Note: I mentioned this story in Ep 12 of the SM500 series on Some Guy Rides and promised I'd try to find it. I pulled this out of the deep dark archive from 1997.
I watched my sister wade out into the murky water. Murky because the earth at the bottom of the lake was never meant to be underwater. My grandmother’s house is down there somewhere.
The electric company came in like they owned the world, like they had a right to everything, and bought up the entire valley at “market value” one plot at a time. My grandmother wouldn’t hear of it, right from the start. They thought that she was senile, that she didn’t understand. After all, it had been in all the papers for nearly five years- that the dam was going to be built. That the handful of people who lived in the valley weren’t important compared to the jobs it would bring. Compared to the “higher quality of life” hydroelectricity would bring. but my family had lived in this valley for four generations- and while it had been tough at times- there surely wasn’t anything that would be fixed by flooding our home. That’s what grandma said.
Most of the property in the valley was owned by the federal government who had already agreed to let the electric company rent it for 100 dollars a year for a thousand years. There was meeting after meeting at the church about the dam and of course, at first, the entire community was against it for all sorts of reasons. Everyone had a terrible feeling about the dam coming, but couldn’t quite put it into proper words. I knew what it was though. It was the fact that the history of 150 families living scattered up and down the valley would disappear. This church where my parents were married would be gone, the beautiful cemetery where my ancestors were buried would be gone, the creek behind my house where my sister and I had smoked the butts of our father’s hand-rolled cigarettes would be gone, the playground by the school where I got my first kiss, the cinder block store where my father played cards and swapped stories, our clothes hanging from the line between the two ageless maples in the yard, the apple tree that our family planted when our house was finished that now dropped fruit onto the grass, the barn where my grandfather had nailed the countless tails from my favorite memories of him and I coon hunting... all of it gone. But as soon as they started talking about the money people would receive for their land everyone began to see the electric company’s side of things. The families who gave in first got ripped off the hardest. Those first offers seemed like a lot to all of us, but they were nothing compared to what was to come.
My grandmother stood firm through all of it, never budging. I could feel the pressure building in our house. My father knew that it wasn’t right to give up our house, our history. But he also knew that we couldn’t win. He knew that the dam was going to be built no matter who was right. He had a family to think of. He couldn’t give up everything just because of a principle.
I walked with him to my grandmother’s house. He didn’t say a word to me the whole way. I tried to get him in a good mood. He always liked telling things to me, like the names of the trees and plants, old Indian legends about the land, he loved pointing out what we called the Cherokee crazy trees that had been tied down generations ago as saplings to grow in crooked ways to mark trails and boundaries. But he couldn’t even hear me. He just stared at the road, his eyes disappearing in his brow, his frown so heavy it practically dropped off his face. Finally, I took his hand and walked in silence beside him. I’d never seen my father like this. He was weak and beaten. He was growing old. I was growing up. I was scared. We got to grandma’s front steps and he looked at me for the first time with a stare that ordered me to stay outside. I had a dreadful feeling like I was becoming heavier. I felt like I was never going to see my dad again. And I didn’t. He walked through that door and changed.
We moved to a small cookie-cutter house along with most everyone else from the valley, into a pre-made little town that was planned and built by the electric company. My dad stood in line with all the other men at the electric company office, which occupied the spot where I would have put the church. He got a job with the lumber company that would be clearing the land to prepare it for the dam. They started at the far end of the valley and on my way to school I’d look out and notice the ground appearing in wide swaths, the trees disappearing as easily as my hair when the barber took his shaver to it to give me a crew cut. As easy as that. My dad came home sweaty and strong, but it seemed like a light wind could easily carry him away.
My grandmother stood her ground and eventually, her plot of land looked like a deserted island in the middle of a brown dirty sea. We never went to see my grandmother as a family anymore, but everyone except dad would sneak down to see her all the time. Everyone in the newly built town said she was a stubborn old biddy, crazy by the looks of it. But she wasn’t crazy. I’d never seen her so active and talkative. She talked more than she ever had before; stories of her childhood, the history of our family, things that I had never heard before. She glowed as she told me, she smiled, she hugged me, and told me she loved me. I felt safe with her, close to her, happy that we had become the best of friends.
All this time, as they cleared the trees, another company was building the dam on the opposite end of the valley. It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen like they were building a mountain. They said that seven men had already died working on it. On Sunday I’d go down there with my sister and some other kids and climb around. Throwing rocks into the river below or looking out over what was becoming a giant smooth bowl, pointing at the dot in the distance that was my grandmother’s house.
It took a couple of years, but they finally finished. Everyone in town was panicking because all but a few of the jobs were gone now. The electric company staged a huge festival on the day that they would start flooding the valley. The town was decorated, there was a band playing, a big picnic with free hotdogs, and even fireworks for later that evening when it got dark. People came from all over to watch it. Men with suits and cigars stood around the stage drinking and shaking hands. Someone was making a speech at a podium. People were selling things on the street. There was a parade. And then, the siren started. We all knew what it was. We’d been told for weeks that there would be a siren to warn everyone that the flooding was beginning. But no one was ready for that sound, like a dying animal condemning its murderers with its last strong breath. The sound of it went right into both ears like arms of smoke diving straight into your body and grabbing your fast-beating heart and squeezing slowly. It sounded like war, like at any moment we would look up and see the bombs coming bigger and bigger towards us, toward our progress, toward our greed. At that moment, no one within the radius of that sound made a move or took a breath. You could hear the absolute silence underneath the wailing of that siren.
They flooded the valley. It didn’t come in a frightful gush of water like we had all expected. It came slowly like the valley was using all of its strength to fight it, to route the water away. But it happened, over three weeks the valley gave way to an enormous lake.
Back when the siren had started my sister screamed, crying for our grandmother, and started running into the valley towards her house. My parents caught her and held her. They told her not to worry. They told her that grandma had finally given in and had gone to stay with some family we had in the northern part of the state. They calmed her and told her that we would go visit grandma soon. She rubbed her red eyes and looked up at my father. She smiled through her tears, “You promise daddy? we’ll go visit grandma soon?” My mother held my sister’s face into her hair and my father turned and walked away.
I knew the truth though and I smiled at the secret grandma and I shared. She had called me her little helper and I had done everything she had asked. I had nailed her rocking chair to the front porch and had brought rope and cut pieces of it which she had me tie to the arms and legs of the chair. She sat down and tried it out. She laughed and said, “Well, it doesn’t rock so good anymore, but it’s perfect honey! You’re a good boy, I love you- remember that.” She smiled and hugged me, I love her so much.
They named it Lake Goliath, I guess because it was so big. It really was beautiful. I built a raft and would paddle out on it, just like grandma had told me to. I’d get where I thought I was above grandma’s house and lean over the edge of the raft and put my face in the water and drop small rocks to watch them flutter down and disappear. I swear I could see my grandmother’s house, and her laughing, waving, and rocking freely in the chair I had nailed to her porch.
So good.
You painted a great picture, Ang. Well done. You had the writing chops way back then, too.