bait shop that her dad built, my brother Deacon and Manny Costa spent a whole winter building 15 skiffs for your father, Norma and Shorty Leach over here at Leach’s used to rent out skiffs in those days. And Kathy Judson decided he wanted to rent them out. He built a dock out. There’s a whole little village over here, just the other side of the bridge. And I used to little [inaudible 00:40:05] newspapers there when I was about 10 or 11 years old. And I can remember [inaudible 00:40:09] fishing n May, June off that pier that her dad built and you get white [inaudible 00:40:14] out there. It was good fishing. But anyway, thanks, Norma. Norma’s got a picture here. If anybody wants to see it.
Norma:
I can pass this. There’s the building in the middle of the [inaudible 00:40:24].
Speaker 5:
It’s a hundred feet of building floating up the river.
Norma:
You can pass that.
Speaker 5:
Just went off, up the road. Anyway, so we kind of had a taste of along the beach over at Gooseberry, folks on the mornings out here, Mike McCarthy’s here. Mike, why don’t you come on up here a minute. Mike lived across the street here and at Leach’s over here, what we call Shorty’s, what I call Shorty’s when I was a kid. And Michael, tell us what your relationship is to Shorty and what you were doing when you were 12 years old.
Mike:
Well, my mother and father were very good friends with Shorty and his wife and Mrs. Leach, better known as KH, was a sickly woman. And my mother took care of her forever because we lived in the same house. So when Shorty and his wife moved down here in the springtime and didn’t come back to the fall, summertime when I got out of school, sister and I, all four of us came down here and lived in the upper apartment in the back of the Wafflehouse. There’s four apartments in the house.
So I was very, very fortunate to grow up as a young kid in Westport Point. I mean there was no such thing as hanging out on the corner because Shorty Leach would give you enough work at four o’clock in the morning for two days. He’d come back at 10 o’clock and want to know if it was done yet. Now he didn’t do that once, he’d do that two or three times during the day, wanted to know what took you so long. But he slept about three hours a day himself.
So anyway, Hurricane Carol, 1954. I’m ready to come downstairs in the morning. I’ve been working at that for two hours because my mother say, “Well don’t go down here. It’s too early. It’s too early.” So I come downstairs and the television’s on and what’s on was the Today Show at nine o’clock in the morning with Dave Garroway.
Dave Garrowway was saying that the storm was going to hit at 55 miles an hour at Long Island, three o’clock in the afternoon. Well, it’s blowing 40 miles an hour then right here and raining so hard like you were saying, [Inaudible 00:42:29]. It’s raining sideways. It’s not raining up and down, it’s right sideways. So George is getting everything together to move out of the house. You can’t do anything in the middle of the storm except just gather everybody together and clothes and whatever.
When I walked out of the house, probably 10 o’clock in the morning, plus I was 12, the water was to my knees in the driveway. That’s right across the street here. We went up the road here to, which was Dr. Fells at the time, and then it was [inaudible 00:43:02] son-in-law, you said his name earlier, had that [inaudible 00:43:05].
Speaker 5:
George [inaudible 00:43:06].
Mike:
George [inaudible 00:43:07] owned the house. Bill White lived in the same complex-
Speaker 5:
John Kenny’s house.
Mike:
John Kenny’s house. That’s the house.
Speaker 5:
Just inside, Susie, [inaudible 00:43:19] and John Long’s house.
Mike:
The water came up to the porch of that house. Right across the street was Paul DeNatale’s house. The gas tanks, the hundred pound propane tanks came off Paul’s house. They were dancing around on the street, shooting out gas. But I watched this building across the road, which is 34 foot square, bore right through this hole and it never hit anything. Now Shorty Leach if he had an anchor on the rope, he could have stopped it, but of course you never have what you need at the right time. But just throwing one through the window, it landed up in Little Ratmos yard up the road here.
On the grass, there’s a picture of that up here that I’ve seen. All the windows and doors worked. Building wasn’t hurt, floated away like a boat. Now the only problem with getting it back down to Westport Point is the road’s 26-foot wide. So they had to cut the building in half. They cut the 10-foot off this north section of the road and brought it down in two pieces. We were back in business or back in business 11 days after the storm. It took about 18 days to get electricity. It was quick. George did everything very fast. If you knew Shorty, he made a decision and he did it. But the house was not as wrecked as bad as it was in ’38. This end was blown out. There was no wall on this east side. The other side, all the windows were gone.
But the devastation to my life as a 12-year-old was a disaster because it was everything that I enjoyed as a young kid. And I watched a man put all the pieces back together. Now what that does for you is give you a work ethic that you carry through the rest of your life. Same way as your dad did. Put his business back together a couple of times. But I watched him do it. He did it all along all on his own. He didn’t go out and get any fancy help. Dill Massey, as you probably remember, some of the folks here, Dill Massey was the carpenter here in town, put everything back together. But it devastated me. But I learned right then on the 31st of August, 1954, a couple of things.
I watched the man lose his business. I watched everything I ever liked and loved go away. And also in the afternoon, just like today, at noontime the sun come out. He had a brand new 1954 Chevy pickup. And at that point in time, the north end of a store up here, you could drive down and go through right to Masquesatch and everything from Westport Point, there was no bridge there. Everything ended up in Masquesatch. He taught me how to drive his pickup that day, that afternoon because I knew all the boats and he couldn’t leave it. And I went up with two or three grown men and started pulling boats down.
Well, the end of that story is that in probably October or November of that year, I traded the pickup because it looked like it’d been in a war because I take it down through every trees and piece of brush going down that laneway. But it was quite an experience. And it’s maybe why I fight hurricanes today, I don’t know. But I’ve been the emergency management director here in Westport for the last 20 years working with guys like Richard and a couple of different police chiefs, a couple of different fire chiefs. And we have a good relationship. I think we holler about tremendous respect for each other.
And certainly we’ve done some things like over on East Beach, there’s a hundred trailer sites over there that Tom has the ability to move off without people getting killed and losing their property or without people trying to get back to see what’s left, which after the hurricane there’s not going to be much left but twisted metal anyway. But they want to get back. We have a good relationship with the state, a reservation over here who listen to us. We tell them we wanted to close down and get everybody out of there, they do it. So we’re looking back, but we all look forward. Every year, we have a couple of these storms that make you nervous.
Charlie made me nervous a couple of weeks ago because it’s one of those storms that you don’t know what’s going to happen or it’s going to intensify or it’s going to come at you and hey, it’s great to look at it today. You can look back and say, “Oh that was nothing.” But they always have a perfect vision what the [inaudible 00:47:53]. But that was one of those storms you’re not sure of. I would much rather have a hurricane that’s coming right at me and it’s got 140 mile an hour wind and then I know what to do. We all know what to do.
Speaker 5:
Get your hands in, Frank.
Mike:
Yes and like they say, “It blew so hard I watched the chicken lay the same egg three times.” The problem is that 80% of the people that live in a flood zone have never been through a serious hurricane. And the advantage to that is it’s people like Bill Tripp and [inaudible 00:48:30] McKenberg and Richie Earl and myself that have been through this. Judge, where’d the judge go? Judge went outside. But no, you’ve seen it. You’ve seen it happen. When we talked to these people, people were nuts. Well, it’s only going to be a wind. Let’s have a hurricane party. This is the kind of a hurricane party you should have. There’s no hurricane coming.
The last thing the police need is another drunk on the road. But thank you for coming. Thank you for coming down to this because I don’t think that maybe I’ll be around for the 75th, but I hope…
Speaker 5:
We’ll see. They will shorten it up to 60.
Mike:
Yeah, I’ll probably be sitting in a wheelchair with [inaudible 00:49:12] down my chair. But thank you folks for coming. Certainly I’ve seen some old friends here that I haven’t seen some in 20 or 30 years. Been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 5:
Thanks, Michael. Okay, we got a couple other people out here, Bruce. We call him Bonzo. This is Bruce Bowers. Bruce lived up behind the store, the [inaudible 00:49:39] in the back. And he was a river rat up here. And Bruce, go ahead.
Bruce Bowers:
He made me remember a great little vignette. I was about 13 years old, about the same age. Tell you what this is. I went down to the wharf to see all the action, watch the Laura’s goes away and so forth and I found this, which was the floorboard for my sailboat, which was over Tripp’s boatyard. And I was so disturbed that Bill didn’t secure my boat. So I’m thinking why is this here? So I picked it up and I went back and the boat had sunk. I don’t know why it was sunk. Maybe Bill sunk it.
So I went over and this floorboard was missing. So I kept this in my house, which is still behind the store, the Point store. But the point that I wanted to make, you just brought back great memory. You were talking about going down there with a truck down on Masquesatch with the lane went right by our house and the 13 years old across the street was a guy named Chip Larson and then there was a Frays brothers [inaudible 00:50:45]
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:50:45].
Bruce Bowers:
Yeah. And they live behind your house now we went down in the Masquesatch Meadows as 13, 12 years and somehow there was some rumor that if you were a child and you found a boat you liked, you would put your name on it and it was yours. Go figure. We were wandering around all over Masquesatch for about five, six hours trying to figure out the perfect boat. Do we want a motorboat? Do we want a sailboat? It was the dumbest thing that we’ve ever done. And I bet I put my name on one of the boats that you went down and rescue. We saw the boats coming back and forth. Here’s [inaudible 00:51:24] boat. But that was a great memory. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 5:
Bruce Bowers. His brother, Kenny’s a little bit shorter and I thought maybe Kenny could make it tonight, but I guess he couldn’t. Kenny’s very good at telling stories. He talks about walking in the wind in a hurricane and-
Speaker 29:
He lives in [inaudible 00:51:45]. Too far away.
Speaker 5:
Too far away. He’s too far away. But at any rate, Susie come on up here. Susie Pina. Susie lives just up the street above the high tide line, about four houses up. And it was a high tide line. I had a talk with Sue today and his or other half, John. Hi, John. And Susie and I were talking and-
Susie:
He’s only two.
Speaker 5:
He was only two?
Susie:
He’s only two.
Speaker 5:
You cradle grabber. No, but at any rate, so tell them what you remember about the ’54 hurricane. Susan was six.
Susie:
Yeah, I was six.
Speaker 5:
But she has some vivid memories.
Susie:
These were all my old friends that always took care of me and everything. I lived in the house up at the post office and my grandmother lived in the house down here, four houses up. And she would put the silver on the table in the kitchen and she’d call my mother and say, “It’s there and when the tide gets too high, I’ll call you.” She was going to be too late. But she knew that nothing was going to happen. She’d been through the ’38 hurricane in that house. She felt everything was fine. And my mother took me out in the eye of the storm, she was all probably-
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:53:03].
Susie:
Yeah, at the post office. Took me out the back door and I blew into the next yard, into my grandmother’s yard because the wind was still blowing then, so I went… Well, picked myself up. We put the milk in my grandmother’s house and we came down to see the other grandmother and the silver that was on the table. And at that time, I think it was when they were bringing John Hickey in-
Speaker 5:
Out of Laura’s restaurant.
Susie:
Out of Laura’s because they were all, and I can remember all the picture that you see with all the boys, everybody pulling
Speaker 5:
Bill White, bill White called the
Susie:
And they were all bringing Hickey in but the thing that I was most enthralled with was that the tide had receded and there were all these worms in my grandmother’s yard and I was-
Speaker 5:
All the [inaudible 00:53:59] covered by salt water.
Susie:
It was big suckers. So you were six, I wasn’t 12, I wasn’t allowed to do all these fun things that you other the guys were doing. But it really started to blow on the way back up the street.
Speaker 5:
Those poor worms, the sauce came up in all the backyards and the worms were coming out of the ground.
Susie:
We left my grandmother there and everything was fine, but…
Speaker 5:
Thanks, Su.
Susie:
Thanks.
Speaker 5:
Okay. I don’t know if Herbie Smith’s here. The farmers took a beating in this thing too. And I’m sure the apple trees and the rest of it took a beating. And Bud Smith’s had a bluegrass thing up in Maine this weekend. Herbie was around, I don’t know if he’s still out there-
Speaker 30:
They’ve gone.
Speaker 5:
They’ve gone. But the farmers took a beating in this thing and there’s stories to tell there. Jim? Jim Pierce. Come on up here.
Jim Pearce:
I ain’t got much of a story to tell you about this Hurricane. ’38. I got a good…
Speaker 5:
All right. Jim’s going to talk about the ’38. Hurricane. Jim lives a little bit inland-
Jim Pearce:
I’ll tell you about the [inaudible 00:55:00], I have my skiff.
Speaker 5:
Turn around here Jim so they can hear you.
Jim Pearce:
Down in Leach Walk.
Speaker 5:
And which storm is this?
Jim Pearce:
Carol.
Speaker 5:
Hurricane Carol. Jim’s got a skiff down here at Leach Walk.
Jim Pearce:
So me and Ginger bought up there across from where I live now-
Speaker 5:
North at Hicks Bridge on the east side of the river.
Jim Pearce:
Right. It has Allen’s Creek on one side and then we had a creek on the other side, which never had a name. So during the storm we had to shingle the barn and the house and fix everything up outside. So the storm is coming there, but we’re behind that hill, you know where Stewie’s [inaudible 00:55:46] was. We were right behind it so we didn’t get the full blast of the wind. But the tide kept coming up, coming up and there’s a pond right in the back of the house there over about two or 300 yards. And the muskrats had four houses in it. So the tide kept coming up. Coming up, fully sold. It was muskrats going this way, swimming on the field there.
Speaker 5:
Muskrats.
Jim Pearce:
[Inaudible 00:56:19] always had the greatest time watching that.
Speaker 5:
Tell Charlie over there, he wants to hear this.
Jim Pearce:
So anyway, the tide kept coming up and filled the barn cellar up, and then it filled the pond up that was there and then started to come towards the lighthouse, in the cellar. And the muskrats just running around in the field there, in the water, when you get to the water. [Inaudible 00:56:48], “We got to do something because we’re going to have a cellar full of water.” So we went out in the bind and we got two shovels and we shovel in the trench there making a little dam and all of a sudden, [inaudible 00:57:01] went right out. Just [inaudible 00:57:06].
Speaker 5:
You’re lucked out.
Jim Pearce:
Yep. We had a good time watching the muskrats.
Speaker 5:
What about you? You remember anything?
Jim Pearce:
There was nothing.
Speaker 5:
Nothing too bad.
Jim Pearce:
Nothing damaged. No damage.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. So you were like five miles up the road. What a difference five miles can make?
Jim Pearce:
The skiff I had down there at Lee’s went up with the [inaudible 00:57:27] and come back the rest [inaudible 00:57:29] in the dock. So I went down the [inaudible 00:57:32] there tipped it back and tied it up the little [inaudible 00:57:35]. Two guys come down and they said, “Can you imagine that? All them big boats get blown around and here’s a skiff still [inaudible 00:57:44].”
Speaker 5:
Still afloat. Well thanks, Jim.
Jim Pearce:
I tell you good one about the ’38.
Speaker 5:
Oh, really?
Jim Pearce:
If you want [inaudible 00:57:51].
Speaker 5:
You want to hear one about the ’38 hurricane?
Speaker 16:
Sure.
Speaker 5:
All right, Jim, [inaudible 00:57:53].
Jim Pearce:
Okay. I was 14 at the time and we went to school on the bicycles because it was football practice and then when we got through we could go right home and it was me and my brother, Stubbin Bassett and Glen. And so about two o’clock the wind come up and we’re thinking, “Hey, let’s go to the principal and tell him that we’ve got to go down and tie the boats up because the winds starting to blow.” And I said, “We’ll get home.” So Mr. Gifford was principal, so [inaudible 00:58:31] but we didn’t want to get home [inaudible 00:58:35].
Speaker 5:
He’s trying to get out of school.
Jim Pearce:
So anyway, he told us, “Yeah, okay, a good idea.” So we got down to Hicks Bridge there. Unless the Bowman was on the shore. He was an old oyster man.
Speaker 5:
This is Lester Bowman, we used to call him Puff. And he was oystering?
Jim Pearce:
Yeah. He was an oyster man.
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:58:52] bridge.
Jim Pearce:
It’s this bridge. And I used to go down as a kid and call him oyster [inaudible 00:58:52]. So he says, I said what’s the matter, Mister, you’re not there.” He says, “I have oyster all my life,” he says, “It’s too much waves, too much sea [inaudible 00:59:15].”
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:59:17], it was too rough to oyster.
Jim Pearce:
[Inaudible 00:59:21] we were standing there so we got by [inaudible 00:59:23] and then we said, gee, why don’t we take a ride down to Horseneck Beach? So then we took the bicycle, went down [inaudible 00:59:31].
Speaker 5:
It’s the ’38 hurricane, now they’re pedaling bikes down on Horseneck Beach.
Jim Pearce:
Well, it wasn’t too bad when we first got down there.
Speaker 5:
Can you hear him?
Jim Pearce:
So we sat in the field, [inaudible 00:59:45] branches [inaudible 00:59:49] we’ll catch hell when we get home.
Speaker 5:
[Inaudible 00:59:54].
Jim Pearce:
[Inaudible 00:59:54].
Speaker 5:
He did catch up.
Jim Pearce:
The next day, Lester Bowman, he was living with his girlfriend, which was normal in them days.
Speaker 5:
Peyton Place.
Jim Pearce:
And he didn’t drive a car. So she used to drive him around and she’d drive him down to Hicks Bridge, leave him off, go oyster, and then she’d come and get him. But the wind had blown the rain on the engine and she couldn’t get [inaudible 01:00:30] so she couldn’t get down there. Got dark in there. So Lester went up in the stones and got in one of their caves there up by the lodge and stayed there all night.
Speaker 5:
So this is at Hicks Bridge at the Masonic Lodge?
Jim Pearce:
Right. That’s where he stayed up all night-
Speaker 5:
He decided to [inaudible 01:00:48] all night.
Jim Pearce:
That’s the hurricane. And he said there was one big rush of water come up, lift up Hicks Bridge from [inaudible 01:00:54].
Speaker 5:
That’s the one that took out Hicks Bridge in ’38. Now we’ve got the bridge that we’ve replaced it now they built after that.
Speaker 33:
It still ain’t done.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, it’s still not done.
Jim Pearce:
So that was about the best interesting story that I [inaudible 01:01:07].
Speaker 5:
Thanks, Jim. Okay, one more story. One more. Hey, Captain Crab.
Speaker 33:
I think he’s running the other way.
Speaker 5:
No, he can’t be running [inaudible 01:01:31]. Hey Captain Crab. We call him Crab and… You know what? I got to tell you a story. Jimmy Manchester’s grandfather, Elmo Manchester, lived right behind me at Westport Point and near the church when I grew up as a kid. And Jimmy lived there sometimes with his grandmother. And he was so skinny, you’ll never guess what his nickname was. Matchstick.
Speaker 6:
He was skinny.
Speaker 5:
He was skinny. Captain Crab was matchstick. And Jim Manchester Senior, Crab’s father, he was involved with [inaudible 01:02:17] and we could go into stories beyond belief, but I was hoping Captain Crab would come in and tell the story. But I guess he’s not going to come in, Mickey. But anyway, can you find him? Get him in here quick? I want to tell you about Jimmy Manchester Crab. When he grew up as a kid during the Hurricane Carol, he lived with his mother above Jack Wilson’s home, a place over on East Beach, which was called Jack’s, which later became Danny’s A Go-Go. Danny’s wreath across from Horseneck Rendezvous. And Crab and his mother, Jimmy Manchester and his mother lived there.
And the morning of the ’54 hurricane, his mother took him up to Horseneck Road and dropped him off at the Wolf’s gas station. She had to go to work. And the Wolf’s gas station is now called Pine Hill Auto and Captain Crab walked across over to Hicks Bridge and spent the hurricane with Kenny Tripp in Hicks Bridge and watched the whole thing from Hicks Bridge and saw all this stuff come up, smash into the bridge and the rest of it. But anyway, I guess he doesn’t want to come out here. He’s done a couple of interviews tonight already. Anyway, is there any stories that we haven’t heard? Huh?
Speaker 34:
There was somebody with-
Speaker 5:
Where? Hey, Paul. Come on up here.
Speaker 34:
Paul.
Speaker 5:
Paul, come here.
Speaker 35:
[Inaudible 01:03:46] all the-