Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993 TAG: 9303250102
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUCHANAN LENGTH: Medium
RIVER TOWN FACES FLOOD OF EMOTIONS
BARRING A MAJOR DOWNPOUR overnight, the riverside town of Buchanan in Botetourt County probably won't have much of a flood when they wake up this morning. But boy, were those people ready.
Folks here know how to keep things up.
Like bar stools. Like fishing tackle.
Practically everything was off the floor Wednesday at Big Daddy's restaurant, Smokey's Bait & Tackle and other Lowe Street businesses. The weather guys had forecast a flood.
So much unwanted water has passed through Buster's Car Wash over the years, owners have color-coded the electrical wiring for easy disconnecting and reconnecting.
That's one good thing about the James River always knocking at your door: You respect, as perhaps your river-fearing ancestors did, the power of water.
Buster Thrasher, 62, spat tobacco juice as he sat on a concrete curb at his car wash and watched logs, branches and even a Christmas tree whiz by in the river below. Country radio tunes twanged from the open door of a white pickup.
It was early Wednesday afternoon, and the river wasn't going to crest at 19 feet - a few feet above flood level - for a few more hours. That was piddly stuff, just half the water that knocked their socks off in the flood of 1985.
Thrasher wasn't taking any chances, though. "Long as you still see the brush coming down the river," he said, "you know it's still coming up."
"That's something my mama told me years and years ago," agreed his wife, Joyce, who plopped down beside him with some Nabs and a diet cola.
The 1985 mega-flood that uprooted Thrasher's car wash also swept cows and horses down the river. A mule too. Later, Joyce and Buster's son Jay saw the mule standing on railroad tracks downriver.
Buchananites make the best of their floods. Even puny ones like this week's produce instant reunions.
The Thrashers' whole family rallied Tuesday night to buckle down the car wash. Joyce's sister was across the river, worrying about six greenhouses full of spring plants she couldn't move.
"When a flood gets up, it hurts everybody," said Jay Thrasher.
His grandmother lost all her belongings to the flood of 1985. She died the next month. Her doctor said the destruction taxed her already weak heart.
That flood engulfed the town so quickly - before people could move their stuff - that fire and rescue workers now warn residents at the earliest predictions. They drove around Buchanan on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday letting people know the latest.
"You never know about this river," said Larry "The Cajun" Fodge, who helps run Smokey's Bait & Tackle. "It does what it wants to do."
Townspeople and the county Sheriff's Department are getting better at warning people, said Wayne Thompson. He owns Big Daddy's, the bait shop and a lumber business; and he has a helicopter, too. At least he could fly that particular property to higher ground on Wednesday.
Just three weeks ago, Big Daddy's almost flooded. The river licked at its door, then receded.
As if the usual rising waters weren't enough - from the river, nearby streams and ordinary mountain runoff - Buchananites fretted Wednesday that distant, melting snowbanks up the watershed would make matters worse. By afternoon, their fears were easing.
Dorothy Smith, 75, pulled two white rabbits - cut-out wooden ones, that is - up by their stakes in her yard when flood forecasts were dire. Wednesday afternoon, she was ready to plant her "Easter bunnies" in the ground again.
She and other people on Lowe Street, the lowest street in town, keep flashlights, candles and oil lamps in working condition for floods and blackouts.
She's a town councilwoman and she couldn't sleep Tuesday night. She kept walking across her expansive back yard to check the river. "One o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock. . . . " She kept going to the water's creeping edge.
Wednesday, more than five of her friends and neighbors came by to check on her - including neighbor Junie Smith on his CB-radio-equipped lawn tractor.
Flood waters forced Oprel McCulloch out of a nearby trailer park seven times in seven years until she moved to a hilltop outside town.
She came back Wednesday, though, to check on Dorothy Smith, as she does every flood. "That's the only way to do it," said an appreciative Smith, "[to] look after each other."