Oh Brother...

•July 27, 2016•

By Mike Brothers
NP Managing Editor

Growing up in the Saline River valley, summer rains were a time of great joy in a world of little or no air conditioning.

As kids we didn’t realize the consequence of the rains ability to flood the streets of Harrisburg.

Sure, we had heard our parents and grandparents talk about the great flood of 1937. The Saline River overflowed into Harrisburg, sparing only the few elevated blocks of the square.

The only passage around town was by boat, and Hart’s Department Store led the nation in rubber boot sales.

It was a flood made particularly difficult by arriving in February so several lives were claimed by the cold winter waters.

By the 1950s a levee protected the city, and flooding levels were better controlled, but not so much that a bunch of kids couldn’t find a way to have fun in the low lands.

That’s what Mike Duncan and I thought when we saw some 55 gallon drums floating in a low lying area behind Smith Packing Company in Dorrisville one rainy afternoon.

We had some knowledge of Huckleberry Finn and his float trip down the Mississippi so we started trying to round up the barrels for our own trip.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.