The Great Flood, and: The Pig

THE GREAT FLOOD

Hazard, Kentucky is no differentthan a hundred rural townsstarted as a trading post,funded by coal that turned lungs

and hands dark at the startof the twentieth century.And while I love the storyof Hazard folk making

the Stone Gap journey,having to go overBig Black Mountain, it isn’tthe shantytowns left behind

when businesses went bust,or the lung cancer cases,either, that draw me.It’s the dust and the mud

I come to see. The samedust and mud that alwaysclaim this town, where historyis marked by the water

that’s made Hazard its own—the Great Flood of ’27,the Great Flood of ’37,and the black magic sevens go on

into the Great Flood of ’57and…where before meteorologists,people could predictthe size of the maelstrom coming

by watching the dust swirlin the middle of the streets,a dirty gypsy-likefortune-telling dance,

with small bits of graveland earth twisting aroundbefore, overhead, the clouds’bulk fell in grey blocks

to the ground until the nearbyKentucky River bredand claimed a new space,making a Venetian world

where no public roads survived,just miles and miles of mud. Archivedphotographs have captured thismurky, wet distress: “Note the automobile

barely visible under the flood waters,”says the back of one. “Looking acrossthe river from town, see the iron bridge,”says another, “to the train depot that lays destroyed,”

and my personal favorite, “A view up Main Streetwhere Rita’s and Jonnie’s Diner is destroyed”written on the last. I don’t know why I like itso much, except that I can imagine

Rita and Jonnie, not unlike my own familyfrom these Eastern Kentucky parts, their determinedpupils paying homage when dilatedto round pieces of coal.

I see them methodically boarding uptheir restaurant, still holdingsand bags in their hands as the waterstarts to ooze through the door.

THE PIG

Now, you’d thinkif he had enough senseto get up there,he’d have enough senseto get back down.The archived photographdeifies him enough to give himthe benefit of the doubt,standing up there in 1957on that filing cabinet God-like.Reminds me of the Stonewall statue,the pig astride a filing cabinetand Jackson on his horse, bothof them with muscles tightand if they were dogs,their hackles would be up.He must’ve used the office chairthat was found floatingaround the roomto get to his metal refuge.And that must’ve been whyhe couldn’t get down.Those witch-possessedHazard, Kentucky watersrose so much that even somethingfairly big like an office chaircould just float away.Huge things could driftaround, too, like cars. We’re not talking about today’s tinyFord Fiestas. We mean behemothgas-guzzlers with testosterone-infusednames like Thunderbird,emasculated, bobbingaround in the floodas if they were a little boy’s toyboats in the bathtub.Whatever you do,don’t call the pig cute.