Indian Pueblo Dancing video

Check out the 1958 video we just put up on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/kXfFhmDWCNE

Elmer Eger and the Floating Garage

Dan Jackson says, “After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 I spoke to Elmer about the 1936 flood that his family experienced. This piece is his response.”


The Floating Garage – a 2005 letter from Elmer Eger to Dan Jackson

St. Patrick's day was yesterday and it reminded me of the great 1936 St. Patrick's Day flood. We were living in a new home during the middle of the great depression. (Everything in my generation seems to have been great: the great war, the great depression, etc.). Our home was located on Neville Island, a strip of land about 10 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. The "Island" seven miles long and one half mile wide at its widest point and was a mixture of farming and industry. At one time it was and was purported to be richest township in the USA because of the taxes paid by more than 50 major industries, including Gulf Oil, Dravo Corporation, Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel, and on and on.

We were living in a new home only because it was practically given to my father ($25.00 per month with every payment going toward purchase) by his good friend and business neighbor Ernest Harper, who had built the house for speculation before the depression took hold. The house did have a deficit. There were not enough electric receptacles in the living room and in order to enjoy the radio and enough lamps, my father ingeniously drilled through the floor and plugged the radio into a receptacle in the basement. As you will see that was a fateful act that later was almost disasterous.

Dad passed away suddenly in July of 1935 and my Uncle Sam and Aunt Sarah Sharp came to live with us. One reason was to share the expenses and the other was for Aunt Sarah to keep house while my Mother went to business. Mother and Dad had just started a jewelry shop a year earlier and my mom to her everlasting credit was determined to keep it going. She struggled mightily, educated two children and lived to see her efforts blossom into a thriving business many years later.

The winter of 35-36 was severe, with snow and ice piled everywhere especially in the upland watershed of north western Pennsylvania. In March a sudden thaw released untold amounts of water and ice floes into the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which joined to form the Ohio River at the famous Golden Triangle of the city of Pittsburgh. It was the first year in many years that the three rivers has frozen solid and if it were not for the heavy paddlewheel and barge traffic which forged a channel in the ice one could have easily walked from shore to shore.

With the spring thaw the river flowed with huge chunks of ice. As the river rose our cellar began to flood. We carefully unplugged all of the electrical appliances in the basement including dad's radio connection. So having no communication with the outside world and trusting that a flooded basement would be the only eventuality, we all went to bed.

At three AM that morning my Aunt roused us and told us to dress quickly because the water was up to top step on the front porch and would soon be in seeping into the first floor of the house. My uncle's 1931 model A ford was in the garage and by now the water was over the running board and possibly into the motor. Anyway there was no way to drive it out in over 2 feet of water. Somehow my mother, sister, aunt and uncle and I waded through small ice flows about 500 yards to the main road which was fortunately built on a hog back and was several feet higher than Yale Avenue the little street where our house stood surrounded by icy water. There on the main spine of Neville Island, we were met by a taxi which had come across the bridge and braved the road which was threatened from both sides by the rising rivers. Thanks to that brave cabby we crossed safely to the mainland of Coraopolis and were deposited at the Jewelry shop which was dry and warm and a safe haven at least for the time being. At dawn we learned that the water was still rising and several homes in the lower end town were already flooded. It was an awesome sight to a young teen because there were boats on some of the streets. As people gathered on the Main street the wisdom was that the water would never reach 4th Avenue one of the two main arteries through the town and the water reaching 5th Ave a block up the hill was not even a possibility. But it did. It reached fifth Avenue, which meant that it put 4 feet of into the the Jewelry store which had becoume our temporary haven. Miraculusly the water stopped short of the shelves on which we had piled the store merchandise. Fortunately at nine that morning I had taken a couple of cartons of rings and watches and valuable jewelry to the Bank Vault of the National Bank which was spared from by the rising waters.

After a short period of bemoaning our fate and being taken in by kind neighbors and wonderful relatives in Aliquippa, everyone waited for the flood to recede, which it did much more quickly than it came.

As can be expected the flood reeked havoc doing millions of dollars worth of damage and leaving in its wake mud and oil and every mess that one can imagine to be cleaned. But cleaned it was and there were and are a million stories in its wake. One family would have been content to clean out the mud and debris but an oil drum had cracked open on a telephone pole spilling the oil and when the water went down their walls and floors were coated with oil. How that house was restored I will never know. I myself, started the coal furnace with our dining room table--that same table that I had been scolded for using as a ping-pong table not too many months earlier.

Remember Uncle Sam's Ford? It was housed in a wooden garage which had a wooden floor. The floodwaters picked up the garage with the Ford still in it and floated it for ½ mile where it miraculously came to rest against an oil derrick, the last obstacle on the island's tip. There it was lowered gently to the ground right side up as the water receded. Eventually the car was towed to a garage where Uncle Sam expected to junk it. And what was he to do? No one carried flood insurance and he certainly couldn't afford a new car. A mechanic suggested that they blowout the gas lines and refill the tank. Nothing to lose. Lo an behold the car after a couple of coughs started right up and ran nicely for a couple years to come. Try that with one of our computerized engines in today's automobiles.

As I edit this we are six weeks past Hurricane Katrina which wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. As I watch the tragedies of hurricanes, floods, fires and sunamis, and as I watch families being wiped out I know from personal experience that the chances are good that the victims will remake a good life for themselves. I think the human spirit is as resilient as Uncle Sam's Ford. Blowout the gas lines and give it another whirl.