Plenty of memories: audio slideshow

GRAYSON August 27, 2007 07:37 pm

— Carrie Sammons remembers the ’37 flood in vivid detail.
She was living in Ashland on the 3700 block of Winchester Avenue. Her father, John Caines, worked at Armco but also sold chickens for a living.
“Daddy was the only one in the Ashland area who sold chickens,” she said. “He sold them all over Ashland and all the way to Kenova. People would buy crates of chicken.”
At the time, she said, chickens weren’t sold in stores.
As the flood waters were rising near their home and eventually swallowed it up, her father let the chickens out of the chicken house, scrubbed it down good and that’s where the family lived. They brought in a half-bed, a feather bed and a cook stove.
“Mom and Dad would sleep in the half-bed and they put the feather bed on the floor for us three children,” she said. “That’s the way we spent the ’37 flood.”
Sammons, who lives in Grayson now but spent most of her life in Boyd County, said she remembers walking down the hill to Central Avenue, where her father had parked the car. He drove the children to Grayson to stay with an aunt until the flood waters subsided. Her two brothers are Robert, who lives in Ashland, and Ernest, who lives in Cincinnati.
Sammons, who is 80, went to school at Wylie, Coles and Ashland High School. She married before graduating, however. She still has fond memories of Ashland.
“I used to go down to the Bluegrass (Grill) often,” she said. “I walked to school — we didn’t have buses — so I walked by the Bluegrass many, many times and I’ve also eaten there quite often. When I went courting, my boyfriend would take me there.”
Sammons and her husband, Bernard, have been married for 59 years. She has two children, a daughter, Diana Holbrook, who is a teacher in Carter County, and Donald Coburn.
“I’m a plain ’ol housewife,” Carrie said. “I worked some for Sylvania during the war.”
Carrie and Bernie have had a wonderful marriage all these many years.
“He’s a good fella, I wouldn’t trade him,” she said. “We’re both retired now. He plays golf a lot at Carter Caves. He’s a good golfer. He’s got some trophies here. He got so many I got tired of dusting them and I threw them away.”
Bernie Sammons, who is 85, has shot his age in golf several times, she said.

Photos

Carrie Sammons with a photograph of her father and uncle in front of the family store, which had been used as shelter during the 1937 Flood when it was a chicken house. The Independent