A Day To Remember Forty One Years Ago

It was June 26, 1965. My sister, Linda, and I were getting married. It was going to be a double wedding. In the year before the wedding, my parents had redone the main floor of our beautiful home at 210 Oak Street. And, a few months before the wedding, our town had one of the biggest floods in its history. We were two and a half blocks from the river. Everyone knew the dike would break from the pressure of the water. Some holes were made in the dike to let the river find its way into our town more slowly and with less force.

I remember sitting in the house and seeing the sheriff walk down the middle of the street with his megaphone saying, "Time to evacuate...everyone evacuate!" All the new redecorating was going to be ruined. But, then all my parent's friends swarmed into our house and before you knew it the new furniture had been moved upstairs and the new carpet had been pulled up and gotten as far up the stairs as it could. And, then, we all sat down and had donuts. There was nothing else left to do except wait for the water.

Our house was an older house. The baseboards were eight inches high. You had to go up four steps to the front door. When the Minnesota River had its way, it filled the entire basement with water and the entire first floor right up to the top of the baseboards. The new wallpaper was spared as was the new furniture and new carpet. Only a few weeks before the wedding, we rowed up to our front door and walked inside with our boots on. It was quite an experience. And, it smelled bad. You really don't want a river in your house.

I don't know how he did it, but when the river receded my father worked hard to restore the house to its original beauty. Floors had to be dried so they would hopefully lose some of the warping. It had to be disinfected I am sure. And, the new carpet had to be relaid, and perhaps the woodwork repainted.

With the flood making headlines, our little double wedding became a human interest story and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune paper came out to the house and did a human interest story. We made the headlines.

Below are two articles and a picture to mark the day.