Flood Sweeps Some Into Time of Washboards and Iceboxes

How this city’s unshowered masses have coped without electricity and running water amid relentless floods has depended a lot on the generation that defines their values.

Babbretta Williams’ family is a case in point.

No sooner were Des Moines’ 250,000 residents plunged into catastrophe last Sunday than Williams’ 68-year-old mother went straight to a local hardware store to buy a washboard and galvanized tub.

Then she eased into the old-fashioned lifestyle she led as a girl in the town of Buxton, Iowa, more than 50 years ago.

“She heated rain water for a bath in the tub, then recycled the soapy water to wash clothes, which she hung on a fence to dry,” said Williams, 44. “The water was recycled again to flush the toilet. ‘Hmmmm,’ I thought, ‘So that’s how you do it!’ ”

Williams’ husband, Cecil, a 67-year-old World War II veteran, approached the crisis from a military perspective.

“He put on camouflage clothes and duck boots and started running around town collecting water,” Williams said. “Me? I chipped in with another family for a hotel room in West Des Moines, which has water.”

Having a shower and a working toilet “is like living in an oasis,” Williams said. “But my husband won’t go to the hotel with me. Too easy.”

Ann Kurtz, 35, co-owner of Kurtz Hardware in Des Moines, compared the situation to “stepping back 100 years.”

When the power went out at her house, Kurtz hauled the food in her refrigerator over to her mother’s house. “My mother started laughing,” Kurtz said. “She said people have been spoiled by electricity and tap water. She said all I needed was a block of ice in a box.”

Kurtz complained: “But it’ll melt.”

Her mother said: “Of course it’ll melt, dear. You just go get more ice.”

Kurtz’s response: “We didn’t grow up being pioneer women, mother!”

“We’ve all been spoiled by modern conveniences, even myself,” Kurtz’s mother, Marge Brekke, 71, acknowledged later. “But it’s a good lesson to learn how to be a little more resourceful again.”

Others across the city put their heads together to find creative ways of surviving the disaster. They used garbage cans to collect and store rainwater, and shared rope to cross streets that became rushing rivers before their eyes. They washed their hands in alcohol.

Families took turns shampooing under downspouts when rain came. Housing project residents fetched water from swimming pools for sponge baths and filling toilets.

Many found relatives and friends outside of the flood zone willing to share bathrooms and washing machines.

Nearly everyone found compassionate neighbors to help clean debris from their yards, transport water from distribution centers, and salvage furniture and other belongings from their flood-ravaged homes.

“We’re pretending we’re camping and eating a lot of sandwiches--everything’s paper cups and paper plates at my house,” said Marty Herrmann, vice president of finance at Iowa Paint Co., which was submerged over the weekend.

“My kids thought it was fine at first,” he said. “Now, they’re looking forward to getting the heck out of town to stay with relatives.”

But Lillie Jones, 84, could only muster righteous anger on Wednesday as she stood beside the soggy one-story house she has lived in since 1933.

A week ago, the house was her pride and joy. “I put years of effort into that house,” she said. “Put new siding on it and paneled the downstairs myself.”

Now the house and everything inside it is destroyed. The basement is full of earthworms. The U.S. flag outside is covered with mud.

When the river first surged over its banks on Saturday, she said she considered suicide figuring: “I’m too old to start over again.”

But now she says she is mad and determined to fight.

“Somebody’s going to pay for this!” she said, trembling with anger and pointing toward a concrete levee a few yards away at the river’s edge. “They told when that thing was built in 1948 that it would protect my house. Now, what in the name of God have I got? Nothing. Nothing.”