The Pre-flood Floods - By Dale Shirley

It was great to get the pictures that Scott sent me of the floods we had before the Teton dam was built. I didn't know the pictures even existed but I glad they do. With the full realization that I am now a senior citizen and subject to senior moments, I decided to write down what I remember of the floods. Hopefully the years haven't distorted too many of the facts. I remember two separate times that the floods surrounded the house.

It seems that the first one was the worst, but it could be that I was just older when the second one hit. My memory of the first one starts with a warm day in the spring of a very cold winter that had a lot of snow. There was a warm wind blowing out of the south and the playground at school became a sea of slush that we played in for a while until we got wet and cold. The wind was very strong and I remember sleeping upstairs and listening to it rattle the shingles as we went to bed. I remember being awakened in the early morning hours by mom. As we got dressed we could hear noise outside and looked out the window to see a National Guard dump truck dumping sand in the driveway. We went outside and helped dad build a barricade around the entrance the basement. It seems like we had a no sandbags so the barricade was built with straight sand around the steps to the basement.

It was still dark when I went back to bed and I slept late. As I woke up I noticed that the wind had stopped and it was light outside. As I looked out the house was completely surrounded by water. It seemed weird that it was so quiet and peaceful. I went downstairs where mom cooked us some breakfast and we watched dad sloshing around in some hip boots and tending to the dam and other concerns around the house.

I soon got bored hanging around the house so when I heard dad was going up the road, Neal and I went with him. We walked up towards Sugar and then followed the railroad tracks up to the overpass. There we found a source of our problem. The ice in the river had broken up into big chunks due to the quick thaw and because the railroad bridge and the road bridge were close together, the ice chunks had become clogged in the pilings of the bridges and were forcing the water out of the channel. There were a group of National Guardsmen there working on the ice. They had one of the men who was a bit heavy set standing out on the ice dam with a crow bar in his hands and a rope around his waist so he wouldn't fall through the ice. He would chip away with the crow bar in the ice and I remember the sweat just rolling off of him as he worked. When he would get a hole down a few feet in the ice they would put some dynamite that they had down the hole and put some sand bags on the hole and set it off. It would blow the sandbags up in the air and accomplished little else. We watched for a few minutes and then dad told us to come on and we went back down the tracks into Sugar City. We went to a house and as I remember, dad called him Stub Sondregger. Apparently dad knew this guy had some experience with explosives and dad convinced him to come with us. We went back up to the bridges and if anything, the situation was worse than when we left.

Dad went over to the National Guardsmen and probably with his connection as the Reserve unit CO, convinced them to let him give it a try. I don't think he had to talk very hard since I suspect that they were pretty discouraged with the progress they had made. Stub took a handful of dynamite sticks and wrapped them together and inserted the blasting cap. They walked along the banks of the river and found a place where an eddy in the water indicated that the water was moving down under the ice. They then pulled out several arm lengths of cord and then threw the dynamite in the eddy and fed out the cord and when it pulled tight he knew it was down under the ice. We all moved away from the river and took refuge behind a billboard that was beside the road. We were told to stand with our backs to the billboard and put our fingers in our ears and they set the explosion off. I got my first lesson in physics when they set it off. I learned that shock waves travel faster in water than they do in the air. We were standing knee deep in water and when the charge went off, it felt like two giant hands gave my legs a squeeze under the water and I just about jumped out of my boots. But then the sound of the explosion hit and it was the kind of boom that pounds on your chest and just about knocks the wind out of you. That was followed by rain as a mist of water came falling down all around us. Even though I was standing with my back to the blast I could see chunks of ice and debris splashing down into the water well beyond where we were standing.

When we were given the all clear, we looked around the sign and the sight was impressive. Huge chunks of ice had been lifted out of the channel and were piled on the bridge and banks of the river. I remember thinking that it almost looked like a giant birds nest. The National Guardsmen were pleased with the progress that had been made and grouped around dad and his buddy as they set up the next charge and they repeated the process again. This time we got near the end of the sign and peeked around as they set off the charge. They must have gotten the charge too close to the bridge because it looked like the whole bridge jumped when they set it off. Maybe it didn't but it sure looked like it.

As we walked back to the bridge, we could see that the remaining ice against the pilings had been pretty well shattered and was beginning to wash through the pilings. We left the National Guardsmen to handle things from there and walked back down the tracks to the Salem highway where we parted company with Dad's buddy and walked back to the house.

The only other thing I remember about the flood is being really bored, so we would go upstairs with dads .22 and look through the scope at chunks of wood floating by the house and when we found a mouse on one of them we would shoot at them. I rarely hit one, but cruel as it sounds, the shot would usually knock them off the raft so I would follow the rodent as he swam around looking for something else to climb up on, and when he did, I would shoot at him again.

The other flood I remember was the one that came a few years later. I found out after dad had left that he had gone up to the overpass again so I took off by myself to see if I could catch up. As I got to the tracks I could see some men walking along down the track so I assumed it was Dad and took off trying to catch up. I came to a spot where the railroad ties had been pulled out from under the rails and the water was flowing under the rails. There was a man standing there as I got there but I didn't pay much attention to him. Determined to catch up to Dad, I started across the rails hanging on to the top curved part of the rail with my hands and walking on the bottom flange of the rails. The man asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that but I went ahead anyway and worked my way across. As I got out near the middle of the rail it started to oscillate from side to side. That coupled with the water moving from right to left just a few inches below the rails made it difficult to concentrate and keep my balance. I managed to get across and as I turned around and looked back, the man was no where to be seen. I don't know if guardian angels really exist but I have often wondered if the man was sent there to keep an eye on me while I did something stupid. I hurried on up the tracks and caught up to the men about the time they got to the river bridge only to find out that Dad was not among them. I looked around the river bridges and he wasn't there either so I went back down the tracks. I evidently didn't learn anything because I went over the water on the rails like I did before. I don't know how deep the water was but I do know that it was cold and moving pretty fast. I had no other idea where Dad had gone so I just went back home. The only other event I remember about the second flood is that a big caterpillar tractor pushed an opening through Uncle Fred’s ditch bank down the road between our house and Browning’s house so the water could move through there and I heard later that Fred wasn’t too happy about it.