1955

I was thirteen the year Hurricane Diane blew into town.  Hurricane Carol, the previous year, probably packed more of an actual punch, but Diane caused a lot more damage, devastation, and long-term problems in my little corner of the world.  And although I don’t have vivid memories of the storm itself, I remember the events immediately following it as if it were yesterday.

It’s kind of funny looking back on it now because I still see it through the eyes of a thirteen year old.  I see myself as I was then, standing in the open doorway of our 4th floor apartment where I had a bird’s eye view of the Blackstone River as it flowed past our house.  

The river was rising at an alarming rate.  The small islands out in its center were slowly disappearing from view and debris of all sorts was going by, swept along by the turbulent waters.  Eventually, we’d see not only trees and trash, but also big items like household appliances.  I even saw a small white coffin floating past after floodwaters washed out part of a cemetery upriver from us.

I remember that we lost power pretty early on.  We had no candles and no flashlights in the house.  You’ll remember, this was back in the days before people ransacked store shelves at the first hint of a storm and stocked up for emergencies.  So except for the small candle tucked into the little compartment on the back of the crucifix, along with a small linen cloth and a tiny bottle of holy water (all the better to assist the priest should someone suddenly require the Last Rites) we never kept candles in the house.  Fortunately, the Cabana twins, teenage girls who lived downstairs from us on the second floor, came to the rescue.  They knew someone at the local funeral parlor and were able to get enough candles to supply everyone in our building.  Yes, they were funeral candles, and they weren’t in pristine condition, being warped or otherwise damaged and unfit for official duty, but they served our purpose quite nicely.  We were delighted to get them.

Water was also a problem.  The reservoirs had become contaminated as a result of the storm and all water needed to be boiled prior to use.  I think we all harbored visions of dead bodies and God only knows what else floating around in our water supply, and no one wanted to chance drinking it no matter how long it had been boiled.  As it happened, there was a spring halfway up Manville Hill Road in Cumberland where clean, clear water flowed out of the ground all day long, just there for the taking.  We all trooped up there with bottles and jugs every day, fetching home enough drinking water to see us through the crisis.

 Yes, it was awful, it was tragic, and all of that, but to a kid it was also pretty exciting.  Rumors flew unchecked and we thrilled to hear them.

Railroad Street was being undermined by the rising water and would soon crumble and cave in.    

A coffin had gone over the dam, breaking open as it went, and a bystander who just happened to be there as it all happened, recognized his wife’s body in it and went insane on the spot.

My personal favorite, though, was the one about a head – just a head – floating down the river, singing “I Ain’t Got No Body,” as it went.  (Yes, I know it’s in poor taste, but it was pretty funny to us).

The Manville Bridge was still new at the time.  There was a lot of concern that it might not be able to withstand the force of the floodwaters since “the cement was still green,” a statement that puzzled my sister Joan who could clearly see that it was gray.  Truckloads of rocks were brought in and dumped off the bridge to protect the footings.  The whole town turned out to watch.

The most serious damage we suffered locally, though, was to the old Manville Jencks mill, located on the Cumberland side of the river where housing for the elderly now exists.  The section of the mill that spanned the river was torn loose and washed away, taking a large chunk of the main mill building with it as it went.  Even now, if you stand on the bridge looking downriver toward Albion, you can see where it was.  The concrete pilings are still standing.

The floodwaters eventually receded and clean up began.  Life in Manville resumed its normal pace.  Then tragedy struck again.

I was visiting my Aunt Bea in the Fairmount section of Woonsocket when we noticed smoke off in the distance, great billowing black clouds that we figured were maybe a mile or two away.  Uncle Aime decided to take a ride to see what was burning and I managed to cage a ride with him.  We just followed the smoke, up South Main St. and onto route 146, heading south.  The smoke never seemed to get any closer.  It wasn’t until we turned left onto Sayles Hill Road and came down into Manville that we began to gain on it.

“What’s going on?” we asked passersby as we got into town.

“The Manville Mill is on fire,” was the reply.

We drove as far as we could before parking the car, then we ran the rest of the way.  Sure enough, from our vantage point right in front of the Community Center building we could see fierce orange flames shooting out from all the windows.  The fully involved building was an inferno.  We could feel the heat all the way across the river.

The Manville Jencks had once been the lifeblood of our little village of Manville.  It was the lure that had drawn most of its older residents from Canada with the promise of work.  My father had once been a weaver there.  Almost everyone in town had either worked there or had family members who did.  And although the textile industry had long since flown south, Manville’s emotional ties to the mill remained strong.  Shocked disbelief was mirrored on most of the faces in the crowd.

We’d only been standing there a few minutes when the building began to explode.  It was speculated that chemicals being stored in the mill by one of the companies that rented space there may have fueled the explosions, but no one hung around asking questions.  We all ran for our lives.  When the blasts stopped and we next looked, the windows with the orange flames were gone, as was most of the roof.  All that remained was the shell and memories of how it had once been.

It didn’t all end quite that quickly or that neatly, though.  The mill burned for weeks, gradually dying down to smaller, and smaller individual puddles of flame that burned in all manner of pretty colors depending on what material was feeding the fire in that particular location.  

The fire became our social life.  It was like a big block party.  Every evening after supper everyone gathered down by the bridge to chat, laugh, and swap stories. Others just clucked their tongues, shook their heads and said, “Ain’t it awful?”  

Then slowly, as the flames subsided, we all drifted back to our usual ways and the old town gradually returned to normal.