"Past Spring Showers Have Been Gushers!" - Time Out #188

Ahhh... Springtime in Oklahoma.

As I was taking my daily 2-mile walk recently, I heard the National Weather Service give it's extended forecast for this spring throughout our wonderful state.

MUCH wetter than normal is predicted by the experts I heard.

Wow, I thought, and my memory immediately went back to 1957 and 1959 when we experienced record, "100-year floods" within that brief, 2-year time span in Our Town.

So, I will dig into my memory bank once again to relive those local events of long, long ago.

First, the 1957 spring disaster. I was in Miss Lillis Lawhon's 4th grade class at iconic Westwood Elementary School. My father, Col. C. H. Breedlove, was renting our family home at 1521 West 4th Avenue (@ South Walnut Street). This area of our city didn't experience any bad flood issues, but my father did drive our family car. a 1956 red/white 4-door Chevrolet, all over town for us to see the high water, devastating many of our citizen's homes and properties. Just east of downtown, the Couch Park area, historic Washington School, and west of town, were all pronounced flood areas, involving closing city streets, and filling many homes with dirt, water and grime. A few months earlier, my father had purchased a large city lot at 2404 West 9th Avenue, where he planned to have a new home built for us. Since we had a special interest in that western neighborhood, we drove out there to see what had happened on the "edge" of Stillwater. Cow Creek was completely over its banks, creating a "lake" just west of our newly purchased property. The college swine farm land was mostly underwater, too. West of the old "Silver Bridge" on State Highway 51, there was enough flood water on both sides of the highway to, in my wonderful father's famous words, "to swim a horse". Fortunately, no flood waters got inside our future neighbors to the west, Irene and "Dutch" Bishop[. However, Cecil Colclasure (owner of Cecil's Store in the college Student Union) reportedly got about 30" of water inside his newly built home in the "bottom" land, just about a block west of the Bishop home. At 10-years-old, I was amazed at all the high-wheeled trucks and boats moving around on some of our isolated, water-covered, city streets and private properties. My dad would drive us on a street that displayed a "CLOSED" wooden roadblock, and stop. Then, we would get out to view the activity taking place at that particular flooded location. I vividly remember the fast-moving flood waters, and seeing all the unfortunate homes with several feet of filthy water and debris surrounding the unfortunate structures.This entire situation was probably my first experience I ever had had with a natural disaster, and it had a chilling effect on my young mind. Fast forward a mere 2 years later, and Our Town experienced another epic flood. By then, our new home was completed, and we were living in it, on the far southwestern edge of town. The 1959 flood was even more pronounced in the area around our new home than the previous one, only 2 years earlier. This time, I remember helping with sandbagging around the Bishop's home, along with assistance from our fellow neighbors, as we were successful in keeping destructive water from getting inside the Bishop home. The Colclasure home, however, reportedly got even more water inside that time, and this resulted in the owners taking drastic action. The aftermath for them, following the second flood, was to remove all the beautiful, natural, Austin stone from the structure, have the home cut in half, then placed on a large house-moving truck, and physically transported several blocks east. In its new location, the home was re-attached, all the exterior stones put back on, and the structure is still there today, 60 years later! Yes, unbelievable engineering feats do happen, dear folks. I also recall the domestic horses just across the street from our new home had to be relocated during the flood, since most of their pasture and some of their enclosure were involved with the high water. I am sure many house pets and livestock all over Our Town didn't escape the ravages of these 2 incredible acts of Mother Nature 60 years ago. In conclusion, I am sure you would like to know if incredible flooding could happen again in our beloved community? My personal crystal ball is in the shop.