Saving livestock from a flood
Connor describes rescuing five cows and a horse from floodwaters, floating them to safety as jet-skiers raced by.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with James W. (Jim) Connor, December 19, 1999. Interview K-0818. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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There were five cows and a horse.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
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Were youߞI've got the tape running. Will you tell
the story of what happened?
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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Well, when the water got up so high back in this pasture area, he
brought them up here and got them on his porch. You see, the water still
got up about six or eight inches in there. It kept on coming on up and
so he had a floating dock over by Holland's Restaurant. We
cut it loose and backed it up against the porch and the first trip we
took the horse and three cows out. Took two johnboats and put them like
a tug and pushed them right up to Highway Fifty-Three to the forestry
station and put them off. We came back and got the rest of them and took
them up the same way.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
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They just stood on this dock.
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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Yeah. It was Jimmy and his wife. They road on the barge and kept the
animals calm. We put some feed on there for them so they'd be
munching. They rode pretty good. The only time you'd have a
problem if another boat tried to get around you and caused a wake and
make it rock. Then they'd get kind of nervous. So we had one
guy hanging off the backߞyou know Randy Wells that had the
bulldog down there the other day. He stayed about
three hundred yards behind us and kept people from coming past us. We
had another guy three hundred yards in front of us making everybody
stop.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
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In boats.
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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Yeah.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
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There were people zooming around in their boats?
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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Yeah. Jet skis. They were havingߞ.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
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Just for fun.
- JAMES (JIM) CONNOR:
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Oh yeah.