This is a photograph of the cabin on Lake Ferguson outside of Greenville, Mississippi where we lived in the summer of 1966.
Martin Savidge of CNN did a story last Sat. (5-14-2011) about Lake Ferguson and the flooding Mississippi River. I can't find his video of Lake Ferguson on the web but it showed all the houses on Lake Ferguson 90 percent under water from the flooding Mississippi River. Lake Ferguson at one time was part of the Miss. River and then it got cut off when the river changed course.
All the homes on Lake Ferguson are built on the "wrong" side of the levee.
I just found the video mentioned above by Martin Savage at Lake Ferguson in Greenville on 5-14-2011.
Click on the link below to see his video on CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/weather/2011/05/14/savidge.ms.greensville.flooding.cnn.html
Next to us was a millionaire(you can see part of his greenhouse in the photo above) who retired from the lumber business in Arkansas and built a mansion on the wrong side of the levee. He also had a yacht he kept at his dock. He told us he wasn't worried about flooding since he had studied high water marks for the last 100 years and he was certain he was high enough to stay dry.
Last I heard he had moved back into Greenville some years ago.
If you enlarge the picture you can see the picnic table in front of the cabin. When I first moved in I was there by myself. I was pleasantly drunk and napping in the sun on the picnic table when I heard a voice speaking to me. It was the next door millionaire neighbor come to check out his new neighbor and introduce himself. I was slightly irritated that he disturbed my nap. But I got up and spoke to him in a friendly neighborly way. He seemed satisfied and finally left. I went back to sunbathing. I was not interested in him or his million dollar mansion. Though it always seemed a bit like The Great Gatsby story to me.
I had no tv or phone there when I first moved in alone. I was sitting there one night in the dark Mississippi night wondering how safe it was to be so far from town. Outside it was pitch black. No lights of any kind.
I was just wondering what I would do if someone came by when I heard footsteps crossing the gravel driveway. It seemed like a bad movie or comic book horror story.
Then a knock on the door. I went and opened it and in the porch light there stood a pretty young girl. Just like in the movies and the horror comics.
She asked if she could use my phone. I told her I didn't have one. She told me she had been parking with her boyfriend and he had told her to put out or get out so she got out of the car and was now on foot.
She then asked me if I would drive her into town(Greenville)which was 10 or more miles. I said sure I would drive her home. During all this conversation she did not seem worried in the least.
When the lake water would rise up to the level of the picnic table we would see many snakes swimming around. Water mocassins also known as cotton mouth mocassins would be left behind in our front yard when the waters of the lake would recede.
I had gotten a 22 caliber rifle at a pawn shop and we would shoot the snakes. My wife shot one. And once I was sleeping and she was sitting on that fence outside and saw a snake she called to me and woke me up to come shoot the snake so she could get off of the fence. I got the 22 rifle and shot the water moccasin.
My wife was pregnant with our first child at the time.
The summer of 1966 was what I used to refer to as "That Pregnant Summer". We had a cat that had a litter of kittens. Everywhere I looked that summer I seemed to see pregnant animals. Dogs, cats, people, you name it.
When the summer was over we left Lake Ferguson. And now in May of 2011 from all I can learn all the houses on Lake Ferguson are under water. Including, most likely, the cabin shown in the picture above. If it is still there 46 years later.
Some pictures of flooded Lake Ferguson on the link below.
http://williamluskcoppage.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-flood-pics-of-our-house-may-10-2011.html
