#61: Banana Slug -The Weldon Melton Farm

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Weldon had to be exhausted. Sherry had no idea how her husband had endured for so long, or how he kept going. He just wouldn’t quit. He was a machine. He was the EverReady Bunny. When he’d first started building the levees, weeks before anyone else, she’d thought he was crazy, but he had been right. The flood water had just KEPT rising. If not for the massive dirt work that’d he’d thrown up and the other things that he had done, the house, shops and barns would have been underwater a long time ago.

“I’m about out of idea’s” he told her during a break. He’d been on top of the house levee with a shovel fixing leaks. He was pretty much at the end of his rope. He was, in a manner of speaking, robbing Peter to pay Paul now. There was only so much good he could do by moving dirt around on top of the berm. He really needed more dirt.

“I wish you had some sandbags.”She told him.

“If wishes were fishes” he wiped his brow with a nasty sweat stained dirty bandana, and began to repeat the old saying.

“What about all those bags of seed in the barn daddy?” Lucy, their young daughter, asked him.

“Oh, we couldn’t use those,” Sherry started to say

“because if we do we won’t have any spring planting?” Weldon looked at her and grinned.

“As if.” Sherry said. “Good point. Let’s go see what we can figure out.”

The old barn they used to store the field seed was upriver along the natural berm that they had used for one wall of the levy that had been raised around the house, the shop, and the garden shed. It shared part of the same natural berm. They walked along it’s top to get there. It was an old, old barn built the old fashioned way. It had been dug into the side of the berm, the same way the house had been built.. They had called it abank barn back in the day. The live stock had been housed on the bottom floor and the hay, grain and feed had been stored in the loft. The loft had a back door that was at ground level to the top of the berm.

They no longer had any livestock but the old barn was handy to store seed in. When the flooding had started Weldon had boarded up all the windows and doors at ground level then tacked a tarp across the wall. He’s dumped a few loader buckets of dirt up against it. The last time they’d checked it was still dry. That had been a while ago and the water was still rising. It might not have flooded yet.

Sure enough. The bottom floor was muddy but it wasn’t flooded yet even though the water was ten foot high against the outer wall. The old barn was full of sacks of seed. Some of the sacks were several years old. The seed was probably worthless for planting anyway but it’d make a good sandbag. Those poly bags didn’t rot and lasted damn near forever..

Many hours later Sherry was so tired that she couldn’t stand up. She had no idea how her husband kept going. They had removed all the bags of seed from the barn, transported them by hand cart to the house levy. They’d placed them in stacks in various locations to be used later as emergency sand bags. Weldon had been climbing the ladder for the last time with the last bag on his shoulder when the outside barn wall had sprung a leak. It had only taken minutes for the bottom floor to flood. He’d got out just in time.

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The Next Episode is
#62: Banana Slug -Levy, Skirmish Style…
The Previous Episode was
#60:Banana Slug -Islands in the Flood…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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