I didn’t grow up in Clark County, so I don’t know how the Christmas Floods of 1964 affected people here. But where we lived in the Willamette Valley, they made for one of the most memorable holidays of my lifetime.
Over Labor Day weekend that year, we moved from our home on the edge of Salem to a housing development several miles farther out. In my 9-year-old brain I thought we were moving to the country and we’d have a lot more room. Maybe I could build a treehouse! Maybe I could get a dog!
Instead, I was shocked to see our new backyard was much smaller than the one in town. But any momentary disappointment was quickly forgotten, because there were a lot more kids to play with, including two classmates right on our block. I went to the same school, but now I rode a bus for the first time. Best of all, I had my own bedroom. No more sharing with my brothers.
Fall 1964 was sort of a blur with my new school routine, Halloween and my 10th birthday. December brought freezing weather and a snow day or two, which quickly turned to warm, heavy rain. If there was any talk about rising rivers, that was stuff for grown-ups, not us kids. We had more important concerns. Christmas was coming!
The big day fell on Friday that year. Monday and Tuesday we had school as usual. Tuesday evening, a terrific present was delivered: our very first color TV, a gift from my dad’s aunt, who’d done well selling insurance in the Midwest.
On Wednesday morning, we slept in while Mom got ready for her job at the hospital. A man knocked on the door, identified himself as a volunteer firefighter and said we might need to evacuate. Mom thought he was exaggerating, but as soon as she arrived at the hospital one of the other nurses exclaimed, “What are you doing here? They said on the radio they’re evacuating your part of town.”
So Mom came home, woke us up and started packing a few things in case we really had to leave.
Dad worked for the city utilities department, which was starting up a new wastewater treatment plant. He was already putting in extra hours. The rising river and all the stormwater were causing more problems. I don’t know what time he’d left for work that morning, but all of a sudden he came roaring up the driveway in his city pickup truck.
He ran in the door and announced that we had to leave, right now. The road he’d just taken into our neighborhood was under a foot or more of water that was rising fast. While my brothers and I tossed our sleeping bags and some clothes into the station wagon, Mom called our aunt in the old neighborhood to see if it was safe there. There was no flooding anywhere near their house, our aunt reported. Only the low-lying areas close to the river were in trouble. We were welcome to come over, and Mom told her we were on our way.
As Mom backed the car out of the driveway, we could see that the intersection only half a block away was submerged completely. Water in the gutter was quickly heading our way. It wasn’t scary, it was fascinating and hard to believe. Another couple of minutes and we wouldn’t have made it out.
We got to our aunt and uncle’s and easily got settled in. We spent so much time there growing up, it was already like a second home. Mom and Dad took a bedroom upstairs while my brothers and I bunked with our cousins in the basement. I remember looking down the hallway at one point and seeing my exhausted dad, flopped on the bed in the middle of the afternoon. Rumors about looters had Mom worried about our new TV. Then news came that the National Guard was patrolling the neighborhood and she felt better.
On Christmas Eve, another aunt and uncle hosted a party. The road to their place climbed a hill, and I always enjoyed the view across the valley. But all I could see in this winter twilight was flooded farmland along the river.
Christmas morning arrived and our cousins opened their presents, but there was nothing under the tree for us. We didn’t mind, though, because our folks had told us we’d be going to our grandparents’ house a little later. So that’s where they’d been hiding our gifts! Nothing was wrapped, so there wasn’t as much surprise, but we all had fun.
Dad had been keeping an eye on the house when he could. Our place was on a little rise that kept it above the floodwaters. The water was dropping but our street was still impassable. The power was still off but Dad decided it was time for us to go home.
Christmas evening, we drove out and parked on the other side of the block, where it was dry. By flashlight we made our way through our neighbors’ yards to get to our house. Dad got the big camp lantern lit and stoked up fires in our two fireplaces. In the firelight we opened the presents we’d left behind. Then we snuggled into our own beds, buried under every blanket and quilt Mom could find.
In the morning, Dad made breakfast on the camp stove. After that, things started getting back to normal pretty quickly. The water receded, the power came on and, after the New Year, school started again.
Some of the neighbors had it much worse, but we were lucky. It was not the Christmas in our new house that we were expecting, but we had many less eventful ones in the years to come.
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