Flood Friday (11 page)

“Well! Looky here!” She opened the refrigerator door, then slammed it shut. “Phew!” she cried. “Everything rotten in there.” She called her husband. “It doesn’t look like the home we left, does it, Robert?”

“It will when we get through, though, Carrie,” said Mr. Graham.

“Well!” said Mrs. Graham, whipping off her scarf and coat. “No time like the present. Let’s get to work. Good thing it’s turned cool. Question is just what to do first.”

“Shovels first, then brooms, mops, and water last,” said Mr. Graham, on his way down cellar.

Soon shovel and broom were swishing out the floor. To keep her spirits up, Mrs. Graham started to sing:

“ ‘Home, home, sweet sweet home,

Be it ever so humble,

There’s no place like home!’ ”

“Hi, there! Hello!” called a cheery voice.

“Is that you, Elsie?” answered Mrs. Graham.

Mrs. Perry Wilson came in. Looking around, she exclaimed, “ ‘No place like home’—you’re right, Carrie. After this, we’ll appreciate our homes as we never did before. But you and I seem to be mighty dirty housekeepers, don’t we?”

The women fell into each other’s arms and laughed until they cried. Mrs. Wilson told again of her husband’s ordeal and rescue.

“I’ve shoveled two wheelbarrows of mud out of the downstairs bathroom alone,” said Mrs. Graham.

“We didn’t get that far,” said Mrs. Wilson.

“I just knew you folks had been here,” said Mrs. Graham. “Haven’t you any mud of your own that you come over here hunting more? There’s nothing like having good friends.”

“Hey, you two up there!” called Mr. Graham from the cellar. “Want some night crawlers? The cellar’s full of ’em. And here’s a live turtle for the kids!”

“What next!” The women laughed.

That night the children were surprised to get a turtle for a pet. Bobby put it in a box and they all took turns caring for it and playing with it.

As soon as the worst of the mud was out, Mr. and Mrs. Graham moved into the upstairs and slept there nights. The downstairs doors and windows could not be closed or locked, and there was danger of looters. Even though the children begged to return, they had to stay on at the Boyds.

As time went on, more and more things were salvaged. Mrs. Graham’s good dishes, packed in a box, were dug out of the sand. There was not a crack or a chip on a single piece. The ironing board, the portable radio and a photograph album were found. Bobby’s bike turned up, bent and misshapen, but possible to be repaired. Sally’s was never found.

“Are we never going back home again?” asked Karen one day.

“Never is a long time,” said Mother.

“Can’t we just come and look at the house, to see if it is still there?” begged Sally.

“It’s there, all right,” said Mrs. Graham. “And tomorrow we have a surprise for you.
We are taking you home again!”

“Hooray! Hooray!” cried the children, dancing a jig.

The day came at last and with it, the grand surprise.

The children could not be held back—they rushed into the house. The downstairs was clean, the mud was gone, old furniture had been repaired and some new pieces added. The new stove, refrigerator and dinette set had come from the Red Cross. Mother cooked the first meal on the new stove, and the Grahams sat down to eat with grateful hearts.

On the living room mantel there stood Mother’s two antique vases.

“One of them never moved,” said Mrs. Graham. “The other one fell to the floor, but did not break. I treasure them, they were my grandmother’s.”

The pictures still hung on the wall above the water line. They helped to make it look homelike, though all the curtains and rugs were gone and the floorboards were still swollen and warped. The children never noticed the water stains on the walls. Besides, Daddy brought home a roll of wallpaper samples, and they all had fun choosing the new papers to put on.

The upstairs was just the same as before the family’s hasty escape through the front window. Karen found her doll’s bed still standing under the side window where she had left it. She put the doll in it for a good sleep. It was the first time the doll had left her arms since Flood Friday.

One Sunday in October, the Boyds came over for dinner and spent the afternoon. It was a grand reunion for both families. Mrs. Boyd was amazed at the change.

Looking around, she said, “No one could guess this house had been through a major flood. It looks just as it did before.” She paused a moment. “What an experience it was! It taught us so many things.”

Mrs. Graham put her arm in Mrs. Boyd’s. “It was a real challenge,” she said, “a test to see what we are made of. Some of us fell short.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Boyd.

“It was a test of friendship, too,” Mrs. Graham said. “How can I thank you, Alice, for keeping the eight of us for so long?”

“We enjoyed having you,” said Mrs. Boyd. “It was the least we could do to help.”

“A disaster like this brings out all the good in people, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Graham.

“Everybody helped,” said Mrs. Boyd. “That is what made it a memorable experience.”

Barbara and Sally and Karen and their mothers came out in the yard. Sally stopped suddenly and looked.

“Oh! Our Christmas tree pine is gone!” she cried. “I watched the water go up over the tip. Where will Daddy hang the colored lights for Christmas?”

“We’ll plant another pine tree,” said Mrs. Graham.

They walked round the house to the back yard. All the trash and debris had been carried away and the yard had been refilled with soil. The apple tree was still there, with the long clothesline attached.

“Our asparagus has come up—in October!” Mrs. Graham laughed. “We could make a cutting if we wanted to.”

“And there, look!” cried Sally. “The apple tree is in bloom!”

A branch hung low with pink and white blossoms on it. Karen ran to the corner where the piles of lumber had been removed. There on the ground were violets in bloom. She began to pick them.

“Violets!” cried Mrs. Graham. “We never had any here before. The flood waters brought them.”

“I’m glad they brought something good,” said Mrs. Boyd. “Nature heals her wounds quickly.”

“Violets and apple blossoms!” said Mrs. Graham softly. “It’s a second spring—in October.”

“It’s like ‘the rainbow set in the clouds’ at Ararat!” said Mrs. Boyd. “A promise of good to come.”

They stood still for a moment and listened to a chickadee singing in the apple tree.

Lois Lenski was born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893. The fourth of five children of a Lutheran minister and a schoolteacher, she was raised in the rural town of Anna, Ohio, west of Springfield, where her father was the pastor. Many of the children’s books she wrote and illustrated take place in small, closely knit communities all over the country that are similar to Lenski’s hometown.

After graduating from high school in 1911, Lenski moved with her family to Columbus, where her father joined the faculty at Capital University. Because Capital did not yet allow women to enroll, she attended college at Ohio State University. Lenski took courses in education, planning to become a teacher like her mother, but also studied art, and was especially interested in drawing. In 1915, with a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate, she decided to pursue a career in art, and moved to New York City to take classes at the Art Students League of New York.

In an illustration class at the League, Lenski met a muralist named Arthur Covey. She assisted him in painting several murals, and also supported herself by taking on parttime jobs drawing fashion advertisements and lettering greeting cards. In October 1920, she left New York to continue her studies in Italy and London, where the publisher John Lane hired her to illustrate children’s books. When she returned to New York in 1921, she married Covey and became stepmother to his two children, Margaret and Laird.

Early in her career, Lenski dedicated herself to book illustration. When a publisher suggested that she try writing her own stories, she drew upon the happy memories of her childhood. Her first authored book,
Skipping Village
(1927), is set in a town that closely resembles Anna at the start of the twentieth century.
A Little Girl of 1900
(1928) soon followed, also clearly based on Lenski’s early life in rural Ohio.

In 1929, Lenski’s son, Stephen, was born, and the family moved to a farmhouse called Greenacres in Harwinton, Connecticut, which they would call home for the next three decades. Lenski continued to illustrate other authors’ books, including the original version of
The Little Engine That Could
(1930) by Watty Piper, and the popular Betsy-Tacy series (1940–55) by Maud Hart Lovelace. Lenski also wrote the Mr. Small series (1934–62), ten books based on Stephen’s antics as a toddler.

The house at Greenacres had been built in 1790 and it became another source of inspiration, as Lenski liked to imagine the everyday lives of the people who had previously lived in her home. In
Phebe Fairchild, Her Book
(1936), for instance, a young girl is sent to live with her father’s family on their farm in northwestern Connecticut in 1830‚ when Greenacres would have been forty years old. For its rich and detailed depiction of family life in rural New England, the book was awarded the Newbery Honor.

Other historical novels followed—including
A-Going to the Westward
(1937), set in central Ohio;
Bound Girl of Cobble Hill
(1938);
Ocean-Born Mary
(1939);
Blueberry Corners
(1940); and
Puritan Adventure
(1944)—all set in New England; and
Indian Captive
(1941), a carefully researched retelling of the true story of Mary Jemison, a Pennsylvania girl captured by a raiding Native American tribe, for which Lenski won a second Newbery Honor.

By 1941, Lenski’s stepdaughter, Margaret, had married and started her own family, and Margaret’s son, David, spent a great deal of time with his grandparents at the farm. Lenski’s Davy series of seven picture books (1941–61) was largely based on David’s visits to Connecticut as a child.

During this period, Lenski experienced bouts of illness, brought on by the harsh Connecticut winters. The family began to spend winters in Florida, where she “saw the real America for the first time,” as she wrote in her autobiography. Noting how few books described the daily life of children in different parts of the country, she began writing the Regional America series, starting with
Bayou Suzette
(1943). The seventeen books in this series depict children’s lives in every region of the United States, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, in rural and urban settings. Lenski traveled to each region that she would later feature in her books, spending three to six weeks in each locale. She collected stories from children and adults in each area, documenting their dialect, learning about their way of life, and otherwise getting to know the people that would become the characters in her books. The second book in the series,
Strawberry Girl
, won the Newbery Medal in 1946. The Roundabout America series (1952–66), intended for younger readers, was based on the same theme of daily life all over the country. Lenski was unparalleled in the diversity of American lifestyles that she documented; the combination of research, interviews, and drawings that she utilized; and the empathy and honesty that she employed in recording people’s lives.

Other popular series for children followed, including four books about the seasons—
Spring Is Here
(1945),
Now It’s Fall
(1948),
I Like Winter
(1950), and
On a Summer Day
(1953)—and the seven Debbie books (1967–71), based on Lenski’s experiences with her granddaughter. Lenski also published several volumes of songs and poetry, mostly for children.

In early 1960, Lenski’s husband died, and she soon sold the farm in Connecticut to live in Florida year round. There she wrote her autobiography,
Journey Into Childhood
(1972). Lenski died on September 11, 1974, at her home in Florida. The Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, which she established to promote literacy and reading among at-risk children, continues her mission by providing grants to school and public libraries each year.