Mariel Williams
editor@mitchellnews.com
As Nick Whitson walks through his family’s flood-devastated properties in Green Mountain, a question recurs: What can be saved?
But for Whitson, “can” is the wrong word. His family has run O.C. Whitson and Sons, a furniture and general store, for six decades, and no matter what, he intends to reopen.
“It’s my life,” Whitson said. “We’ve had it 63 years, [and] I’m 66 years old. You can’t walk away from your life.”
Next to the store is Whitson’s mother’s home, a house that dates back to 1896. Like the store, the house filled up with mud and water but plans for remodeling it are already underway.
“I’m gonna save it,” Nick Whitson said flatly.
The morning of the flood, Nick Whitson saw the river cross State Hwy. 197 and ran next door to get his mother, Parzady, and bring her into the second floor of the old store.
“It was six foot deep in her house and six foot deep in the store,” he said. “We grabbed her and got her upstairs and just sit there and watched — that’s all you could do.”
Down the road from the family store, Nick’s older brother, Rick Wilson, was fleeing his home as well. Situated at a lower level, Rick’s house would be a total loss.
“[I] didn’t think it would be that big,” Rick Whitson said. “We come out of the house when the water hit the top step of the kitchen.”
Rick Whitson and his wife had to wade through almost waist-deep water to get out of their home.
“We walked round behind the house through the water ... then we crawled through the woods,” he said. “When we got to the woods my wife crawled, mostly.”
Down the road at the store, Nick Whitson watched the flood for nine hours. A bridge just upstream from downtown Green Mountain held out for most of the flood but finally gave way.
“It tore that bridge down, it was so fast--there was so much timber in it,” Nick Whitson said. “There was so much timber behind it the water was shooting over it — you looked one time; it was there; the next time it was gone.”
Nick Whitson said the bridge may have washed away around 2 p.m., but he is unsure of the time. The destruction of the bridge created a wave the swept through the township.
“The water with all the swirls and wash and debris — it hooked through my back door and came out the front windows,” Nick Whitson said.
Nick Whitson said he was fairly confident that the water would not rise to the second floor of the old store.
“I didn’t think it would, [but] I didn’t think it would be above these steps,” he said, gesturing toward the raised entrance to the first floor of the store.
The second floor of the store has a back door, and if necessary, the Whitson family could have scrambled up into the woods.
“If it got up in there, we were going to put mom in the wheelchair and head up the holler,” Nick Whitson said. “There’s an old barn up the holler we were going to get in, but it peaked at 3 o’clock.”
At age 96, Parzady Whitson’s blue eyes are calm when she remembers the day of the flood.
“I was out of the way, and I was thankful,” Parzady Whitson said. “And I’ll tell you what, I’ve been treated awful good.”
The family, with the assistance of volunteers, have cleared two feet of mud out of O.C. Whitson & Sons. Although not as old as Parzady’s house next door, the store has been a Green Mountain institution for almost 100 years.
“My dad and mom run [the store] 30 years, and me and my sister’s had it 33,” Nick Whitson said. “It was built in 1927; third-generation Howells run it, and they sold it to my dad in 1961.”
Volunteers from all over have come to help dig the mud out of the old building.
“I’ve had people from New York, California, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Ohio,” Nick Whitson said. “Had a bunch of Amish young people come — I never seen people work like that. We’ve had people from Kentucky ... Illinois, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Asheville — as bad as [flooding in] Asheville was, they came out and helped.”
Although the furniture and appliances inside were destroyed, Nick Whitson is ready to ready to repair and restock, and he is optimistic about the strength of the Green Mountain community.
“I don’t care what the media says — these people ain’t falling apart, they’re falling together,” he said.
But Rick Whitson, after 70 years in Green Mountain, is less certain about what his own future is going to hold.
“This is the third [flood] we’ve been through,” he said. “The first one, in ’77, got the first step out here at the store, [and] it ran in my basement. In ’95, it got to the first step of the house.”
But Hurricane Helene was different. This time, the river flooded Rick Whitson’s house to within four inches of the ceiling, and that might be the final straw.
“My wife don’t want to live here anymore,” he said. “And that’s all I’m going to say.”