~Times That Were Scary And Boring~

Submitted Charles McClure

As a child growing up in Symsonia I heard a neighbor tell a story about her and her husband living in Paducah before, during, and for a while after the '37 flood. They lived in an apartment over a grocery store within walking distance of around ten minutes from downtown.
When the water started rising, no one thought it would reach the heights it did. After the water got in the street level floor of the store, they thought surely it would not get to the second floor of the building. They decided to wait it out, as her husband could not go to work because where he worked was under water too. Without electric power they had no lights just some candles And no radio after the battery went down. They were bored to death with nothing to do. All the books and magazines from the grocery had been read twice or more.
The stairs went down into the inside of the store and then you would exit out the back door, everything in the grocery that could have been carried upstairs was not because no one thought the water would get as high as it did.
They were talking upstairs, still dry. and one of them heard a funny noise coming from the store below. It was a bubbling or gurgling sound. They had trouble finding out what it was as it was repeated ever so often. After investigating it was found to be empty Soda pop bottles floating up on top of the water and bobbing around until they got enough water in them to make them sink. There was that bubbling or gurgling sound. She told that to pass the time they started to count the bottles as they heard them sink.
When the rescuers finally got them out in a rowboat she said they had counted over a hundred and twenty-five bubbling and gurgling bottles.

Created By Charles McClure

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