State We're In: Reflections on Minnesota History

The Flood

85 Marge barreTT s The Flood On Father’s Day, the sky opened up. Rain poured down. It poured down for two days until the Redwood River overflowed, gushing over banks, soaking every corner of our town. Local radio stations and papers reported news of the flood. It was even covered in the Minneapolis Tribune! On the front page, under the date June 18, 1957, ran a huge headline, “Marshall Battles Flood with Will,” with photos of our downtown buildings buried under water. We were lucky to get the Tribune—my older brothers, Jim and John, newspaper boys, could only deliver to the houses in our neighborhood, a high part of town. I tried to picture the roaring river about a mile from our house but could only see the sleepy stream that ran through Liberty Park, under the bridge and behind the band shell. We skated on the Redwood in the winter.Hemmed in by trees,their frozen branches stretching above us, we pumped along on its narrow ice. In the summer, we hopped across it or stepped over its rocks on picnics at the park or on Wednesday nights when the Marshall Band got boring. At the concerts, it was quiet down by the river,the music faint,far away.Some people listened from their cars and instead of clapping after songs honked their horns. That sound, too, faded in the ravine. Writer marge barrett recalls the flood that swept through Marshall, Minnesota, in 1957.Historians could do research about it in the Marshall Messenger or the Lyon County Independent. We could, no doubt, also find records in city and county offices, the hospital ,businesses,even.Barrett does not rely on any of those—as a historian would—because her aim is different. She is a writer, not a historian; this is a memoir. In the last few years, more than one memoirist has gotten into some trouble when others challenged the facts of the story. Perhaps Barrett talked to her brothers and sisters to compare her memory to theirs (did they get to the anniversary party or not?), but clearly this is a story of personal truth, accurate to her memory, true to her experience. Is it history? You decide. 86 u barreTT Mom and all seven of us kids together read the flood story spread out on the kitchen table.Mom muttered as she read,“Oh,my.How are we going to get to the anniversary?” We were supposed to be in Rochester the next day for my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Mom worried we wouldn’t make it. She also worried about my dad. He was a volunteer assistant civil defense director, but he’d assumed command when the flood marooned the chief at his home. Dad hadn’t been home for three days and three nights. Mom hadn’t even talked to him, because telephone lines were down. She’d been fretting, “Does he have dry clothes? What are they doing for food?” Reading the paper,she recited information out loud,such as “threefifthsofMarshall ’shomeswereeitheruninhabitableorwater-damaged.” Then she added, “I can’t believe it.” Suddenly she shouted, “Look, here’s your father!”And there he was,in the middle of page ten: “Sleep is the rarest commodity of all in Marshall.Pat Rogers,head of local civil defense,is gaunt and haggard as he works at his makeshift headquarters in the half-flooded police station. To him come trouble calls; from him flow orders to the guardsmen, police, firemen and volunteers.” Besides Dad and the anniversary, Mom worried about the flooding around us. Our house, on the corner of Minnesota and Charles Street, bordering Weiner Memorial Hospital, was dry, but below the hospital’s hill,toward our school,Holy Redeemer,we caught glimpses of the most amazing boats.Strange,amphibious,they rolled on wheels down to the edge of the water, then sucked up their wheels and floated out. People waved from their roofs, “Over here.” The amphibians cruised over to pick them up. My sister Mary, thirteen, and I, twelve, figured we were old enough to help the firemen with Operation Rescue, but Mom insisted we help her. “Go get groceries before Lloyd’s floods out.” She handed us a list. “Make it quick.” I didn’t know if she meant quick before all the store goods swam in the aisles—that would be fun, just grabbing whatever you wished for off a floating conveyor belt—or quick as in don’t dawdle...