FLOOD ON THE FRIO

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CHICKENS IN THE MAYTAG??

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Margaret

FLOOD ON THE FRIO
by Margaret Ruth Rickets Dougherty

We were awakened by the symphony of the storm; the leviathan organ roll of thunder, the crashing cymbals of lightning, the staccato drumbeat of rain; basso on the roof, snare on the windows and fortissimo of the wind on the tree harps, back of the house.

For a moment I just lay there savoring its grandeur- for I have always loved a storm  Suddenly I was brought back to the now, by the voice of our littlest, “Mommy, I’m cold, and I’m scared!”  and the thought came to me, “Oh, not, not another rainy day!”

In New Mexico, where we lived on the Frio draw, three days of rain was  a long rainy spell. Four walls could hardly encompass enough space to accommodate  nine children, accustomed to roaming the hills and valleys, from “can see” to “can’t see”.  Add two adults and a pup and you just about had a houseful, almost any size house.  By the end of the second day, we all had a bad case of “cabin fever”, and I had a double helping.

The dominoes were slick from repeated shufflings and the Monopoly money was just about threadbare, and ready to go back to the mint.  My ears were ringing from twenty-four hours of “What can I do now?” and, “Stop pestering me.”

The rain finally stopped about noon and we had a reprieve from children as well.  Kids scattered like quail before the swooping of a hawk.  The big ones went up the draw to see if it was running yet, and the little ones to play in the puddles nearby.  

The child reprieve was of short duration.  They all came bursting back into the house, with the least ones in front, shrieking, “Can we go too?”  The others were shouting, ‘Hurry, if you want to see the draw rise!  It’s almost to the barn now!”  Hurry we did!  Dinner could wait, the draw wouldn’t.  

The muddy water was rapidly licking up the distance as we reached it.  About fifty feet behind the headwater was a seething, turbulent wall of water, crested with foam and trash.  Cowchips danced along on the waves like leaves.  The dry carcass of a cow went bounding by, end over end, scattering bones at every turn.  Several huge dead trees dashed by, rolling and bucking like first ride broncs.  Almost together, Cookie and Bill said, “They look just like ships.”  Wylie, the middle one, said, “I think I’ll get on one and go to Texas to see Grandma and Grandpa!”   We watched spellbound as they wrenched out the water gap north of the waterlot, and whirled madly toward the big windmill and on down the draw.

Shortly hunger became stronger than the fascination of the flood and we returned to the house just in time to rescue the roast.  Dinner over, they were gone again like tumbleweeds before a norther.  

An ominous black cloud draped the western sky, with highlights of an eerie green, which made us sure it was a hail cloud.  It started raining so suddenly that everyone was drenched.   It continued to rain intermittently most of the afternoon but the hail did not materialize.  Out came the weary dominoes, the bedraggled Monopoly and a limp jig-saw puzzle.  There was an occasional recess to look out the window at the draw as it continued to rise.  By mid-afternoon there were relapses of “cabin fever”, and just a touch of “stir crazy” on my part.  

There was a lull in the downpour, at chore time and the two oldest boys made a beeline for the corral, happy for once to do the chores, anything to get out of the house.  They did not tarry long, bounding back in to report that the cows were across the draw bawling plaintively to their calves, and that the draw was about a mile wide, all over the flat in which the houses were located, and running through the yard.  

By bedtime the rain had stopped again and the water had receded from the yard and most of the flat.  All of the children were in bed, and my husband was engrossed in helping Ellery Queen solve another murder.  Taking a flashlight, I went outside to refresh my outlook and my spirit.  There was a sky full of brilliant stars, but there was a halo of cloud along the horizon and around the moon.

The rhythmic chorus of frogs was muted by the sound of the rushing water.  There was an ominous different sound to the water.  As I went toward it, I met it!  And it should have been running the other way.  It was running the wrong way!  Water can’t run uphill, but it was.  Something was mighty wrong!

I had a runaway going back to the house to report that the Frio had lost its sense of direction.  David and Noel (he says he slept through it) hit the floor running, and with Archie, grabbed tubs, as we all headed for the brooder house, where there were two hundred six-week old chicks.  Though we all worked frantically, we were only able to save about fifty, for as that icy water hit them, they keeled over as though they had been pole-axed.  

The water continued to run west and rise until it was from eighteen to twenty inches deep all over the flat.  As we waded in the water, which was just like liquid ice, we knew that hail had fallen somewhere.  We tried to anchor things that might be carried away when the draw did start running the right way again.  

After an hour or two, the water did change direction again and we all went back to bed.  When morning came, we found the water gone from the flat, but it had left from six inches to a foot of silt, beat oft grass, sagebrush and other vegetation mixed with cowchips, rabbit pellets and even dead birds.  

The first order of business was to dress the chickens that we were unable to save the night before, for we had bled them immediately..  They were so covered with silt that it looked about hopeless, but someone suggested the Maytag, and it was just the thing.  After a few gentle swishes, they were clean as a whistle, and we soon had a freezer full of broilers.

As we made an inspection trip over the ranch the next morning, the trailer was gone, as well as all loose lumber, and a pair of small water tanks.  In all of the side draws we found stacks of the same sort of debris near the house, though where it had swirled into these it was sometimes as much as four feet thick, and covered an area of an acre or two.  The trash had so insulated the hailstones, that we could dig in and find them almost intact, almost all summer.  We also found that the big trees we had seen riding the flood had lodged against the bridge, in fact, building a dam, with the continual buildup of trash.   Finally the weight of all this became too much and the abutment of the bridge gave way at the south end, and that was when the draw started running in the right direction again.

Later we did find the trailer and one of the tanks.  The other one must’ve gone to Texas.

There had been other floods, bad ones, but this one made history.  Once before a driver had to leave his school bus in the draw.  (WD note One of the reasons that the Grady School District paid Clovis to haul the Doughertys to school in Clovis). A neighbor, a hired hand, had to abandon his house and rode the flood holding on to a mattress with two young boys on it.  They all survived but needless to say they were just about frozen, as he was only wearing his “long handles”, by the time they made it to another neighbor’s house.

The quail crop was really short that year, and we saw very few young rabbits, except the ones we uncovered in the trash drifts.  We put a lot of the finer drift on the garden, which made wonderful compost, already mixed.  The water did not get into the house, but it just about ruined the floor, for it certainly was lapping at our doorstep, and it took all summer for it to dry out under the house and for the floor to settle again.  

We had high water many times in the forty years that we lived on the Frio, but we never again saw it run the wrong way.  In 1933 the water did get in our house, when Noel was a baby, and twice in 1936 in May, just a few days after Wylie was born on the second.  I never heard the last of some one else having to clean up the mess.  The first time it got in the house in 1936, I had a very bad rigor when the baby was four days old and had been very feverish, so had to drink lots of water.  There was usually a pitcher of water by my bed, but there wasn’t that night, and I was dry as a powder house.

When I finally roused Archie enough to get me water, and he swung his feet over the side of the bed into about three inches of water, and believe me, he woke up!  His remark was classic, for he said, “If you will just get your glass, you can dip up all you can drink!”

Where the trash was so deep there was no grass that year, but it was really great the next year.  We had a super abundance of wildflowers the next year also.  The flat east of the houses was a sea of purple horse mint and almost all of the prairies were lit by Candles of the Lord, until the cows ate them.  In the fall, the pastures were really seas of “wild statice”, which is actually buckwheat, sometimes called “snow weed”.   

Another time when we had high water, when Bill was in high school, he and a friend rode the draw in a small drinking tub.  It was leaky, so they had to spend most of their time bailing or pulling it to shore when bailing wasn’t enough. Since it was round, it was plenty difficult to navigate, and being leaky made things quite interesting.."

Floods on the Frio were exciting and frustrating if they caught you on the side away from the house.  They were sometimes frightening, especially when it ran the wrong way; sometimes devastating, though generally it did not last long at real high stage, but they never failed to be interesting. 

Margaret Ruth Ricketts Dougherty

1907-2003