Title:Oral History Interview with Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh, December
8, 1999. Interview K-0281. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Electronic Edition.
Author:
Cavenaugh, Aaron,
interviewee
Author:
Cavenaugh, Jenny,
interviewee
Interview conducted by
Thompson,
Charles
Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the
electronic publication of this interview.
Text encoded by
Kristin Shaffer
Sound recordings digitized by
Aaron Smithers
Southern Folklife Collection
First edition, 2004
Size of electronic edition: 212 Kb
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2004.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
Languages used in the text:
English
Revision history:
2008-00-00, Wanda Gunther and Kristin Martin revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic
edition.
2008-12-08, Kristin Shaffer finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
Source(s):
Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Aaron and Jenny
Cavenaugh, December 8, 1999. Interview K-0281. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (#4007)
Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0281)
Author: Charles Thompson
Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Aaron and Jenny
Cavenaugh, December 8, 1999. Interview K-0281. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (#4007)
Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0281)
Author: Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh
Description: 158 Mb
Description: 56 p.
Note:
Interview conducted on December 8, 1999, by Charles
Thompson; recorded in Duplin County, North Carolina.
Note:
Transcribed by Unknown.
Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series K. Southern Communities, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
Editorial practices An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition. The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines. Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " All em dashes are encoded as —
Interview with Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh, December 8, 1999. Interview
K-0281. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
AARON
CAVENAUGH, interviewee
JENNY
CAVENAUGH, interviewee
CHARLES
THOMPSON, interviewer
[TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Page 1
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It's December 8, 1999 and we are in the northeast community of Duplin
County. And this is Charlie Thompson with the Southern Oral History
Program. And I'm here in the living room of Aaron and Jenny Cavenaugh.
It's twelve noon, a little bit after. And we're sitting here where they
had flood damage in the house. And we're sitting on some chairs that she
put together. But most of the house is unfurnished right now.
So your story is unique because you are small business people and turkey
farmers in the community and lost a lot in really three ways: your
house, your business and your flock of turkeys. So maybe you want to
just tell about what happened, something about—maybe something about
your business. Tell first of all how you got into antiques or how you
got into farming. How long you've been here.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We got into the antiques because the love of the antiques by Aaron. He
was the one that started the business. And we started about six years
ago. We had six thousand square feet. And we would go to Pennsylvania
and New York, mainly, and get our antiques and bring them back. And the
turkeys we've been in since 19-thirty years.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Thirty years, yeah. We—the way we started, we tore down old buildings
and brought them home and put them back up. That was on the old farm.
Then later on we built the new buildings and kept right on growing
turkeys.
Page 2
We've had some losses before but never none
like this. It's—this is something nobody, I don't think, was expecting
and never seen either.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Describe it the way you were describing it when we were at the river.
How the water rose and how that was different.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Okay. We—yeah—we were going to stay at the river house the night of the
flood. And we went to the—we got all our things down there during the
day: our clothes, our changes, or whatever we needed to do and put them
in the river house. And then when we got our generators cut off and
everything, we—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You had the generators going because the electricity was gone.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Right. The electricity was gone. There was no way of getting water
without the electricity or feed. So we left these on and we were going
to keep these checked during the night. And when we came up—or came down
going to the river house with the tractor, it flooded out. So Jenny got
worried about us and she had two men to come get us. And we waded out of
the water, probably chest deep from that incident. The next day we came
back and all the turkeys were drowned. It came up probably five foot
during the night.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We had babies in two houses that were one week old. And we had four
houses of birds that we almost ready to go to market. [Laughter—"Go ahead."] When Aaron came out from the river house he was rescued. Some
boys went down and got him with a boat. And he came home and went to
bed. It was about ten o'clock on Thursday night.
But he had no idea, and neither did we, that the water would ever come to
our house. Not even thinking it would go in the barn because we've seen
the water rise on
Page 3
the river before but we've always
watched it day by day. We put a stick out and we'd watch it hour—. It
might rise an inch an hour. And if you—if there was ever anything you
wanted to move you had time to move it because the water never came up
that fast. And it never came to our house. So he—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you've lived here how long?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We've been here—. Well in this community we've been here all my life.
But here, we've probably been here twenty-two years.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right on Highway 41.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And on Highway 41 we've been here thirty-three years just not right in
this house. We lived further down toward the river until twenty-two—the
last twenty-two we've lived in this house. But in '62—I wasn't here but
the flood came. But it only came up how high?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It came probably a foot in the old house we used to live in.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
It didn't even come on this piece of property.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No, huh-uh. It was just—this was high ground here.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Every other flood it's always been the high ground.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You could go here and be safe.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And '62's the only real big flood that you've had.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Right. Now Fran brought in a little water but nothing out here on 41,
no.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No. It did go in our river house. But it didn't go in our turkey houses
at all.
Page 4
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No, no.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
At that time we watched it. We put a stick out and we watched it and I
went down and I got all the things out of the river house. Because he
was on the farm at that time and we had hogs and turkeys and so he was
on the farm. But—. Even got a tractor-trailer, backed it up to the back
of our antique shop and took all the antiques out. But it didn't go in
the barn after doing all that. It didn't go in but never here. We are
not located in a flood zone. So where we are we never expected the water
not even that morning at three o'clock.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How far is it to the river from right here?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Three miles approximately.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That much?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
( )
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Across 41—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Across ( )—. I'd say at least two miles maybe three. I'm not sure.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And then we—the water came into our house—it came from both directions.
It came from the river and it came from this back. And that's where our
mailman was evacuated from with his family on Thursday morning. It was
around their house. And there's a creek and it runs into the Northeast
River. That's the Island Creek creek. Is that it? But the Island Creek
water and the Northeast River water met and came in our house because he
was here when it came in. So he knew, you know, from which direction it
came.
Page 5
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You were telling me something about how you saw the water first across
41 and how you were pretty much saying, "No. It couldn't happen here."
You want to go through that some.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. It came up that night—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Thursday night.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Thursday night we—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's September—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Sixteenth I think it was. And the water was just trickling across the
road. And I said, "Well, it's about to peak out. This don't come this
high." And we came on home and went to bed. The next morning I had to go
check the farm, the turkeys, which they were all dead when I got there.
And the water probably had come up at least five foot during the night,
drowned all the turkeys, flooded the antiques. It was just more than we
expected. We didn't just—disbelief. We didn't believe that but it did
happen.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Explain what the river house is. You've mentioned that a couple of
times. How you decided to build that and how you built it. It was a good
story.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well we started with the first little part of the river house when we
needed somewhere to clean up and wash and maybe get us a sandwich during
the day and a bathroom—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
While you're working at the turkey barns.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
While we're on the turkey farms. And then we got a chance to get the
logs. The logger had left them in the woods. You know, they almost gave
them to us. So we took them, and dressed them up and kindly sized them
out to see what size they
Page 6
were and how far they
would go, or how long they were. We kindly figured that out in our minds
how we could build a building.
So we got all that together, and we just started out a foundation and
come up with it. And log by log we had to scan them. And some days we'd
work several hours. Some weeks we'd work two or three days a week just
whenever we could fit our time into it to build it. And we probably—it
probably took us a year and a half to build it working part-time and
getting it all figured out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And then that was the place you decided to go first when you left here
to go take care of the turkeys, right?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's exactly right.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
You were going to stay there because you could get to the generators and
he could actually hear if the tractor gave out of fuel he could—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Tractors run the generator.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh. And if it gave out of fuel he could hear it from the river house
and he could just get up, go down, refuel and go back to bed.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. Now I've heard you say about getting off the tractor. Why were you
moving the tractor? I'm not sure—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well, we used it—one of the tractors to go to the river house because of
the water. We didn't want to wade through the water.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It has—it's pretty high up off the ground.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Or at least it was.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We thought it was but it drowned out.
Page 7
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And there weren't any lights on that tractor either so he didn't know
how deep the water was. He was expecting it to be a foot.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. So you were going along this road where you knew it was and you
thought maybe it was a foot deep. Tractor cuts off, it's drowned out,
spark plugs, you get down off the tractor.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It's chest deep.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Chest deep.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
And by that time the guys that Jenny had called to go get me they were
there looking for me. So we came on out with them, didn't go back to the
farm until the next day.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Came home and went to bed. It was about ten o'clock Thursday night and
we went to bed.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Even after you'd lost all your turkeys.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No. We had not lost—. It wasn't even in the turkey house at that time.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. It wasn't in it, okay.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
During the night the water came up, that night. But if we'd have been
smart we would've stayed down there and got all our feeders up, motors.
Who knew?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He didn't have any idea. He thought that it had done what it was going
to do.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now the electricity was off.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yep.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Was there any news whatsoever from outside the community, any news
stations saying, "Prepare yourselves. This could be a flood."
Page 8
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There's water falling up stream.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We didn't hear anything.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
No one heard any of that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Our daughter heard on the scanner at three o'clock Friday morning that
they were going to close 41. Her husband's a fireman. And Tina called
and she said, "Mama, they're going to evacuate 41." I said, "Tina, how
do you know that?" And she said, "Mama, I heard it on the scanner." But
we didn't have the scanner going because we had—Aaron's not a fireman
and we didn't have but one generator. And so necessities were all we had
on that generator going.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So no one knew and no one was warned ahead of time. Do you think that
there was any way that somebody could have warned you about what was
going to happen?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well I've thought about that. And I've wondered that if in for future
preparations, what could be done because I don't know. And I don't know
at what point our fire department—. I think they did an excellent job of
getting people out. They worked around the clock, you know, until they
got everybody out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Do you know who made the decision to tell them to get everybody?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't know. I have no idea. And I don't know if they like woke the
fire chief up in his own home and said, "This is what we need to do." Or
if maybe a resident called and said, "Do you—are you all aware that the
water's coming up?" I don't know. And there's been no time. We've worked
so hard. We've not had time to talk to our neighbors to find out really
what happened with each one. I think it would be so
Page 9
interesting to know what went on in that house and that house and with
us because we've not had any time. We have worked around the clock.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe you would like to, at some point, as a community have a community
story telling—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That would be good.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Event—where having some of the older people and some of the younger
people tell—. Some people might want to videotape it. Just an idea that
came to me.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Right. That's a good idea.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It is.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I know there's a video that somebody made going through here in a boat
with the water in our houses, you know. I would love to see that but I
haven't. I've heard of it, but I haven't.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Do you know who made it?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No. I have no idea. I don't know.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Now we got some aerial photos.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Aerial photos, yes, that somebody gave us.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Frankie English, I believe.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But you really—. Yeah. But you really have to sort of know what you're
doing. That video would be excellent because it would be right at eye
level, you know. I think it would be real nice. And I've also wondered
what else—.
You know they're saying that we should prepare for the next one. I don't
know exactly what we should do to prepare because we didn't think it was
going to come here. And I still stay that somebody let a dam open
somewhere because it came too fast.
Page 10
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How did you know it was coming too fast? I mean what were the signs?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well as a rule if the river rises we can tell it by putting a stick out.
And we'll say—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That means you put the stick in the ground?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
( )
AARON CAVENAUGH:
—water come up to and then you can measure from the stick to how far it
come up. Say an inch an hour's average. Well it just depends really. A
lot of times, it's three inches an hour. And then later it was five,
six, seven inches an hour.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But this was like back with Fran or a big rain. And people would measure
the water that way. And, you know, you just talk about it sometimes,
"Well, the water's coming up an inch an hour." But with this it was
probably rising a foot an hour.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well not that much but it was—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. How much?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Going fast—six inches, probably, an hour.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There was—the mailman would have gone out at one point to check on
things.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He lives on the supply road behind us. And he was evacuated—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What was his name?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Nathan.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Nathan?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Nathan and Vicky Cavenaugh.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Nathan and Vicky. Okay.
Page 11
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He was evacuated that morning from his house. It never went in their
house. But their house was surrounded with water. So the fire
department, the Northeast Fire Department, went and got them on Thursday
morning. And then they came here. But by Thursday afternoon, the water
had gone down around these houses. But between us and his house, on the
highway there was a lot of water. So he couldn't go back in. They said,
"We've evacuated you." So they wouldn't go back in.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So at one point you were scared that the water was coming up. But then
it went down and you stopped thinking it was coming this way.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well, okay, as a rule when it went in Nathan and Vicky's house, if it
ever went, rose up at the creek at their house, we could look for the
river to rise two days later where we were. At the barn and at the house
down there, two days later we could look for the river to start rising.
We had two days so when Aaron came out on Wednesday, Thursday night, he
was still thinking, "The river was at Nathan's this morning. It's going
to be two more days before it gets here." Because that's what it always
took until that night. And it just rose so fast, too fast.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
He went out at one point—Nathan—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Over to the fire department. How did he know—I can't remember—he knew to
go over there and check.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. Tina called at three o'clock Friday morning.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's your daughter?
Page 12
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm. And she said they were going to evacuate. And Nathan and Aaron
decided that the water was not going to come here in the house. They
said, "Well, we'll just go back to bed." So they all went back to bed.
Nathan and Vicky, and their children and Aaron, and the little Mexican
boy that we had staying with us. But then Autumn and I were in the
office. And we were putting deeds and files in a trash bag and tying
them up. She would hold the flashlight, and I'd hold one side of the bag
and we'd put it in.
Nathan decided when he heard us doing that that he'd walk to the
firehouse. And he did and when he got down there the water went through
his legs. He said he was standing with his back to 41. He ran back up
here to our house. And he said the next truck that goes out we're all
going to get on it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So he walked out on dry land and while he was talking—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But we walked from my carport—from our carport to 41 to get on the
truck. It was dry when we left here. It was dry. But by the time we got
to the firehouse, which is right down here—between here and Betsy's—the
water was already across the road. Before we got to the big curve down
there, which is less than a mile, this truck—. I remember we were on
this truck. And I can visualize it. He had a boat trailer hooked to his
truck. The trailer was completely submerged in the water. And the truck
was high. And I remember the taillights being—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
( )
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't remember. But the taillights were under water. I felt like that
I was a refugee or something because we were all—. I mean I went out
with my gown, a shoe of one color on each feet, foot and my pocketbook.
That's all. I mean we left. But
Page 13
Aaron stayed.
Aaron stayed. He was going—. I don't know what Aaron was going to do.
But he stayed until that afternoon and went out on the boats. And see
the water was already here by that evening.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Weren't you stacking furniture or something?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. We got up her furniture and put it up on—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He and the little Mexican boy.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Put it up on—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Do you remember the little boy's name?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Junior Enrique —
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Enrique Segovia Junior. We called him Junior. And he was—he worked on
our farm. His whole family lived on our farm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In a trailer.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
In a trailer that was destroyed by the water. And, of course, we lost
two flocks of turkeys. That's half a year's income. Plus we have all
these repairs to make and we do not have the income to pay them now. So
we're having to do the work ourselves. And they have relocated over
around ( ) between ( ) and ( ). Maybe one day we can get them back if
they'd like to come. They've been with us since '85. So they've been
here a long time.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So Enrique speaks English fluently, I'm sure. Does the whole family
speak English?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The mama not quite as good as the children. But they do very well. The
children do very well.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now they have a father too with them.
Page 14
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yes. Their father is not on the farm.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. Okay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He was until—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Two years ago.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Two years ago.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
But he had been with us since ' 85 as well.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( ). You said—. Let's talk about the antique business a little bit.
The—how did you decide you wanted to have an antique shop here in
Northeast, first of all. I mean did you think about having it in
Wallace. Did you think about—?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well when we went up north we went up there several times. And we'd go
to these auctions and we'd always buy something: box lot stuff or
occasionally we'd get a good piece here and there, you know. And bring
it back home and we'd put it in this barn down here that I just showed
you. And we kept going for several years and I soon had the thing about
half full of box stuff and a few pieces of furniture.
So I told Jenny we were going to set this stuff out and sell it. So she
didn't believe it much I don't think. And I got it set out and it wasn't
arranged right. So they got in there and they got it, you know, looking
halfway decent. So I said, "We need to sell this stuff." So we opened a
half—we've got a division in it. We opened the half, the front part up.
And the things were for sale. So we started selling them, kept going to
Pennsylvania, picking it up. Finally we met a man named Joe Griggsport?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Griggsport.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Griggsport. He's a ( ).
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Bedford, Pennsylvania.
Page 15
AARON CAVENAUGH:
He would bring us a load probably once a month of pretty good furniture
and stuff. That helped out with the sales because when you've got a good
piece you can sell it. Plus all the local salesmen. There's a lot of
auctioneers would go to Pennsylvania. They'd have an auction every
Saturday night or once a month. We'd pick up a lot of stuff there.
So—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He stayed on the road a lot buying antiques.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Oh I'd be out three to four nights a week buying antiques. I'd look at
them.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Running the farm in the day and buying antiques at night.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
But it's just something that I like to do. I mean, you know, there's not
a whole lot of money in it but it's a lot of fun.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So you had the building here. That was one of the reasons that you—what
were you going to say?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He said that he was going to open up a shop. And I said, "What kind? A
tack shop?" Because at this time he was going up north to buy horses. I
did not know he was packing all this stuff. But the barn was full. He
said, "No." He was going to open an antique shop. He'd been furnishing
the river house, you know. So he had—.
Anyway, I said, "Aaron that will never work. It will never work out here
on 41." And he said, "Well, let's just try it." Well I was amazed. I was
overwhelmed. We picked up traffic from I-40. We had people that came
from Charlotte, Chapel Hill—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well, Greenville to Wilmington's a pretty main route. We had a lot of
people from Greenville, Kinston, Wilmington—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Southport.
Page 16
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. Little Washington. It was amazing.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And they'd come one time and then you'd see them come back every time
they would pass. So we had a lot of regulars but—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We sold to a lot of dealers. I mean, we done good.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So that means your prices are low enough that they can mark them up.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And that's how—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We didn't try to make a bunch of money.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We just enjoyed it. Now we need to make a bunch of money.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
[Laughs] Now we don't have any money.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How many antiques did you lose in the flood? How do you—?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Dollars-wise or—?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well, either that or—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Phew. We had a barn full.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( ).
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well we probably threw out a hundred thousand dollars worth aside the
road for the state to pick up. That's mostly furniture, which was—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Completely ruined.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Completely ruined, which is most expensive. Furniture costs you more
than the small stuff. Of course I enjoyed the small stuff but I guess I
had too much of it. And I don't know—.
We had an auction and sold a lot of stuff. Got what we could. Of course
we cleaned it all. It done pretty good on the auction. But we felt like
that was the thing to
Page 17
do because when a customer
come in, "Well this has been under water. I don't want that." So we feel
like selling out the whole contents and start again we'd be better off.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We put that money back on our farm, too. The farm has to get going
because that pays for the inventory. There's no way without the farm. We
needed that money to go on the farm, too.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So your auction did well.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It done good.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And maybe a lot of people would say—who don't know this community would
say, "Why would you want to locate the antique business back where it
was. If it flooded, it might flood again." What would you say to that?
Is there a sentimental attachment?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They could be very well right. It could flood again. But, you know, I
think that the building can be cleaned and repaired. And that would be
an expense that I wouldn't have to go into. But the water could come
back. It very well could.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's something different. You wouldn't have said that back in the
summer that the water would ever come there. Now you're saying it could.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It could and it scares you. It really does.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What's changed? Has the river changed? Has something upstream changed?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I think somebody let the dam open somewhere for it to flow that fast.
I'll say it until somebody tells me I'm absolutely—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They had dredged the river, what, a year or so ago ( ) getting all the
debris out of the stream and everything. That should have helped. So I
don't know.
Page 18
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Where? I know that was a lot of water. But y'all, we're talking about a
lot of water around here, too.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well the ground was already saturated. It was wet. What was it, eight or
ten inches before a flood?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( )
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. And then Floyd did drop, what, nineteen to twenty inches? So—. But
I think we've had that much rain before at times and had no flood like
this.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But it came so quick.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, it came quick.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
It came quick. Even if you had that much water it should have risen
somewhat like it's always risen so you could tell what was going on in
the river. You're talking about a foot of water that afternoon to chest
deep on a six foot man by eight o'clock. That's a lot of water.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Going back to check the turkeys during the storm, the wind part of it on
what was it, Wednesday, Thursday-Wednesday night did it start?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Wednesday night was the wind.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Went back down there Thursday morning, you know—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No water.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No water nowhere. Later on during the day they cut the power off. I
don't think the storm done it. The companies done it for safety reasons.
The water had begun to come up within what—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The water came up and they cut the power off?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
Page 19
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
At what point in time?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That might have been Friday. I don't know. Anyway—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But our power was on Thursday down there. It was on Wednesday night.
Remember?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Wednesday night's when the storm came.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Right. And we had no power. You were down there with the generator on
Thursday.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Okay. Thursday I hooked the generator. But Thursday morning everything
was calming down after the wind. The turkey house had blew over, you
know.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh yeah. Our turkey house was leaning.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We would have been to scared to go in that thing if it ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is it torn down or is it back up?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No. We straightened it back up. It took us ten days to get it back up,
about seven or eight head of us. But we done it.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We should have pointed that out.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. We should've. But I can't remember everything. Anyway the wind
was—. Thursday morning everything looked—after the wind had quit it
looked fairly normal except the water was coming a little bit. But
not—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But not much. We weren't worried.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No. We weren't worried. And, you know, it was probably after dinnertime
before we got the generators going. That's on Thursday. And the water
came right on it just that quick, fast.
Page 20
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And it did come up but it was only about a foot deep in that low place
at four o'clock. And by eight it was chest deep.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's what I'm talking about. It was fast.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Fast. It—has anybody else that you talked to—have they thought it came
fast?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Everybody.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Everybody.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
( )
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But we really have not had time to talk. But it came fast.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Tell us about what you've been spending the time doing. You don't talk
to people right now because you're too busy.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
You do not have time. When you get up in the morning it seems like
nothing you've planned to do or want to do is what you do. It's
something that pertains to the flood that you've got to do. But in the
beginning there was nothing——. Well in the beginning we had sixty
thousand dead turkeys. And Aaron worked for four days.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It's the worst four days I ever spent.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And those turkeys had been dead a week. And he spent a terrible time.
Well the whole time he was down there working around the clock, I was
here thinking that I could save our floors and walls. So I was trying to
dry them out with the dehumidifiers. And I was trying to spray Clorox on
everything.
And after Aaron finally got the turkeys removed and then they started to
remove the litter, he came home and—. At that time we were not staying
here we were staying with our daughter. But you didn't have—. We didn't
have time to go stand and see if the
Page 21
Salvation
Army could help us or the Red Cross could help us. We did—I did take
time to get a FEMA number. FEMA came. And they said, "Well you can save
your walls." Which you can see we've cut those out and replaced the
boards there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The baseboards?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm. And so FEMA and they said we could save everything. Well we
couldn't. We moved back in here. And we took the sub-floor up one night
after we had moved back in here. Aaron said, "If I live until in the
morning, we're going to take the board up." It was just as green as it
could be.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Mildew.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh. The walls were spongy. And the—when we cut these walls out and
pulled that insulation out, the water ran down my arm. We had to take
everything—. But we did it in between working at the turkey house. We
might get an hour that we could come home and take a floor up. Or we
might get one whole day that we could come here and work.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Were you doing all this yourselves?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We had a little help.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We didn't put the baseboard down. But our—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Son helped us with that ( ).
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And then we had a family, a real nice family from Lillington that came
and helped us one Saturday. And they helped us put down more of the
sub-floor.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
In the three bedrooms.
Page 22
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. In the bedrooms. And they helped us put—. A piece of sheet rock
had to go behind each one of these boards. And they helped us get one
room fixed there. And the rest of it we've got hired done. But we've had
a lot of volunteer work in the barn. I am forever grateful for the
volunteers that we've had.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Let's go through those. Who all came?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. I hope I don't leave anybody out. The First Baptist Church of
Charlotte, North Carolina. There was Stan and Judy Crisp and their
family from Lillington. There was Connie Mack Johnson from Wilmington.
He has not been, but he's brought a lot of food to our center. And he
introduced us to Stan and Judy. There were some turkey growers and they
were from up Pageland. And they have been twice. They came once. I think
there was seven or eight of them. Some of them helped on the farm. The
men helped on the farm and the women helped me in the shop wash the
dishes and things getting ready. That was over a period of at least four
weeks, wasn't it Aaron?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That is took us to get back ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now they would just drive up and say, "What can we do?"
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm. Or some of them came to the Wallace Baptist Church and Mr.
Bazemore, the pastor there, he would call and ask did we need any help.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How do you spell Bazemore? B-A-Y—?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
B-A-Z-E-M-O-R-E, Bazemore. And that's the First Baptist Church in
Wallace. And Aaron has a nephew that goes to church out there. And they
found out—. The nephew and his wife found out that some turkey people
were coming. So they knew that they would like to be on a farm so they
contacted us. And that's how we met them.
Page 23
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They had damage during Hugo.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Sure did.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
And it was so bad that the volunteers came in and helped them, and they
said if anybody ever needed help on a turkey farm and they could, they
would come and help them. So that was nice.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And they did. Because they knew how to wash waterers and feeders. The
North Carolina Department of Revenue came and helped us wash turkey
feeders. It was a group of ten.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They were just volunteers. They weren't here to give money or anything.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh, no. No. No.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Unofficial.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He came to the door and he said, "I'm with the North Carolina Department
of Revenue." And I said, "Well, son, I think I mailed my sales tax and
paid all my taxes." And he said, "Well I didn't come to collect." And I
said, "Well what can I help you with?" And he said—. And by then I had
invited him in. And he said, "I've come to help you." And I said,
"You've come to help me?" And he said, "Yes, ma'am." And I said, "Well
what would you like to do?" I had no idea that's—. He said, "Anything
that you want cleaned up pertaining to this flood." I said, "Let me get
my pocketbook and we'll go to the farm." So I got the gloves and they
helped. They were good help, too.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Men and women?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm, men and women.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
There was another group that came in on a—I don't even know who they
were really—on a Saturday evening about four o'clock —
Page 24
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
They came from the Baptist church. They were connected with the Baptist
church.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They'd had been somewhere all day and they'd work all day long. What we
had built—or repaired the turkey house we had a lot of timbers laying
around. And some of them were still nailed up that we were through with.
And we had to get them down and pull the nails out and stack it. They
asked me what they could do. So they jumped in there on that. And, phew,
an hour and a half they had that stuff cleaned up. It would have took me
three days by myself to get it. And a couple of them went and put a
water pump on my well for me. They were a big help. They sure was.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Hands have been the biggest asset that anybody—if you've ever been
flooded, hands are what a person needs. They need financial stuff, too.
But in the very beginning those hands—. You don't even know what you
need financially but you know you need hands because your mind is
working so much faster than your hands can keep up. And it was like
every morning when we left here, we left this in a mess.
We had no vehicle. We didn't have time to go buy a vehicle. I was driving
my nephew's car. And we finally—. For weeks—I don't know how many weeks
after—we finally went to see if we could get Aaron a truck. I know the
man from Safeway Chevrolet. Aaron called him and he let us use that
little white truck.
And then we went back down and bought this little red truck that was
their parts truck. As a matter of fact, we went that morning to buy me a
car. And I was just overwhelmed. And I said, "Aaron, I don't need a car.
You need a truck." So we bought the little truck Safeway had let us use.
And when Aaron came from around the back of the shop, he was grinning
from ear to ear. And I said, "What is it, Aaron?" And he said,
Page 25
"I bought two trucks." He said, "They're going to
sell this little parts truck here. And I bought it, too."
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Mitsubishi?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. That's—a '91. But we have run it. It is wonderful. And then I have
[dog barks].
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Hannah. [Dog barks.]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
We were talking about—. We just had lunch and now we're talking about
the volunteers who were in the antique shop and all the different groups
who came. And you mentioned several different groups just now. You
mentioned the Salvation Army. You mentioned customers coming back. You
want to tell us again, go through that a little bit.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm. Aaron—. While we were having lunch we were talking about how the
Salvation Army truck would come through our community. And they would
stop and they would have like a box lunch with a drink. And at that time
we'd been on the farm. If we weren't on the farm we were in the shop.
Sometimes we were back here.
But it was—. Always we were so busy. You never had time to think about
what you were going to fix to eat, what you were going-where you were
going to go and get it. And at the time we were eating a lot of beans
and franks and vienna sausage. We got it from the center, which we were
truly grateful.
But that hot meal when they would pass it out that window, I never ate
anything that was bad that came off that truck. Everything that we ate
was delicious. And then on Saturdays we'd go down to the barn to work.
And while we were down there working
Page 26
we had former
customers that would call and they'd volunteer to come back. They'd say,
"I've got to work all week but I can be there on Saturday." We had
friends. We had neighbors. We had family. Without those hands, we would
have never gotten the merchandise washed and ready for the auction.
And it was like everybody that came—even church groups from out in
Wallace came. Ladies would come in the afternoon after their prayer
service. They would come and wash dishes with me for an hour or two
hours, three hours. And when they'd come in, I'd just say, "Go pick a
section. Here's some gloves. Here's a tub. Pick a section and just wash
what you want to wash." And they acted like they had fun doing it. Of
course I was so strained at that time I didn't even know who I was. I
didn't think. But without their hands we could have never gotten it
done, just never.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So, also, how did those people help you? When you say you were strained.
They helped physically. They helped move things. But what other ways did
they help?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Just knowing that somebody cared. It was like everywhere that I went
there was devastation. The house was devastated. We were having to drive
an hour. When we got through working at night we had to drive one hour
to get to our daughter's house. We would give completely out when we got
there. We would eat supper with her, take a bath and go to bed. And then
the next morning we'd get up and start again. And we didn't see anybody.
We'd see our friends and our neighbors all along the road. But nobody
had time to stop and say, "How are you? Do you need anything?"
If this—if this flood had happened to just one person in our community,
we could have all joined together and took care of that one person or
five families or whatever.
Page 27
But when it's every
house for a twelve mile stretch, nobody has time to help anybody. You
are so busy trying to get—just keep your head above the water to help
yourself.
Or that's the way we were because every bit of income we had, every
business, everything we owned was underwater. I mean we didn't even feel
like we had—like I said, to go shop for a vehicle. There was no time to
think about that. There was no time to go stand in line to see if
Salvation Army would help you or the Red Cross could help you. It was
needless to go for food stamps. But you didn't have time to even partake
in a lot of those things. And, too, the shelter—.
In the beginning there were times when churches would come by. I know
Penhook Church or Oakdale Church—I think it was Oakdale Church came by
one day and it was around lunchtime. They stopped in our driveway. It
was two ladies. And they had brought us some paper towels and things
from their church. And I was so glad because I hadn't had time to go get
any. And out she brought some potted meat. And Aaron said, "Well I just
want some potted meat." I mean anything that you could just pop the top
on a can. That's what we ate.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
For how long? How many days did you do that?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Three weeks
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh it was weeks. It was weeks. It was weeks. But it's—. I appreciate all
the help—like I said—with the hands. People have been good to us. People
have been good to our community. And to be able to go down to the center
and pick up cans of beans and corns and detergent has helped
tremendously because our last income was in August. And we won't get
paid again until 2000, the end of April or the first of May. That's a
long time.
Page 28
CHARLES THOMPSON:
When the turkeys get—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
When these turkeys that we've just put in, that's when they'll sell.
We'll have to raise them that long before we can send them to market. So
that's a long time without the income.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yes it is. And when do you think you might have the antique store back
open?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well I don't know. He's got some stuff down there now that he's going to
have an auction in January. But all that stuff does not belong to us.
That consists of the remaining things that we did not have a chance to
sell October 30th. We're going to sell those things. And then another
man has brought some stuff in to sell. But as far as us opening back up,
I don't know. Do you?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I have no idea.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We've got to have that farm income. And that's one thing I was saying
about the Small Business Administration that's good. We did not need a
loan to buy antiques because you cannot shop for antiques out of a book
or a catalog. And they come rolling up to the door and you put them on a
shelf. That's not the way that works.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So that the problem is that if you take a loan from SBA, you're holding
that money and paying interest on it. But to buy antiques it takes a
long time and you don't want to hold that money. Is that what you're
saying?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That's right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So you'll have quick turn over of money.
Page 29
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That's right. And you've got to have time to go and find them. You can't
just go out here and buy an antique. You've got to go shop. We usually
would go and stay a week at the time.
But we had—right now's not a good time of the year to even go because
estate sales and things aren't going on. And that's a lot of what we do
is estate sales in the spring and the fall.
Plus we can only go when the farm, when the turkeys are at a certain age.
And now that our income's gone, we're doing all the work ourselves on
the farm. We have no help so we don't even have anybody to leave at this
point that can take care of the farm while we go and shop for
merchandise for the barn. So we're in a two-fold problem really. I don'
t know when we'll ever get back with it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So the primary goal is to get the farm running and get that flock out.
Get that money.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In the meantime you're having to work on your house. You're having to
spend money on the farm. How are you doing that? How are you managing?
Is the government helping by giving you some money?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
They gave—the government gave us $2,855.10. That was FEMA.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. That wouldn't pay for even one tractor loss.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Oh no.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well that was only to be used in this house.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
On the house.
Page 30
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. And our house—I can't tell you how many thousand we've already had
to spend. Because when FEMA was here they said, "Oh you don't have to
take the walls out." And when we cut the walls out all that had to be
replaced.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You found water inside the wall.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We found—cut the wall out, and we reached up and pulled the insulation
down and the water ran down our arms from that wet insulation.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Insulation works like a wick. It pulls that water up.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And while other people were tearing theirs out we thought we were safe,
weren't going to tear any walls out, might take the floor up. For a long
time we thought we wouldn't take the floor up. But we slept in here one
night and mildew was so bad. Aaron said, "Well we will in the morning."
And so we did. And it was green.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It smelled so much like mildew? Is that what you mean? It was so bad.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How did it smell?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Mildew.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Musty, mildewy, stuffed up, no air.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Couldn't breathe, burned your nose. Do you smell it now?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I don't smell it right now. But I have smelled that smell, yeah, in
people's houses.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I'm sure. And the barn as open as it is it was terrible. I mean just
mildew all over. But we've aired it out and dried it. And the weather's
been pretty. It's pretty well gone.
Page 31
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you have this sprayer over here where you sprayed Clorox. How many
gallons would you say?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I wish I knew how many gallons.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A ]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B ]
AARON CAVENAUGH:
When we done the floor, the door would have to be opened—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And flies.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It was just black with flies. It was terrible.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Of course, yeah, they love damp places to breed. How about mosquitoes?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Mosquitoes have not been that bad. There have been some but not too bad.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Did you smell it when you first came in here?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Clorox?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No. The mildew, musty?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I don't remember noticing.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Maybe it's getting better.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It's definitely better than most houses where they're just ripped and
stripped. Yours is in close to the condition where you bring furniture
back in once you get the flooring on there, right?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's the way it was with the refrigerator. I mean that thing was awful
when we came back in here. But she Cloroxed it four or five times. I
wouldn't let her throw it away. And now you can't even smell it and it
works—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I cleaned it though with a Q-Tip and Clorox.
Page 32
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, Q-Tips. Just ( ). But it's better than laying out there aside the
road.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I went in every crack, every crevice of that refrigerator.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now did they tell you to throw away your refrigerator?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't know.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I've heard all kinds of rumors. I don't know.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't remember—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
But there's been an awful lot of them down the road piled out for the
state to pick them up.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But now Dawn over here told me that you're not supposed to use the hot
water heater. And our hot water heater's working.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well, we're going to let it work right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well, that's—. If you only get two thousand and some dollars, what else
can you do?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
What else can you do?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's right.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well, you ask what we're doing. We're taking from our retirement. That's
what we're doing. What else can you do, you know?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I'd a made a fortune going up and down the road picking up refrigerators
and ( ). I mean really. They worked and they just tossed them out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But they thought they had to.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. They thought they had to ( ). Well that's just like I thought I
had to get rid of my shoes. But I didn't because Kaye's wearing hers.
Page 33
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well, once you dip it through Clorox, they'll be all right. They'll be
sanitized then.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I wouldn't want this on tape either. But I had aunts that wouldn't come
over here because they were scared of—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It is on. That's scared. That's no problem. I've heard of other people
being scared including workers coming from FEMA even.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh, they wouldn't go in some of the houses.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well, and all these hogs and turkeys and the water that had been all
over this district. It's not a no good situation. It's really not. So if
they'd been you and you'd been them, what would you have thought,
probably the same thing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They weren't from this community I suppose. Everybody that's from the
community understands that had to live through it. But that's maybe
something I haven't heard so much about is people not—. I mean some
people say it's drawn the community closer. And it seems to have done
that. But people aren't really sharing and talking. How is it closer if
it's not through talking? Is it you just know by passing one another on
the road or—? Maybe you disagree. Maybe you don't think it's closer.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
There's something about when I am around when I meet somebody down at
the center. Or if somebody—if you do get together and talk. I had a
neighbor stop by and talk this morning. It's like there is a closeness
and you share the same things. Our lives are somewhat the same right now
because everybody's got the same problems.
She doesn't have the income problem. I have the income problem but we
both have the house that we're working as a goal. I think there probably
is more closeness. And other people might have more time to socialize
but I don't think so. I don't think so.
Page 34
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Probably not.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And I think, too, that we did have—. You know some people could go to
their jobs and they came home and they were through. We were never
through. We're still not through. But ours was—we worked seven days a
week up until this past weekend. And I'm serious seven days a week. We
kept foster children. We have a foster son. And he's come and helped us
do a lot. But he can only come on the weekend. And Randy's helped us a
lot. Our children have been good to us, good to us.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Everybody's been good to us.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Everybody has—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They really have.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Our children rallied around us from square one.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How did they rally?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well our daughter was right here. And then she took us in our home and
she's been here ever since. Randy lived in Laurinburg and as soon as he
could come, he was here. He came as soon as the dead turkey—we could get
in there, he helped Aaron get those dead turkeys out. And he would stay
like the whole weekend. He wouldn't go home until Sunday night.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
What are their names and how old are they?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. Tina is twenty-nine. Tina Batts and Randy Sweeny. He was a foster
child. And he lives in Laurinburg and he is thirty-one. And then we
had—. Michael was a foster child. And then we adopted him. You met
Michael today. Michael was in Tennessee when the flood happened. And he
had gone and found his real mother. And when he heard about the flood he
moved back. He's been a lot of help to us.
Page 35
AARON CAVENAUGH:
He's really done good.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
He decided to move back to help?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He called and I said, "Mike, I don't even have a bed. I don't even have
a room." And he moved back while we were at Tina's, didn't he?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. He slept on the couch at Tina's until we could get back in here.
And my family and his family—but his family's all been flooded. But my
family's from Harolds. And they have been good to us. We've had a lot of
good family really. And—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How did the government come in and let you know that you were getting
two thousand—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Eight hundred fifty-five dollars and ten cent. That was—we applied for a
FEMA number and an adjuster came out. And when he—. Some weeks later—.
Of course we didn't even have an address at that time because when we
applied we were staying down the road. And then we moved over to Tina's.
When it got so that Aaron couldn't come back in and check on the farm
then we left Northeast and moved with our daughter. But we evacuated
right here in Northeast where it was not flooded for four days. I think
it was four days.
But, anyway, they sent a check. And with it they sent a printout as to
what it was to be used for. It was $110 for clean up, $200 for—or to
$200 and a few dollars for doors, windows, and the rest of it was for
our flooring.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And they said walls don't have to be replaced so there was no money for
walls.
Page 36
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Nothing for walls. And I don't know if anybody else got money for their
heating system. We did not.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You lost that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We lost the ductwork underneath. It's forty-one hundred dollars to get
that back. We're at the point now that we have to go and talk to the
heating and air folks to see if we're going to have to have a new unit.
I've heard that we do. If it went underwater then it has to be new. That
I have to inquire about.
We had to have insulation put back in. That's like a thousand dollars.
We did save our cabinets by Aaron taking them out real careful, got a
real good carpenter. And I begged him. Hank McGowan, he's the best. And
he came from over at Willard. And he came and bless his heart he put our
cabinets back in.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
If we'd a throwed those cabinets out it'd a been about seven thousand
dollars. He put them back in for $250.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He is good.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
He was good.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In order to really build back you had to go against the advice of the
officials who came through here.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Otherwise you would have been much worse off.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That's true. I hadn't thought about that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You decided early on to sort of stay and pile furniture. You began to
not heed the advice—I'll put it that way—of the officials from the
beginning because you knew better. Or somehow you sensed—
Page 37
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I kept believing it wouldn't come. But some halfway said it was coming
so I started packing that furniture up high where it wouldn't get wet.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But they were telling you—
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We saved that furniture.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
They were telling you to leave at that point but you decided to stay and
do it anyway.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So all along I've been hearing you say you only do what you think is
right and not necessarily what the officials give you on a printout.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
You can't do everything they tell you. You just cannot.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And they certainly did not give us a bunch of money.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Some people have thrown out all their belongings out at the curb
thinking that FEMA was going to replace that.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They shouldn't have done that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The FEMA says they'll make it safe, secure and—something. But they won't
give you back everything, which is understandable.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And how's that understandable?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well, because if they gave everybody back everything that they had and
that person that lives next door to me possibly—I'm not saying they do.
But that's just an example.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right. This is hypothetical.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. If the person that lives next door to me does not work and pay his
taxes and I work real hard and I pay my taxes and then the federal
government comes in
Page 38
and they say, "Okay, I'm going
to put everything back just like it was." They're going to go broke
because the man on my left is not paying anything. And I'm doing all I
can to pay everything that I can. I'm just keeping him up and me. But
you can't replace—. I don't think they can replace everything.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But, the government is obligated to do what? What do you think in a
flood situation?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I know what they said they'd do.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Make it safe and livable, is that what you're asking?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yeah. Safe and livable across the board. Everybody's house should be
made safe and livable — paid for.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't know about the paid for.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Do they—? I know they're doing the loans. But I don't know about that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. The loans—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The SBA loan. We could have gotten an SBA loan on this house. But we
didn't. We didn't get any SBA loans.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You turned them down on the antique business and the house.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That's right.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
How are you going to pay it back?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I asked the man that. When he was—when he came to our farm with a group
of senators and legislators. And I asked him then. I said, "You'll lend
me money on the shop?" And he said,
Page 39
"Yes." And I
said, "Money on the house?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "But without
any income until the year 2000—and at that point didn't even know what
month it was going to be in 2000—why would I want to go get a loan? I
don't have any way to pay it back." And I said, "We can live on
sub-floors, which you can see that's, you know, we can."
And then they did bring us a FEMA camper and we stay there. And we don't
have heat and whatever in here. And I cook out there. I don't have a
stove. But I didn't need a loan here to have to pay back when I don't
even have any income.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. The FEMA trailer is not part of the $2,855. That's—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You don't have to pay for that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No, sir.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You do get it for what eighteen months? Is that what they said?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The lady told me when she put it in—and it's been less than a month—she
told me she'd be back in thirty days to see what kind of progress I was
making on the house. And that if we were making no progress, they would
come pick the camper up. If we were trying to make progress in the house
then they would leave it. But she never said they'd leave it for how
long. I've read in the paper what you're saying, eighteen months. But
I've never—she did not tell me that. She just said, "Somebody will be
back to check in thirty months, thirty days, excuse me."
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And if these people come to your house, how have they treated you? Have
you felt weird about our officials who visit?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The FEMA inspector that came here—very arrogant, rude. He was not
interested. And I think our $2,855.10 showed that. He was not interested
in us at all. He
Page 40
came from California, a very rude
man. And I would have appealed that but I didn't have time. I've not had
time to appeal or do anything other than keep our head above the water.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So you called the FEMA number at some point.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I did. When I was—we had not even come back in here. We knew the water
was in here.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Where were you then, at your—?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We were evacuated down the street between here and Wallace.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. And you were at this shelter or someone's house.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I was at someone's house.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And you called from that number?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I called—. Her phone was out so we went into town where there was a
phone and I called from there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You called an 800 number to FEMA.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I did.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And how long was it before this man from California came after that?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I do not remember.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
A week probably.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Or longer. I'm not sure.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And so one day he knocks on the door here.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No. He called the night before.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Where you were staying?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm.
Page 41
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And said that he was—. By that time we had moved to our daughter's. He
called Tina's and he said he would be here the next day. And he was. And
he just came in and looked.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How was he arrogant?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Just didn't have time. It was like he walked through and walked right
back out. And he punched some numbers on a little handheld computer. And
anything—. I remember asking a couple of questions. Right now I can't
remember what they were. And it was like, "What does it matter to you?"
And I don't remember exactly what he said. The feeling that I got from
him. And I think I even asked him where he was from and he said he was
from California. He went right over to one of our neighbor's and he was
the same way there.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Do you think it's been fair across the board? I mean, has this FEMA man
gone somewhere and thought, "Oh this is $12,000." And you think that's
unfair or—? I mean, not to say that you don't want the other people to
get that. I'm just wondering about whether you think they've had fair
judgments about things.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
In my opinion, none of us have. I had the same amount of water that I
know another lady had. She got $9,000 and I got $2,855. I'm glad the
lady got the money. There's not a problem with that at all. But I know
we weren't paid enough even to make it safe and livable. But I'd never
been experienced with FEMA before so really what did I know either, you
know? I really didn't know.
But I think—. I don't think they've been fair because one adjuster might
go over across the street. He might be in a better mood that day and he
might do more for that
Page 42
fellow than he did for me.
I don't know if that's a good way to look at it. But I think some of
that happened.
Now Hunt, Governor Hunt, when he got his money, the governor's relief
fund, he sent out checks. And you went down and you signed your name up
and he gave everybody the same amount. I think that's the way to do
things. If you're not going to take it—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How much was that?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. I got three hundred and some dollars the first time, a hundred and
some dollars the second time and $308 the last time.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So roughly $800.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Roughly. I think about is what I had. But if you're not going to take
what I paid in in taxes and what the fellow next door paid in in taxes.
If you're not going to do it that way and that's where the money comes
from if I understand it right. This federal money that we are being
issued back—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
From FEMA.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Uh-huh. It comes from our taxes. Is that right?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I think that's right.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I am a big taxpayer. I work hard. I try to save my money. And every time
I make money I am punished by taking those taxes out at that point.
Okay. Now I'm punished because I've tried to save and have something.
This fellow over here on my other side—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You—before we go on. You're punished how by saving because it appeared
that you had something you think you got less.
Page 43
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yes.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. That's part—
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I was a homeowner. I was not a renter. I was a homeowner. A renter—and I
hate to say exactly what they got. But they got for the contents of
their trailer. You know, I didn't get anything for the contents in
here.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's because I put it up.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But I wouldn't have if all the furniture had been destroyed. They
wouldn't have paid me for furniture.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's what I'm hearing from other people.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's right.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But if they're not going to do it on what I paid in and what this man's
paid in, then I'll tell you something, that little pot's going to run
dry after a while. Because if they don't put me back on my feet or I get
back on them by myself, I can't pay any income taxes. But if you keep
taking out of that one little pot that we're putting our tax money in
and you don't make it equal and at least help equal, we're going to give
out of money.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Good point. So we've gone over the state. We've gone over FEMA. We've
gone over volunteer agencies. Were there any others? There was—. Were
any local officials involved at all?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Charlie Albertson.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Charlie Albertson came to our farm at least twice.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I don't know him. What is he?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Came here one time.
Page 44
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He's a senator.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
A-U—?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Came to our house.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Albertson, A-L-B-E-R-T-S-O-N.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Oh, okay. You said there were several officials that came to the farm.
Was he one of them?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
He was. And he even came here. Russell Tucker, he's our house of
representative. He's been very helpful. Our county extension agents have
been very helpful.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How have they helped?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
James Parsons has been over the poultry end of that. He's visited our
farm. We've been to him for advice.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And the clay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well we went to see the governor about the clay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You and James Parsons.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. Right. And a neighbor of mine, June Cavenaugh and I rode together.
We visited with the governor, the speaker of the house. I can't remember
who the other person who was involved.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Department of Agriculture, maybe.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't remember. I wish I did. But I don't remember. But we went
because of the clay. We were appealing for help for the farmers with the
clay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The clay is used for what?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It pads the bottom of the poultry house.
Page 45
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You have sandy soil.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. Once this water came in and they came in with the—and then the
water went out and then they came in with the machines to get the litter
out. It took a lot of the dirt and sand out. And you need a hard pad to
go back in on with the turkeys.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Does it prevent the water in there from leeching out into the water
table or was that just to—?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It was just to build it up and it gives you good solid foundation.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So they—. How much does it cost to put in that soil in the turkey
houses?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It's probably going to run what? We just paid the check this morning for
nine hundred dollars I believe it was. That's just bringing the clay
there and dumping it out.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's the cost of the clay.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yep. And then we've got to get it in the buildings and leveled out.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And you've got to have more clay.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We've got to have more clay. It's probably going to cost six to seven
thousand dollars per house to get it back.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Six or seven or sixty-seven?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yep.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay, six or seven thousand.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I'd say around seven thousand dollars to the house.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
To rebuild the pads. And then to replace and repair equipment the
average cost per house is about $32,000. That's if you have to replace
everything. These are some things that we went to Raleigh about. The
financial assistance in the form of grants
Page 46
replacing poultry house pads even if a producer had the flood insurance,
financial assistance in the form of grants for repairs and replacing
equipment, and replacement income for lost lots. But the only thing that
was talked was the clay.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So no income replacement.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
No, sir, nothing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And they did—so, let's see, six or seven thousand times—how many houses
do you have?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Six.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Six. And you say you have gotten a grant from the governor's fund.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Forty-eight thousand would be the total and the grant would be
seventy-five percent of that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. So that's been your most generous offer and gift through the whole
process, right?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It sure has.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's been very helpful.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And there were some problems encountered with the contact of our
integrator with the growers. That was one thing. We didn't have phones
to call and to see what to do and what we should do. And then when the
people came to the farm to get the dead birds out there was a lot of red
tape. And there was just—.
Those were some things that they said they need to be, that they need to
work on. And the disposing of the dead animals. And too the flooding
washed out roads. That's just some of the things that were problems that
we had no control over. There was nothing we could do.
Page 47
CHARLES THOMPSON:
There's no flood insurance on turkeys. I mean the company doesn't make
you have any insurance or is there any you can even buy.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We don't own the turkeys. They own that turkey in that house right now.
He's a day old when they bring him. But we do not own the bird. We own
the houses, the equipment and do the labor. But they own the bird.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
But they have no insurance on it. Apparently their insurance is that you
have them. I mean that you are the ones raising them.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
It's like this when the birds are living it belongs to the company and
when he's dead, he's mine. [Laughs]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Comes out of your total check. You have to work to make sure these birds
are healthy and deliver as many as you can at the end of the process.
It's in your best interest, of course. Well, there are a lot of things
that we could talk about about the poultry industry, but we won't.
And so, let's see. Why don't we talk about—you'd mentioned, I think it
was during lunch about the possibility of relocating. The issue of maybe
what if there was an offer of a buyout and you would be taken out of
this flood plain and so on. What would you—?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I think we would consider that pretty hard especially on the farm
because it's on the flood zone. Up here, probably not.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You want to continue to live here but you might consider a buyout for
your farm?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Right.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
If somebody offered a good price.
Page 48
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I sure would.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Now why continue to live here if you weren't turkey farming?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Well we might not either but probably would. There's some mighty pretty
places in Pennsylvania. [Laughs] But I just don't know. I don't know.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So did we talk on tape about the idea—I think we did—about you appealing
a decision. I think you did say that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
For the—
CHARLES THOMPSON:
For the FEMA.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
FEMA. I don't know but they said that you could appeal and you had so
many days. But at that time I didn't have time to do anything except
what had to be done that hour.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And now your days have run out. When you have a little more time you
can't appeal it anymore.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I think there was a time frame on it. And then I heard so many different
people and everybody seemed to be so disgusted. I thought, "Well what's
the use?" that was—I mean I brought home the SBA papers, too. Looked at
them many times. And I said, "Aaron, what is the point?" You know. So we
never did.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So, how long's it going to take? How many years are you going to take to
build back? Have you thought about it?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Not really, but it's going to take a long time especially the barn, the
antique barn.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You have turkeys again.
Page 49
AARON CAVENAUGH:
We have turkeys. And when we get this clay in these four houses and get
everything back to working normal then it'll be pretty near right. It'll
be on a regular basis. And we'll get turkeys every thirteen, fourteen
weeks. That's about what a cycle runs.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And once you get back in the cycle.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. You keep rolling. With no problems everything should get back to
normal, you know, within a year I'd say.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay and then—. When do you hope to be here back in the house?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Maybe by the spring it should be back together.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You are making progress. You've talked to people about adding the heat
ducts back in.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh yeah. We just hadn't decided which route we want to take. We'd like
to do it ourselves and save that money.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I mean twelve hundred dollars against forty-one, that's a big
savings.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It sure is.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
If we can do it that cheap and it works and I don't see no reason why it
shouldn't.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That would be Michael and Randy's job.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They can do it.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Crawling under the house. [Laughs]
AARON CAVENAUGH:
That's a good job for them little boys.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Especially if you use flexible duct.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Oh yeah. That's what they're going to use.
Page 50
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's possible.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, Randy's going to come—. See he would have to come from
Laurinburg.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
They probably could do it in two days.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Are the vents already in?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Oh yeah, the vents are here.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
We just got a new heating system about three years ago. New ductwork,
the whole works.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Plus remodeled the whole house last fall.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You're not the first people who've told me that.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Oh, that's terrible. Probably could have bought a new house with
remodeling money and what we're going to have to remodel with this
time?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So how long—how many—. Let's see. Did y'all go to school here in this
community?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Went to Chinqua-Penn and I went to Wallace.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
( )
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Oh. So you've got a lot of history here.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah, been here all my life.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I'm from Harolds.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Right.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Been here thirty-two of hers it's twenty-three.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
That's how long y'all've been married.
Page 51
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Thirty-three years the eighteenth of December. That won't be but what,
two weeks. How have I took it? [Laughs]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So, have—you didn't first move into this house, of course, because you
built that since then. But where did you move to first when you were
first married?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
When we were first married we had a little house—I owned it down between
here and the farm. It was what, ten years old. And it was just eleven
hundred square feet, I believe. It was a four-room house. We lived there
for what, ten years, eleven, something like that.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
But we had it paid for six months after we were married. It was sixty
dollars a month and we paid six payments. He had already paid most of
that ( ).
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Is it still there?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Still there. It was flooded.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It's not one of those torn down though?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
No.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How many houses have been torn down through here?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I would say twelve to fifteen. That could be off one or two either way.
But I'm sure somewhere in that number. Some of them were nice houses,
too.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Oh, they were.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. I hated it. Russell's daddy—Russell owned the house. It was torn
down.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Did you come up with a number that's about—?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I don't—I was trying.
Page 52
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Well that's okay—twelve to fifteen. You were talking about Russell
English. And back in their place are trailers. Did FEMA when they tear
down a house—? Is that the way they provide a trailer back? Or is the
person—?
AARON CAVENAUGH:
I have no idea.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Maybe they condemn certain houses and they have to tear them down.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
The way I understand it, and I could be wrong. We talked about that this
morning. If a house is condemned, it's condemned because it's not
livable. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not fixable.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
So I don't think that if they're condemned that FEMA's putting anything
back for these people. I could be wrong. They might be giving them the
rental assistance. In fact I talked with a boy this morning and he said
that he was fixing to get $10,000. And it was called rental assistance.
But in reality his house was condemned. That he was going to get that
$10,000 and he was going to put it on another one. So I don't really
know. There's so many different ways you can hear.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Volunteer—. Why don't I pause and —.
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
We were talking about the flood itself and the horse that you had that
you bought in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Yeah. He was an Amish horse. He was a saddle bred horse. A good buggy
horse. He'd do just like you'd tell him to do. We went back to next
Friday morning. And he was in water probably up to his knees and we just
hooked a lead line to him. And we were in the boat and we just led him
all the way down 41 for about
Page 53
probably five miles
to a higher ground where he was safe. And we left him there for about,
oh me, five weeks probably to the auction. And then we sold him. But he
was a good horse.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Sparky.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Sparky was his name. He'd pick up them feet high.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
It just reminds me that we didn't talk at all about you having school
groups come into the river house. And that says something about y'all
that I'd like to talk about.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well we had a lot of good times at the river house. And we would have
school groups that would come out. And when the teachers would come
normally there was like three rooms. And so they sectioned them off in
colors. And one group would maybe sit out on the deck with story telling
time. Another group would see a demonstration of butter, making homemade
butter. And the other group would—we had a demonstration of quilting.
And then Aaron did buggy rides for them.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
With the horse, Sparky?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
With Sparky and the buggy.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Was it an Amish buggy that you had?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
It was a wagon.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Wagon. You could put ( ) ten to the ride.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
And they'd come and stay the whole day. They'd bring a bag lunch. And
normally they came at Christmas. So we had the house decorated usually
by Thanksgiving.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The river house?
Page 54
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Um-hmm. And then at Christmas we invited the area churches and the
ladies and we had something called ladies day. The ladies would come and
we'd have refreshments in the afternoon. A lot of us younger folks—I had
lots of help because they would help bring the goodies. They would also
help when the older ladies came they'd go get them and bring them with
their transportation. And then they helped them up and down the steps.
It was just a fun time. And had a lot of community breakfasts and
suppers all down at that river house. It was just a fun place.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
And are y'all going to have that again this year or you probably won't.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Not this year.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Not this year.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Maybe later.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
The goal is to open all that back up and have the children again.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well I don't know if we've gotten too old or not in all this. We've got
to see how much energy we're going to have left after all of this.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
You mean the flood has caused you to get older?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
I feel like we've aged a lot.
AARON CAVENAUGH:
Very much.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
A lot. We've aged a lot. But maybe when some of the stress is off we'll
feel better. But now, I mean, it's all we can do to just keep doing the
things that have to be done on the farm and here. There's no time for
anything else.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
How about I say to close why don't we mention any things that you can
think about as recommendations for FEMA or for any other agency, for the
governor's
Page 55
office to know. Perhaps some of this
information can be used for that purpose although I can't guarantee it.
But in case if it's ever used for that let's list anything we can think
of.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well the only thing I can list would be that I think they should make
sure that everything is fair. But that's all I'd know to say because I
don't know what—. I only know hearsay things.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Okay. If you were the man in California, from California, and you were
in the house, how would you be fair?
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
How would I be fair? I would make sure that I listened to what the
person—if they had any questions I wouldn't turn them off, first of all.
I'd be genuinely interested. And I'd go in there with an open mind. And
I would think, "What if this were my house and I had nothing? What if
this was my mama? What would I want done?" To me—and I know he did it—he
was just as rude with his ways and his actions. And we did try to ask a
couple of questions. He just said it didn't matter. He told Vicky and
them down there. What'd he tell them?
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
CHARLES THOMPSON:
In terms of recommendations about agriculture or—. Oh you mentioned that
you did receive something from Jim Graham. We forgot to list that. You
might say something about receiving that or any other recommendations
you have for people who work in agriculture for farmers who are victims
of a disaster like this.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Well one thing we would like to say is that Jim Graham, our commissioner
of agriculture, took up a farmers' disaster relief fund. And he said
that every dollar would be given to the farmers. And I know that we did
receive money from Mr. Graham and we greatly appreciate it. I wrote him
a thank you note. And we did appreciate it. It
Page 56
came in good on our—to help with the repairs on our farm. Now what was
the other question?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Any other recommendations for people who work in agriculture to assist
people in a flood like this in a future.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Like other—?
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Yes, helping farmers.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Oh, well, we've had—. I don't know if we said this on there before. We
had a group that came from Pageland that had been affected by Hugo. I
think Aaron told that.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
I think so.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
Okay. That was a godsend because when they came they knew exactly what
to do.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
Put farmers together with other farmers.
JENNY CAVENAUGH:
That's right. And we think that if this happens some place else, we've
already said we'd like to go volunteer and give hands ( ). Yes. I think
that's a good thing.
CHARLES THOMPSON:
So maybe keeping a list of people who receive help and who give help and
somehow getting in touch with people at some point, having some sort of
network might be a good idea.